When last week his rally booed Donald Trump’s suggestion that attendees get vaccinated against COVID-19, it was a clue that he was losing his grip on the political base he helped radicalize. Trump had not initiated their descent into madness, but until recently he seemed their master. Movement conservatives had bred and fed the monster for decades when, like so many man-made monsters in fiction, they lost control. Trump seemed in command of the mob, too, until recently. Watch Sen. Lindsey Graham for signs of Trump’s eroding influence on the GOP.
While the party is united in its criticism of President Joe Biden over the Afghanistan evacuation, the effort to resettle refugees is driving a wedge between Republicans willing to accept Afghan refugees into the United States and those fed years of relentless anti-immigrant messages from Trump and his closest allies.
On the one hand, the GOP on the whole wants to slam Biden’s evacuation efforts (about 100,000 have been evacuated to date) over the fate of American allies who risk retribution by the Taliban if they stay. The message from the anti-immigrant Trumpist wing is, don’t you dare bring those dangerous foreigners here. Evacuate them, sure, but dump them somewhere else. Trump, in his usual, fact-free way, insists Biden is admitting an unknown number of terrorists.
The unusual split is pitting traditional conservatives, who are more inclined to defend those who have sacrificed for America, against the anti-immigrant, anti-refugee wing of the party. And it is a fresh test of Mr. Trump’s power to make Republican leaders fall in line behind him.
“The core divide within the Republican Party, post-Trump, is on immigration,” said Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster. “The Republican Party used to be the party of immigration, and Trump changed all of that.”
The debate highlights the larger ideological divide within the party between “America First” isolationists like Mr. Trump and Republicans who believe maintaining strong alliances and America’s influence abroad benefits the country’s security.
Former Trump adviser and noted xenophobe Stephen Miller believes the party would come together to oppose Afghan resettlement in the U.S.:
“There’s an enormous amount of agreement among conservatives that there is no desire among the American public at all for a large-scale resettlement of generalized refugees,” he said.
With right-wing hosts on Fox News like Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson aligning with the anti-refugee wing of the party, Ms. Longwell, the Republican strategist, said that “the open question” was whether Republican sentiment that America was morally obligated to help Afghan allies “diminishes after two weeks.”
“Is it really our responsibility to welcome thousands of potentially unvetted refugees from Afghanistan?” Ms. Ingraham said on her prime-time cable news show last week.
“Potentially” does a lot of work in Trump’s circles, as in potential voter fraud. (Also weasel phrases such as may be, might be, and possibly.)
“9% of Americans—believe the ‘Use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency.’” Over 25% believe the election was stolen and Joe Biden is illegitimate. 8% or 21 million people, believe both. The report refers to them as “adamant insurrectionists.”
Out of the 21 million adamant insurrectionists: – 1 million are in a militia or personally know a member – 6 million expressed support for militias – At least 7 million own a gun – 3 million have been in the military
This is the most concerning statistic. 63%, or more than ten million, believe in Great Replacement which used to be for hardcore, violent nazis only. It’s an extremely powerful and dangerous lie. This will make the other Big Lie look quaint if it grows. 54% are in QAnon.
“As the 2022 election season fast approaches — along with the potential for distorting election outcomes — understanding American political violence must surely be a national priority if democracy is to hold the line.”
The Supreme Court handed down an order Tuesday evening that makes no sense.
It is not at all clear what the Biden administration is supposed to do in order to comply with the Court’s decision in Biden v. Texas. That decision suggests that the Department of Homeland Security committed some legal violation when it rescinded a Trump-era immigration policy, but it does not identify what that violation is. And it forces the administration to engage in sensitive negotiations with at least one foreign government without specifying what it needs to secure in those negotiations.
One of the most foundational principles of court decisions involving foreign policy is that judges should be extraordinarily reluctant to mess around with foreign affairs. The decision in Texas defies this principle, fundamentally reshaping the balance of power between judges and elected officials in the process.
The central issue in Texas is the Biden administration’s decision to terminate former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required many asylum seekers arriving at the United States’ southern border to stay in Mexico while they awaited a hearing on their asylum claim. Although the policy was formally ended under Biden, it hasn’t been in effect since March 2020, when the federal government imposed heightened restrictions on border crossings due to Covid-19.
Nevertheless, a Trump-appointed federal judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, ordered the Biden administration to reinstate the policy, and he gave the administration exactly one week to do so. The Supreme Court’s order effectively requires the administration to comply with Kacsmaryk’s order, at least for now, with one vague and confusing modification.
