The bell tolls for us in Kabul

Some events are like this.

They creep up like a stalking wolf.

Or, as Nietzsche put it, on doves’ feet.

We don’t hear them coming and need a third ear to make out, behind the ‘still, small voice’, the echo of the explosion.

It happened at Leuctra, in Boeotia, on that day in the 4th century BC when the sacred band of Thebes cut 400 Spartiate equals to pieces, tolling the end of Lacedaemonian hegemony, though no one knew it at the time.

Or at the battle of Chaeronea, 30 years later, which marked the start of the waning of Athenian power.

Or the seemingly minor battle of Pydna, in Thessaloniki, which set in motion the crumbling of Alexander’s dream and was the first real victory of the nascent Roman empire.

Or the battle of Adrianople, which began as a policing operation by a legion sent to rein in bands of Ostrogoth raiders; no one saw it, at the time, as Act I of the fall of Rome.