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.
The heart-breaking images of those who helped repel terrorism in Afghanistan for 20 years realistically reflect the near impossibility of removing the anti-terrorists in large numbers.
'We will see many refugees from Afghanistan resettle in our country, and over the next decade, that number may swell to the millions. So first we invade, and then we are invaded.' Tucker Carlson, Fox News
Nevertheless, the moral thing for America to do, insist veterans, diplomats, pundits, women and non-governmental humanitarian groups, is for massive airlifts to rescue upward of 90,000 now-refugees at risk for what looks to be certain death, rape, forced marriages and a return to an anti-human rights campaign of immediate, if misinterpreted, Islamic justice. We heard leading Republicans bang away at Biden's failures to make the Taliban takeover a calm affair and to have accelerated visa rescues for Afghans who want out five months ago or more.
The case is a strong one to aid those who helped us, to stand by our word and to uphold American humanitarian values.
It was heartening to hear that even conservative hardliners, including those in Congress, were putting the fate of so many individual Afghans on a pedestal for us to rescue. Even the likes of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who hates everything Biden does, told Afghans to call his office for individual help, as if they could do so.
Circumstances and Afghan demands not to do so aside, Biden alone owns the disastrous picture was the message.
It was overlooked that predecessor Donald Trump had made the no-conditions announcement of withdrawal; that the built-up Afghan army just refused to fight; and that the Afghan president fled the country altogether.
But wait. Doesn't doing the right thing here mean moving and taking in all those Afghans and families?
Aren't they immigrants seeking refuge from persecution just like the hordes that conservatives insist are massing at our Southern border? Aren't they "non-white," and from a country with under 2% Covid vaccination rate? Where would they all go, anyway?
Dealing with Reality
As it turns out, of course, taking out that many Afghans is proving difficult for anyone not already among those swarming the Kabul airport. Women are being stopped, and Taliban patrols are reported to be seeking out Afghans on U.S. or allied database lists.
From all reports, the situation remains chaotic.
The needed forms are complicated and all in English, of course, and there is no one left in Kabul to process would-be immigrants.
However the practical side of this works out – it will take many days to know – some people are getting out to go to third countries to await further processing. But most can't leave, despite some Taliban promises to allow exits.
There is a lot of loose talk about why America is insisting on so much paperwork in the middle of chaos – as if the same thing is not evident and true throughout the immigration system and, in particular, at the Southern border.
We've heard nearly daily from Republicans from Trump to Republican governors about the failures of strong immigration barriers, if not outright walls, to stop immigrants from invading the United States, legally or not, with lots of emphasis on the Biden-authorized import of vaccine-less migrants carrying Covid (most who cross and in Border Patrol custody actually are quarantined for two weeks), crime, drugs and more. What is needed, they say, are total bans, years' worth of wait and processing and review, and deportations.
So now, it is OK for other specific war-related Afghans to simply show up and be whisked away? How does the Right square this contradiction?
No problem, apparently. Here was conservative stalwarts Stephen Miller, the Trump immigration whisperer, tweeting:
"It is becoming increasingly clear that Biden & his radical deputies will use their catastrophic debacle in Afghanistan as a pretext for doing to America what Angela Merkel did to Germany & Europe."
On his Fox News broadcast, Tucker Carlson added:
"If history is any guide, and it's always a guide, we will see many refugees from Afghanistan resettle in our country, and over the next decade, that number may swell to the millions. So first we invade, and then we are invaded."
Laura Ingraham succinctly put it:
"Is it really our responsibility to welcome thousands of refugees from Afghanistan?"
Indeed, there was one Proud Boys Telegram account cited by Vice's Ben Makuch:
"I think Islam is poisonous. But, these farmers and minimally trained men fought to take their nation back from [world governments]. They took back their national religion as law, and executed dissenters. Hard not to respect that."
You get the idea. To the Trump Right, saving refugees is good, but saving ourselves from immigrants is more important.
Next Worries
It is mostly disingenuous to draw conclusions in a situation this chaotic and fluid. But we do know that the Afghan meltdown is consequential for a variety of international concerns, American prestige is on the line, even with allies and with potential in-nation helpers in the next terror war zone.
We can communally worry that Afghanistan will return as a safe home for terrorist training, and the elimination of effective intelligence and diplomacy to monitor developments in that country.
There are open questions about whether the Taliban actually directs or controls its most militaristic rebels, and whether any word from a new government about safe passage out can be believed.
There are a ton of unresolved questions about American immigration policies as they apply to a rescue on this scale. Given Biden's forceful self-defense this week about his own decisions, it is unlikely that we will see any widespread changes in leadership of U.S. intelligence services.
The actions of the Chinese and Russians are under review to determine just how they will work with the Taliban. In Europe, Biden is coming under heavy criticism for seeming to abandon 10s of thousands to a brutal group.