Technically, this case is still on appeal. The Biden administration requested a stay of Kacsmaryk’s order while its appeal is pending. But the administration is now under an immediate obligation to comply with that order.
And the Supreme Court’s decision to deny the stay bodes very ill for the ultimate outcome of that appeal. The Court did not disclose every justice’s vote, but liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan did disclose that they dissent.
That’s from Ian Millhiser at Vox. Click over to read the whole thing to get the details. It’s truly shocking but it shouldn’t be. The Republicans packed the court for a reason and this is just the beginning.
The number of conservative demonstrations nationwide since the Biden inauguration remains a fraction of the volume of liberal demonstrations that followed the Trump inauguration in 2017, according to data collected by the Crowd Counting Consortium, a public interest and scholarly project directed by the researchers Erica Chenoweth of Harvard and Jeremy Pressman of the University of Connecticut.
Where left-of-center demonstrations made up three-quarters of all demonstrations in the United States during the six months after Mr. Trump entered office, conservative demonstrations account for just 10 percent of the total since Mr. Biden did (protests against racism and policing have accounted for the majority). And at only a few dozen of them have protesters explicitly criticized Mr. Biden, according to the crowd counts, in contrast to the hundreds of Obama-critical Tea Party events held by the summer of 2009.
Well, there was that one time tens of thousands of MAGA’s got violent and stormed the capital to try to kill Pelosi and Pence. But other than that …
The transformation of the Republican Party since 2009 offers another possible explanation. The rise of the Tea Party “marked the beginning of a mainstreaming of right-wing resentment politics” that helped pave the way for Mr. Trump’s presidency, said Rachel Blum, a political scientist at the University of Oklahoma.
Its very success in remaking the G.O.P. might have made a new grass-roots resurgence on the right unnecessary. “There doesn’t need to be another Tea Party because Trumpism is the downstream” representation of it, Professor Skocpol said. “Trump is leading himself, front and center, a much more personality-centered embodiment of the same urges.” Where Mr. Obama commanded activist attention in 2009, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project has documented more than four times as many pro-Trump demonstrations as anti-Biden ones through July 20.
In some cases, Mr. Trump’s influence has fueled opposition to fellow Republicans rather than against Democrats. “A lot of the anger is focused on Republicans that betrayed Trump, that threw Trump under the bus,” Ms. Dooley said, mentioning Representative Liz Cheney, Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. “That’s what a lot of people are focused on versus 2009.”
The Tea Party was “anti-RINO” too. Remember Eric Cantor?
I wrote about this months ago, noting that the DC GOPers believed the Tea Party was going to re-emerge and shut down Biden’s domestic agenda, which was a joke:
Igor Bobick of the Huffington Post recently reported that Republican officials are anxiously awaiting a resurgence of the Tea Party, which they have been expecting to reconstitute in the face of Joe Biden’s ambitious agenda. It was, after all, a smashing success back in 2009 and 2010 in opposing President Barack Obama’s health care plan. You’d certainly assume that they’d be getting the band back together. But so far, it isn’t happening. And there’s a reason for it: people like what they are seeing.
Bobic quotes deficit hawk Republican Sen. Mike Braun saying, “even my counties back in Indiana are happy, which is a very conservative area. They’re asking, ‘How can I spend $15 million in a rural county?'” Braun ruefully admits that Biden’s agenda is a smart political move and he’s right. Biden and the Democrats are betting that people are hungry for some positive government action and they are determined to deliver it.
But there’s more to it than that.
The Tea Party was a grassroots movement but it was also heavily subsidized by some of the wealthiest activists in the country. The Koch brothers’ operation and other wealthy interests spent quite a bit of money to make the Tea Party a reality because their libertarian ideology really was on the line. But when you think about it, it was a bizarre set of issues for grassroots activists who usually organize themselves around a sense of victimization. And it didn’t really fit their usual modus operandi. The “threat” was a total abstraction — how were they “victims” of other people getting health care?
Sure, the right has always opposed government programs if it would benefit those they believe don’t deserve them (and I think you know who those people might be). But the outrage against Obamacare was really all about Obama. They had to sublimate their racist backlash into something and that was on the menu but the war the Tea Party was really fighting was against the election of America’s first Black president.
Yet some Republicans in Congress are still operating under the illusion that their voters really did care about deficits and will be moved to protest despite the fact that they still adore Donald Trump, a man who didn’t care about any of that. In fact, right-wing grassroots activists are already engaged in a battle that is far more energizing and interesting to them than any of that egghead economic stuff ever was: Donald Trump’s Big Lie.
