Thirty-five dead. A charred runway in Niger. And the British government, ever the gentleman, offering counter-terror expertise to allies.
How civilised. How utterly predictable. We are watching the slow, grinding collapse of order in the Sahel, and our response is a seminar on bomb disposal.
It would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. The parallels to the late Roman Empire are now too numerous to ignore: barbarian incursions, a hollowed-out imperial core, and a ruling class more interested in bureaucratic gestures than decisive action. The airport attack in Niger is not an anomaly.
It is a symptom. A symptom of a world where the West has lost its nerve, where we send experts instead of legions, and where the enemies of civilisation see our hesitation as an invitation. The Victorians would have understood this.
They would have sent a gunboat. We send a PowerPoint presentation. The 35 dead are not statistics.
They are the price of our decadence. And the bill is not yet paid.