There are domestic U.S. political fallouts to resolve from decision-making across multiple presidencies, but finally by Biden, based on faulty assumptions about Afghan resolve and failures to defend themselves when called upon.
Republicans won't let go of images of helicopters on the embassy roof and declarations of disaster that they were either silent about or in support of when the same words were uttered by Trump. No one is talking about deploying more American troops in Afghanistan for another 20 years.
As MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace noted, there is no stomach among Americans for more Afghan war, though there is serious distaste for the images of desperate Afghans holding onto the sides of military aircraft to escape the country.
Here is TalkingPointsMemo.com:
"With both the Biden administration and the Taliban promising to offer protection, for millions of Afghans the future promised only more uncertainty. Despite assurances of safe passage, the Taliban are not only known to operate with brutality, but also have a dismal history of managing a vast nation largely dependent on foreign aid."
Recalculating Nancy Pelosi’s big win
The preliminary win to advance Joe Biden's huge social services spending bill is being depicted as a parliamentary victory for Speaker Nancy Pelosi over a small group of would-be Democratic spoilers. A day or more later, what looks more the case are two things:
It's our American obsession with winning rather than focusing on the basics.
As The New York Times summarized, "For now, the deal that Ms. Pelosi struck amounted to a precarious détente for Democrats that did nothing to resolve tensions between the moderate and liberal flanks or end the jockeying for political leverage."
It's an important distinction because there is no bill yet for infrastructure spending—small, medium, or huge—in place yet, and, other than general support for the substance over the timing of votes, there are lots of ways that this discussion about investing in our next 10 years still can go south.
As it stands, this contested vote essentially only lays the groundwork for Democrats to force through both a $1 trillion bill to fix roads, bridges, airports and a lot of rural broadband wiring and the three-times larger bill to address spending on "human infrastructure" that includes an array of improvements to universal pre-K education, health and prescription drug access and pricing, expanded Medicare coverage, child-care tax write-offs, paid leave and tax increases for the wealthy and corporations.
It's an important step, of course, but what we should remember is that Pelosi was forced to deal with a handful of "moderates" who basically don't support the full package.
What Pelosi Did
In case you were living your life and managed to avoid worrying about Congress, the group of nine moderates wanted an immediate vote on the already Senate-passed bipartisan hard infrastructure bill. Pelosi wanted to twin the two spending packages. What happed was, according to a variety of press reports and congressional statements, was extended legislative negotiation.
Pelosi's particular way out was to link all the spending under a singular "rule" vote that would set a Sept. 27 deadline for a vote on the roads bill, setting up the possibility for House committees to vet the social services programs and price them for a simultaneous vote. She won the day, but, obviously, there's not a lot of time to assess both the actual cost of these sprawling programs and to ensure the politics for passage.
Basically, Democrats want to use the so-called "budget reconciliation" rules to cram all the spending together in bills that can be passed by as little as a single-vote majority – something that is a real prospect in the Senate. In the House, there was an eight-vote majority for this measure, which is likely the maximum it can achieve in an up-and-down vote for final approval.
Politico and others have attempted to revisit all the back-and-forth conversations and late-night haggling between Pelosi and her closest minions and the group of nine, headed by Rep. Jeff Gottheimer (D-NY). It was a serious enough effort to force delay, and to put the outcome in doubt.
To summarize, it turns out that Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Mad.) and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) were able to separate and exploit individual concerns among the nine and to persuade them that they all need to pull in a single direction. We'll never know if there were individual promises.
Afterward, Pelosi praised the rebel group for its "enthusiasm" while announcing her commitment to pass the infrastructure bill it had opposed.
Topping off the 220-212 vote on the eventual spending bill was approval for a voting rights measure that the House passed soon after.
Our Focus
This House showdown reminds us of the power of just a handful of people to hold up approval of legislation – or court decisions, or even who's giving advice within the White House.
We keep thinking that we go to the polls every two or four years with the idea of setting an understandable direction for our democracy. But then we keep tripping up over those one- or two- or even nine-vote groups that decide that they are smarter than the rest of us.
We will go through this same discussion over what constitutes a fitting social services safety net for America when this big Biden spending package comes back to the Senate, and we must depend on the peculiar waverings of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WV, and Krysten Sinema, D-Ariz.
We think we're voting for an agenda when we cast ballots for Biden or Donald Trump only to re-discover daily that there always is a single vote over in the corner of the House or Senate that insists on standing in the way of popular support, whether the issue is more gun control, abortion, environmental rules, or economic issues.
It's bad enough that we have gridlock resulting from near-equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. It seems worse when one side or the other can't line up its own folks – or free them from party commitments to specific legislative agendas. We expect that democracy is messy, but not daily.