According to a new CNN poll, 70% of Republicans believe the election was stolen. And they are taking action. We all know about the flurry of restrictive voting laws that are quickly being enacted all over the country and the preposterous “audit” taking place down in Arizona by a bunch of Trump fanatics and conspiracy theorists is probably just the beginning. The explosion of GOP grassroots activity in the states isn’t just about Joe Biden or the events happening in Washington. They are also working night and day to punish Republicans who dared to disagree with Trump’s version of events and ensure that Trump will be able to win the next election.Advertisement:
The Washington Post took a look at some of the grassroots action taking place around the country. They interviewed one Michigan organizer who is trying to censure and remove a Republican Party executive who accepted the results of the election. She said, “I think I speak for many people in that Trump has never actually been wrong, and so we’ve learned to trust when he says something, that he’s not just going to spew something out there that’s wrong and not verified.” That sort of cultish delusion is forcing official rebukes and purges of Trump apostates all across the country.
And then this happened to Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Ut., over the weekend:
This video of Mitt Romney getting loudly booed by Trumpers at a Republican gathering in Utah on Saturday is incredible pic.twitter.com/NywSXAWjBW
The motion to censure the former GOP presidential nominee failed 711-798, which I’m sure softened the humiliating blow. But it’s bubbling up to Washington as well. The House GOP caucus thought they had successfully managed the “Liz Cheney problem” but it’s coming back. Axios reported that there may be another vote to remove her and from the behavior of the leadership, it seems as though the worm has turned, no doubt because these Representatives are getting an earful from their activist base. The party is now eating its own.
Florida seems to be losing its patience (and its patients) with Ron DeSantis’s deadly policies:
We now have a quality poll — from Quinnipiac University — that seeks to probe public opinion on the great mask debate in Florida in a lot of fine-grained detail. And the conclusion is clear: Anti-mask derangement is losing the argument. Badly.
Which hints at a big opening for President Biden and Democrats.
Florida, of course, is ground zero in the mask wars, to a degree unsurpassed by any state, with the possible exception of Texas. In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has done everything he can to block local officials from implementing mask mandates, sparking a remarkable rebellion, with numerous school districts defying him.
A plurality of Florida residents believe DeSantis is hurting efforts to slow the spread of covid-19 in the state, 46 percent to 41 percent.
73 percent think the spread of covid in the state is a serious problem, 59 percent say the spread is out of control, and 61 percent say it was preventable.
60 percent support requiring students, teachers and staff to wear masks in schools, while only 36 percent oppose it. And by 54 percent to 44 percent, Floridians say schools, not parents, should make the decision on masks for kids.
59 percent support requiring mask-wearing in indoor spaces, while only 39 percent oppose it.
63 percent say the issue of wearing masks is primarily about public health, while only 33 percent say it’s about personal freedom. Meanwhile, 64 percent say they’re effective in slowing covid spread.
68 percent say local officials should generally be able to require masks in indoor public spaces.
Large majorities reject just about every aspect of DeSantis’s framing of this public debate. Those majorities not only support mask mandates; they also see them as a matter of public health and a legitimate tool for local officials to employ. They don’t see them as an infringement on freedom, and see them as effective against covid spread, which they view as a problem that is both preventable and that DeSantis has personally made worse.
DeSantis and other pro-Covid Governors are convinced that their political future is dependent upon sucking up to the Trump base regardless of how insanely nihilistic they are. They may be right. It’s a long way to 2022 and this may very well be forgotten. And the enthusiasm of the hardcore pro-COVID base could bring them over the top.
DeSantis only won in 2018 by 32,000 votes or less than 1%. But the way the press has inexplicably feted him as the one true GOP hero, he’s become a national figure and has been seen as a great success. Let’s hope that Florida voters have long memories.
This 60 Minutes piece by Wesley Lowery sounds fascinating:
My latest for @60Minutes is a piece i’ve wanted to do for awhile – an examination of Louisiana’s “Jim Crow Juries” and the years long fight led by current and formerly incarcerated people to rid the state of an explicitly racist provision of the law (a brief thread)
In nearly the entire country, someone accused of a crime can only be convicted by a unanimous jury decision. otherwise it’s a mistrial. But in Louisiana, you can be convicted by a split jury – even if some jurors vote in the final tally to convict, you end up incarcerated.
This provision was passed into law during Louisiana’s 1898 constitutional convention — which had been called, post-Emancipation, for the explicit purpose of “ensuring the supremacy of the white race in perpetuity.”
