Opinion

For a few moments, I wondered if the Republican opposition, which is so reveling in the discomfort that Joe Biden's decision-making on Afghanistan has evoked, actually was expressing concern about the fate of myriad Afghans who helped the American and coalition cause.

Naturally, a certain hypocrisy in messaging from the Right took only another day to kick in.

It seems like only yesterday that the President of the United States was standing on the pile of rubble of the World Trade Center with a bullhorn telling the world, "I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." That iconic image of President George W. Bush promising vengeance 20 years ago was America's primal scream in the wake of the horrific terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the echoes of that scream still reverberate today.

But to watch the febrile pundits on TV and read the agitated screeds of hundreds of observers and experts over the past few days, you would never know that the Afghanistan "mission" came out of such a primitive war cry. The sad truth is the war was an act of revenge. The attacks of 9/11 were truly terrifying and wanting to hit back was a natural human response. But leaders are supposed to rise above such emotions and make rational decisions in the national interest. Clearly, that doesn't always happen. For a variety of reasons, they instead start wars, which are the most irrational human activity of all. America has been acting irrationally about Afghanistan ever since.

Results from a Saint Louis University poll suggests that disgraced former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens is the frontrunner in the race to fill retiring Sen. Roy Blunt's seat.

This article was originally published at Missouri Independent

For a few moments there, I was wondering if the Republican opposition, which is so reveling in the discomfort that Joe Biden's decision-making in Afghanistan has had, actually was expressing its caring about the fate of tens of thousands of Afghans who helped American and coalition efforts as translators, drivers, among other ways.

Naturally, a certain hypocrisy in messaging from the Right took only another day to kick in.

Apparently, the bodies of sick or dead children are not a motivator for today's Republicans.

Then again, when were they?

Let's never forget that what we are watching happen right now in Afghanistan is the final act of George W. Bush's 2004 reelection strategy.

After 9/11 the Taliban offered to arrest Bin Laden, but Bush turned them down because he wanted to be a "wartime president" to have a "successful presidency."

The most striking thing about President Joe Biden's Tuesday speech about the sudden fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban was the underlying message to his Republican critics and their handmaidens in the Beltway press corp: Jesus Christ, start acting your age already.

"I want to remind everyone how we got here, and what America's interests are in Afghanistan," Biden said before he went on to level with viewers about how he "came to understand firsthand what was and was not possible in Afghanistan."

Tucker Carlson recently full-on embraced Hungary's authoritarian leader Victor Orban, who has attacked immigrants and LGBTQ people with a vengeance. Carlson, broadcasting his show from Hungary for a week earlier this month — meeting with Orban and speaking at a far-right conference there — held Orban's anti-democratic regime up as a model for the U.S.

This article was originally published at The Signorile Report

Channeling Charlton Heston in the original "Planet of the Apes" film: "It's a madhouse! A madhouse!"

America is now experiencing a second wave of the deadly coronavirus pandemic. At least 600,000 people have died from the pandemic in the United States. That number will likely surpass one million by the time it is over. The country may even be forced to endure another wave of lockdowns and forced business closures intended to slow the spread of the disease. The economic and human consequences will be dire.

Do you really think our pull-out from Afghanistan would have looked any different under the man who handled the coronavirus pandemic so well that he cashiered 400,000 American lives? He claimed over and over that he was going to end the "forever wars" and get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan once and for all. He was the president who said he could "make a deal" with the Taliban that was supposed to lead to a peaceful reconciliation with the Afghan government upon the withdrawal of American troops.

This article first appeared in Salon.

The situation in Afghanistan deteriorated quickly over the weekend. The Taliban took control of its capital city last night. That co-op of regional warlords now has effective control of the country. The swift developments provide partisans here in the states plenty of reasons for being partisan. The Republicans are acting like the fall of Kabul is the same — politically, strategically, morally — as the fall of Saigon at the end of another forever war that had no point but cost us blood and treasure. Naturally, this puts the Democrats on the defensive. I'm no expert on military history. I'm no expert on international affairs. I do know, however, that partisanship often makes people say silly things.

I think it took a degree of courage for Joe Biden to end "the forever war." Decisions like this don't come without cost in every sense of the word. The president surely knew what was going to happen, though he probably could not have known how or how quickly it would. Given that uncertainty, it took courage. But contrary to what some liberals are saying in Biden's defense, I don't think it took that much courage.

All the recrimination-filled reporting and commentary about how fast Afghanistan fell to the Taliban after President Biden made the courageous decision to finish withdrawing our troops miss a much more important story.

This story concerns why Americans can't have nice things anymore while our main economic competitor, China, is investing in a lucrative and influential future. It's the story of jettisoning the sensible Powell Doctrine on military action in favor of chronic combat that creates enormous fortunes for investors in the military-industrial complex, all enabled by jingoistic political cowardice in Washington.

In trying to understand what prompted a man in Plymouth, England to commit the worst mass shooting in the UK for over a decade, attention has turned to his apparent links with the incel community – an online subculture of people who describe themselves as “involuntary celibates".

Jake Davison allegedly shot his mother before a shooting spree which ended when he turned the gun on himself. His youngest victim was three years old. In the lead-up to the attacks, he compared himself to incels in YouTube videos and contributed to their forums.