It would be fair to say that the eyes of the nation are not currently focused on the uphill battle to advance voting rights legislation in Congress. Images of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, after 20 years of seemingly fruitless American engagement in Afghanistan, dominated screens over the weekend, leading President Joe Biden to hastily return to Washington on Monday to deliver remarks.
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From its inception in 2001 to its ignominious end, the U.S. war in Afghanistan has been defined by lies. It was a lie when, in 2001, President George W. Bush told service members that “your mission is defined, your objectives are clear.... We will not fail.” It was a lie when, in 2016, President Barack Obama proclaimed that America had successfully “trained Afghan forces to take responsibility for their own security.” And it was a lie every time pundits and officials insisted that victory was around the corner. Читать дальше...
As the Taliban reconquers Afghanistan, producing bloody scenes of reprisals and desperate attempts to get on some of the last planes out of the country, the blame game is operating at full tilt. Who’s responsible for all this? It can’t be America’s fault writ large—a colossal tale of imperial hubris and corruption that left an already war-wracked Afghanistan in shambles while our homeland slipped further into disrepair and authoritarianism. No, that would imply that America is not exceptional;... Читать дальше...
Last week I wrote about the gap between Democratic leaders’ rhetoric on the climate crisis and the reality of their actions, put in stark relief by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sobering report. Since then, even more data has accumulated, showing how big that disconnect really is.
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In politics, the rule is treated as immutable, like the law of gravity that Isaac Newton supposedly conceived while sitting under an apple tree in 1666. The political equivalent is the dictum that the party that controls the White House is doomed to lose congressional seats in every off-year election. Presidential victories are invariably followed by an outgoing tide that takes away the winning party’s congressional seats.
It was tragic to watch events unfolding Sunday in Kabul. Blame Joe Biden for a terrible miscalculation based on intelligence estimates that were obviously crap. But also blame Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo (who signed the peace deal with the Taliban that forced Biden to choose between withdrawal and expansion of hostilities). And while you’re at it, blame George W. Bush and the neocons, blame the generals, and in fact, blame the whole bipartisan foreign-policy establishment for the hubris of thinking... Читать дальше...
As the Covid-19 virus experiences its second life in the form of the Delta variant, the lion’s share of national attention has focused on how the surge has affected the South. America’s favorite punching bag, Florida, has received special attention. Much of the derision has been well founded: Florida currently has the highest hospitalization rate in the country, and last week, as schools across the state started to reopen at full capacity, Governor Ron DeSantis threatened to withhold pay for teachers... Читать дальше...
A very bad idea has picked up more steam than it deserves in recent days. Fed up with surging Delta cases and lagging vaccination rates, commentators have begun to opine that unvaccinated people ought to pay more for health insurance, or pay full freight for any care they require if infected. “Don’t want the COVID-19 vaccine? Then pay full cost if you land in the hospital,” declared one headline in MarketWatch. Elisabeth Rosenthal, the editor in chief of Kaiser Health News, argued for similar financial penalties in The New York Times... Читать дальше...