Allowing for split jury convictions would made it easier, even w/black ppl now on juries, to convict black men & women even without compelling evidence/when there was doubt of guilt. that was important for both subjugation and for the convict labor it would provide post slavery
A century later, I spoke with 52-year-old Anthony Boult via video chat from Angola, where he has been incarcerated more than two decades for second degree murder. he was convicted on a 10-2 vote. virtually anywhere else in the country, that’s a mistrial.
Formerly incarcerated people campaigned to get rid of the state law. as Norris Henderson notes, most people had no clue this provision of the law even existed in Louisiana
Then, last year, in the Ramos decision, the Supreme Court ruled the practice of split juries unconstitutional. but the decision did not apply retroactively – meaning the 1600+ people already incarcerated due to these unconstitutional split jury convictions had no recourse.
In New Orleans, DA Jason Williams is proactively reviewing all convictions in his jurisdiction that came via split juries, and finding cases like Jermaine Hudson – who spent 22 years incarcerated for a crime he not only didn’t do but one that was completely fabricated.
Legislation granting new trials/reviews to those still incarcerated due to split jury convictions failed in Louisiana this year. there is hope something similar could pass next year. In the meantime, 1600+ ppl are in prison for convictions the supreme court ruled unconstitutional.
Our full segment is streaming now on @paramountplus. would love if you watched and weighed in. iIwasn’t even close to the first person to tell this story, which has been documented and examined by tons of great journalists. Just hoped to use my platform to bring more attention.
Also worth noting: Louisiana is one of two states with non unanimous jury provisions, Oregon being the other (and there is a similarly interesting fight going on there to get laws changed)
A couple from Miami Beach was arrested in Hawaii last week after police say they attempted to use fake vaccination cards to travel into the island for a family vacation.
Enzo Dalmazzo, 43, and Daniela Dalmazzo, 31, were charged with falsifying a vaccine card, with Daniela facing an additional two counts for submitting fake documents for their two children.
Violating the state’s COVID-19 mandates, including falsifying a vaccination card, is a misdemeanor that can result in a fine of up to $5,000, up to a year in prison or both.
The couple was cited a total of $8,000 and posted bail. It was the second known case of visitors using fake vaccination cards to bypass quarantine in the last week.
A Chicago pharmacist was arrested Tuesday morning onfederal charges of stealing and selling authentic Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 vaccination cards, federal investigators announced on Tuesday.
Tangtang Zhao, 34, is accused of selling 125 cards on eBay for $10 each during March and April 2021, according to court records. Investigators believe Zhao stole the cards from his employer: a pharmacy authorized to distribute COVID-19 vaccines.
Creating or having a vaccination card that an authorized source did not officially give to you is a federalcrime,Siobhan said, in part because the CDC is a federal agency, and the card includes a CDC seal.
California father and son arrested in Hawaii for fake COVID-19 vaccine cards, ABC7-LA August 15, 2021
I want to see more stories like this. Not just people arrested for using fake vaccination cards, but for breaking other laws that endanger the lives of others.
Why is enforcement of breaking public health laws important? As this FBI notice says , “…you endanger yourself and those around you, and you are breaking the law.”
It’s a misdemeanor to break some public health laws, a felony for others. Each crime has different levels of recommended punishment. When it comes to punishment of violations of public health laws we should look at intent and the scale of the crime.
Glenn Kirschner on his #JusticeMatters podcast suggested last week that Trump be investigated for negligent homicide for avoidable COVID death. I agree. My friend Dave thinks what Trump did is depraved-indifference murder, a type of murder where an individual acts with a “depraved indifference” to human life and where such act results in a death, despite that individual not explicitly intending to kill.”
I want to highlight these stories of enforcement for three reasons:
1) It’s good news. People got caught. Fox News covered it, so maybe it will be a deterrent. Of course if you are reading this fine blog you probably aren’t buying fake vaccination cards. You are already vaccinated. So what you want to know is:
2) How do we stop people who intentionally put lives in danger when they expose others to a deadly virus?
3) What’s the best punishment for people who intentionally endanger lives and break laws?
I noticed that the pharmacist case is a federal case. Federal crimes mean federal prosecutors that can operate in any state. I’ve found that states are often reluctant to enforce or prosecute violations of their OWN public health laws. In fact, Red state governors like DeSantis made it a point to PARDON people who violated their own state public health laws!
The Biden administration is now using federal government levers to get vaccination and mask mandates in place. Biden can do things like restrict federal funds if people don’t get vaccinations and mandate vaccinations for people employed by federal agencies.
They can also bust people for breaking federal laws. The federal government needs to do both.
In the CBSN video about the Chicago pharmacist, Steven Block, a former Federal prosecutor, explains that this arrest sends a message to healthcare professionals. He suggests that more arrests are coming. He also says that the DOJ probably won’t pursue the people who brought the cards. I think that is a mistake.
I’ve seen multiple elective officials say a reason not to have mandates is that it’s too hard to enforce the law. But making something a law sets into motion a number of societal and psychological responses. Just having the law leads to people being afraid of being arrested.
But when there is no enforcement, or weak enforcement of public health laws it sends the message that endangering lives isn’t serious.
And when there is no punishment, or weak punishment of public health laws it send the message that there will be no serious consequences for actions that endanger the lives of others.
I believe that people who put lives in danger should be arrested and charged for crimes related to the severity of the danger they put others in. Those who know of this danger, do it intentionally and with malice aforethought, need to be seriously punished. I say this as a green-blooded, bleeding heart liberal.
My message? It’s good that the Federal government and the states are arresting these people. I’m encouraged by this and want to see more.
Last spring I wrote an optimistic piece about the attempted recall of California Governor Gavin Newsom, concluding that it wouldn’t go anywhere because “California is the beating heart of blue America and this time the Terminator isn’t going to be on the ballot, the state isn’t in a perpetual state of crisis over funding and the California Republican Party is a joke.” All of that remains true, but three weeks out from election day, it’s clear that unless Democrats get out the vote, Newsom could actually be in trouble — and that means the U.S. will be in trouble too.
It is absurd that Newsom is being recalled in the first place. California has money in the bank, the pandemic has been handled well, especially compared to some of the other big states such as Florida and Texas which are buckling under the onslaught of the Delta surge and are suffering far more hospitalizations and deaths. By today’s polarized standards, Newsom is very popular with a 57% approval rating and 60% approving of his handling of the COVID crisis according to the latest CBS News poll. Moreover, he’s up for election next year anyway and the state will have to spend over $270 million for this unnecessary charade.
So why is such a thing happening?
This archaic law goes back to the progressive reform era at the turn of the 20th century but never produced a successful recall until Arnold Schwarzenegger unseated Gray Davis in 2003. That was the first time anyone managed to get the required signatures of 12% of the turnout in the previous election. This time, necessary COVID mitigation measures and Trump’s defeat energized enough Republicans to sign up and get the recall on the ballot (with the help of a three-month extension granted by a judge because of the pandemic.)
If Newsom fails to get 51% of the vote he will be defeated while whichever of the 46 gadflies on the ballot gets the most vote goes on to become governor. It’s entirely possible that someone could become governor of the biggest state in the US with only 10% of the vote. It’s a daft system that desperately needs to be tossed in the dustbin of history.
You might think that a Republican pulling this off is impossible since the state is so blue it’s downright iridescent. But weird off-year elections like this one are notoriously low turnout and polling right now is showing a serious enthusiasm gap. Republicans in the state are salivating at the chance to pull off an anti-democratic, legal coup in the most liberal state in the country while Democrats either aren’t paying attention or see Newsom as “unlikeable.” (They really need to wake up and recognize that what’s really unlikeable is a Trumpish right-winger in the governor’s mansion.)
The assumption early on was that the reality show star and former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner would be the main challenger. Trump’s brain trust, led by former campaign manager Brad Parscale, was running her campaign and she was getting a lot of press. But she flamed out early, taking time off from the campaign this summer to appear in the Australian version of Celebrity Big Brother so it’s pretty clear she’s not taking this seriously. The Republican front-runner now, currently polling at 20%, is also a celebrity, although he’s hardly an international A-lister like Arnold. He’s a D-list, LA talk radio host named Larry Elder, who calls himself “the sage of South-Central” although he more accurately represents the thinking of white South Carolina than Black South Central Los Angeles. He has never held political office, which in GOP circles is a requirement these days for leadership.
Here’s a look at his thinking, so thoroughly out of step with the majority of Californians, he might as well be from outer space:
NEW: Meet Larry Elder, the right-wing Trump ally who's set to be governor of California if the GOP-led recall of @GavinNewsom is successful.
He's militantly anti-choice, thinks the minimum wage should be $0, and promotes anti-vaxxers. pic.twitter.com/2W4KSWsogW
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Elder’s beliefs about women are downright antediluvian. Not only has he been accused by an ex-girlfriend of brandishing a gun at her, but his sexist comments over the years are also right up there with the worst of Donald Trump. He has claimed that more women vote for the Democratic Party because they don’t understand politics and are easily manipulated. A Nebraska state senator was forced to step down from his post after retweeting one of Elder’s crude tweets suggesting that Women’s March protesters were too ugly to be sexually assaulted. If you want a combination of Rand Paul, Donald Trump and Laura Ingraham to run the largest state in the union, Elder is your man. And that’s exactly what Republicans are looking for.
I know that most people around the country probably care little about this recall election. Perhaps it seems like just more eccentric kookiness from LaLa Land. But it’s deadly serious for the whole country, not just California.
If Republicans pull this off it will be one more piece of evidence that their anti-democratic strategy is working. If they can seize the reins of power in the heart of blue America by using arcane rules that benefit a minority, they will believe they are unstoppable.
And as indelicate as it is to mention this, it’s important to note that California has a Democratic Senator who is 88 years old. You don’t even want to imagine who Governor Larry Elder would appoint to her seat if she were suddenly no longer able to serve but you can be sure it would be a right-wing Republican. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would be pleased as punch to see the abrupt end of the Biden agenda at the hands of Californians.
The Washington Post’s David Weigel reported on Tuesday, that so far a million mail-in ballots have been returned which is comparable to the return in the first week of early voting in the 2020 presidential election. He writes:
According to Political Data Inc., which has been crunching the return numbers, nearly 605,000 mail ballots have been collected from Democrats, compared with around 236,000 from Republicans and around 236,000 from voters who belong to minor parties or have “no party preference.”
Assuming that the vast majority of California Democrats are voting no on the recall, that’s good news for Newsom. But if we’ve learned anything in the last few cycles, it’s that you can’t extrapolate much from the early vote, so who knows if this will hold up?
If Newsom is removed from office it will not be a case of vote suppression or manipulation. They couldn’t have made it any easier to exercise the franchise — every registered voter in the state has received a mail-in ballot. If California gives a big boost to the undemocratic forces on the right out of sheer laziness, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
As we’ve seen so often before, a lot of Afghan-endgame coverage is being led by *political* writers, who naturally force-fit all issues onto the familiar “how is the Prez doing??” R-vs-D grid. Counterexample: how NYT Kabul correspondent writes.
Here it is. And it’s like a brain cleanser:
It was 8 a.m. and the sleepy Afghan sergeant stood at what he called the front line, one month before the city of Kunduz fell to the Taliban. An unspoken agreement protected both sides. There would be no shooting.
That was the nature of the strange war the Afghans just fought, and lost, with the Taliban.
President Biden and his advisers say the Afghan military’s total collapse proved its unworthiness, vindicating the American pullout. But the extraordinary melting away of government and army, and the bloodless transition in most places so far, point to something more fundamental.
The war the Americans thought they were fighting against the Taliban was not the war their Afghan allies were fighting. That made the American war, like other such neocolonialist adventures, most likely doomed from the start.
Recent history shows it is foolish for Western powers to fight wars in other people’s lands, despite the temptations. Homegrown insurgencies, though seemingly outmatched in money, technology, arms, air power and the rest, are often better motivated, have a constant stream of new recruits, and often draw sustenance from just over the border.
Outside powers are fighting one war as visitors — occupiers — and their erstwhile allies who actually live there, something entirely different. In Afghanistan, it was not good versus evil, as the Americans saw it, but neighbor against neighbor.
When it comes to guerrilla war, Mao once described the relationship that should exist between a people and troops. “The former may be likened to water,” he wrote, “the latter to the fish who inhabit it.”
And when it came to Afghanistan, the Americans were a fish out of water. Just as the Russians had been in the 1980s. Just as the Americans were in Vietnam in the 1960s. And as the French were in Algeria in the 1950s. And the Portuguese during their futile attempts to keep their African colonies in the ’60s and ’70s. And the Israelis during their occupation of southern Lebanon in the ’80s.
Each time the intervening power in all these places announced that the homegrown insurgency had been definitively beaten, or that a corner had been turned, smoldering embers led to new conflagrations.The remains of old Soviet tanks surrounding a forward operating base in Kunduz in 2011.Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times
The Americans thought they had defeated the Taliban by the end of 2001. They were no longer a concern. But the result was actually far more ambiguous.
“Most had essentially melted away, and we weren’t sure where they’d gone,” wrote Brig. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, as quoted by the historian Carter Malkasian in a new book, “The American War in Afghanistan.”
In fact, the Taliban were never actually beaten. Many had been killed by the Americans, but the rest simply faded into the mountains and villages, or across the border into Pakistan, which has succored the movement since its inception.
By 2006, they had reconstituted sufficiently to launch a major offensive. The end of the story played out in the grim and foreordained American humiliation that unfolded over the past week — the consecration of the U.S. military loss.
“In the long run all colonial wars are lost,” the historian of Portugal’s misadventures in Africa, Patrick Chabal, wrote 20 years ago, just as the Americans were becoming fatally embroiled in Afghanistan.
The superpower’s two-decade entanglement and ultimate defeat was all the more surprising in that the America of the decades preceding the millennium had been suffused with talk of the supposed “lessons” of Vietnam.
The dominant one was enunciated by the former majority leader of the Senate, Mike Mansfield, in the late 1970s: “The cost was 55,000 dead, 303,000 wounded, $150 billion,” Mansfield told a radio interviewer. “It was unnecessary, uncalled-for, it wasn’t tied to our security or a vital interest. It was just a misadventure in a part of the world which we should have kept our nose out of.”
Long before, at the very beginning of the “misadventure,” in 1961, President John F. Kennedy had been warned off Vietnam by no less an authority than Charles de Gaulle. “I predict that you will sink step by step into a bottomless military and political quagmire, however much you spend in men and money,” de Gaulle, the French president, later recalled telling Kennedy.
The American ignored him. In words that foreshadowed both the Vietnam and Afghan debacles, de Gaulle warned Kennedy: “Even if you find local leaders who in their own interests are prepared to obey you, the people will not agree to it, and indeed do not want you.”
By 1968, American generals were arguing that the North Vietnamese had been “whipped,” as one put it. The problem was, the enemy refused to recognize that it had been defeated, and went right on fighting, as the foreign policy analysts James Chace and David Fromkin observed in the mid-1980s. The Americans’ South Vietnamese ally, meanwhile, was corrupt and had little popular support.
The same unholy trinity of realities — boastful generals, an unbowed enemy, a feeble ally — could have been observed at all points during the U.S. engagement in Afghanistan.
Kennedy should have listened to de Gaulle. The French president, unlike his American counterparts then and later, distrusted the generals and would not listen to their blandishments, despite being France’s premier military hero.
He was at that moment extricating France from a brutal eight-year colonial war in Algeria, against the fervent wishes of his top officers and the European settlers there who wanted to maintain the more than century-old colonial rule. His generals argued, rightly, that the interior Algerian guerrilla resistance had been largely smashed.
But de Gaulle had the wisdom to see that the fight was not over.
Massed at Algeria’s borders was what the insurgents called the “army of the frontiers,” later the Army of National Liberation, or A.L.N., which became today’s A.N.P., or National People’s Army, still the dominant element in Algerian political life.
“What motivated de Gaulle was they still had an army on the frontiers,” said Benjamin Stora, the leading historian of the Franco-Algerian relationship. “So the situation was frozen, militarily. De Gaulle’s reasoning was, if we maintain the status quo, we lose a lot.” He pulled the French out in a decision that still torments them.A soldier carrying his gear preparing to leave a base in Kunduz in 2011.Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times
The A.L.N. chief, later Algeria’s most important post-independence leader, Houari Boumediène, incarnated strains in the Algerian revolution — dominating strains — that will be familiar to Taliban watchers: religion and nationalism. The Islamists later turned against him over socialism. But the mass outpouring of popular grief at Boumediène’s funeral in 1978 was genuine.
Understand the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan
Who are the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that came after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here’s more on their origin story and their record as rulers.
Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who have spent years on the run, in hiding, in jail and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to govern, including whether they will be as tolerant as they claim to be.
How did the Taliban gain control? See how the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan in a few months, and read about how their strategy enabled them to do so.
What happens to the women of Afghanistan? The last time the Taliban were in power, they barred women and girls from taking most jobs or going to school. Afghan women have made many gains since the Taliban were toppled, but now they fear that ground may be lost. Taliban officials are trying to reassure women that things will be different, but there are signs that, at least in some areas, they have begun to reimpose the old order.
Boumediène’s hold on the people emanated from his own humble origins and his tenacity against the hated French occupier. Those elements help explain the Taliban’s virtually seamless infiltration across Afghan territory in the weeks and months preceding this week’s final victory.
The United States thought it was helping Afghans fight an avatar of evil, the Taliban, the running mate of international terrorism. That was the American optic and the American war.
But the Afghans, many of them, were not fighting that war. The Taliban are from their towns and villages. Afghanistan, particularly in its urban centers, may have changed over 20 years of American occupation. But the laws the Taliban promoted — repressive policies toward women — were not so different, if they differed at all, from immemorial customs in many of these rural villages, particularly in the Pashtun south.
“There is resistance to girls’ education in many rural communities in Afghanistan,” a Human Rights Watch report noted soberly last year. And outside provincial capitals, even in the north, it is rare to see women not wearing the burqa.
This is why for years the Taliban have been dispensing justice, often brutally, in the areas they have controlled, with the acquiescence — even the acceptance — of the local populations. Disputes over property and cases of petty crime are adjudicated expeditiously, sometimes by religious scholars — and these courts have a reputation for “incorruptibility” compared with the former government’s rotten system, Human Rights Watch wrote.American soldiers boarding a helicopter to depart from a forward operating base in 2011.Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times
It is a system focused on punishment, often harsh. And despite the Taliban’s protestations this week of forgiveness for those who served the now defunct Afghan administration, they have not shown anything like tolerance in the past. The group’s system of clandestine prisons, housing large numbers of soldiers and government workers, inspired fear in local populations all over Afghanistan.
The Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Gani Baradar, was reported to have received an enthusiastic welcome when he returned this week to the southern city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban. That should be another element of reflection for the superpower which, 20 years ago, felt it had no choice but to respond with its military to the crimes of Sept. 11.
For Mr. Malkasian, the historian who was himself a former adviser to America’s top commander in Afghanistan, there is a lesson from the experience, but it is not necessarily that America should have stayed away.
“If you have to go in, go in with the understanding that you can’t wholly succeed,” he said in an interview. “Don’t go in thinking, you’re going to solve it, or fix it.”
This is the perspective Americans need and are not getting. This didn’t happen in a vacuum. And I can’t believe we got into two of these quagmires in my lifetime. But here we are.
Fallows also suggests that we should all watch Lawrence O’Donnell from Monday night:
Its coverage lately has been pretty egregious, as Eric Boehlert tweets this morning:
Politico gives away the game.
after hysterically overplaying the Kabul airport story and convicting Biden of doomed mission, Politico announces it doesn’t believe 70k+ have been evacuated.
Boehlert’s PressRun post this morning is unsparing on how a national press that let Trump lies slide from his first days in office hammers Biden for not lying to them:
Fact checkers at CNN and the Washington Post are not forced to churn out updates to detail all the “falsehoods” pouring out of the Biden White House. The president has been consistently factual throughout and has taken responsibility for the outcome. He’s also trying to do the right thing by evacuating as many people as possible, while still ending U.S. involvement in a lost military cause.
In that sense, Biden is the anti-Trump, he’s a straight shooter, whether you agree with him or not —and the press is trying to hang him for it.
Trump derided press corps members to their faces and reporters with few exceptions stood there and took it like victims of domestic abuse. Biden’s Ward Cleaver affect has them finding their spines again.
Boehlert cites Susie Madrak on that:
Beltway press is like a child of divorce. They save all their anger for Mom (Dems) because they're afraid if they display anger toward Dad (GOP), he'll stomp off and they'll never see him again.
It is because the press’ expectations of Republicans are so low that they cannot disappoint us. Only Democrats can. That’s why so many lefties are forever acting like jilted lovers.
Boehlert sums up Biden’s press coverage:
The press continues to sponsor a one-sided feeding frenzy that’s now well into its second week of doomsday coverage, even though encouraging developments emerge each day — 70,000 people now having been evacuated from Kabul. But that’s not the story the press wants to tell because they don’t want to abandon their preferred, “disaster” narrative. For instance, this doomsday Los Angeles Times write-up about Afghanistan does not include a single sentence about the tens of thousands of people who have been airlifted out of Kabul.
This isn’t just about comparing Biden’s press treatment to Trump’s. It’s about a long-running pattern where Republican liars not only aren’t punished by the press, they’re celebrated.
Indeed, the press covered virtually all of Trump’s daily media circuses in the White House press room. Trump’s press spokespersons lied relentlessly and unapologetically for four years. And “when Biden’s truth-telling team arrived,” Boehlert writes, they turned off the cameras and pulled the plug.
UPDATE: over the last 24 hours a total of ~19,000 people were evacuated from Kabul.
Since 8/14, the U.S. has evacuated and facilitated the evacuation of approximately 82,300 people.
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