Eric Levitz: The Media Manufactured Biden’s Political ‘Fiasco’ in Afghanistan “Straight news” has chosen sanctimony over circumspection.

America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan has yet to cost our nation a single casualty. Evacuations of U.S. citizens and allies from Kabul’s airport are proceeding at a faster pace than the White House had promised, or than its critics had deemed possible. Afghanistan’s decades-long civil war has reached a lull, if not an end. On the streets of Kabul, “order and quiet” have replaced “rising crime and violence.” Meanwhile, the Taliban is negotiating with former Afghan president Hamid Karzai over the establishment of “an inclusive government acceptable to all Afghans.”

In other words, Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan has been a “disastrous” and “humiliating” “fiasco,” in the words of the mainstream media’s ostensibly objective foreign-policy journalists.

This may be an accurate description of what recent events in Kabul have meant for the president, politically. The latest polls have shown sharp drops in Biden’s approval rating, driven in part by widespread opposition to “the way” his administration handled its (otherwise popular) exit from Afghanistan. Yet this political fiasco is not a development that the media covered so much as one that it created.

Countless reporters and commentators have cited the relatively low level of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan in recent years as proof that maintaining the status quo was a near cost-free proposition. When doing so, such cosmopolitan correspondents reveal the insularity of their moral vision. Before Biden commenced his withdrawal and the Taliban completed their victory, the 20th year of the war in Afghanistan was set to “witness the highest-ever number of documented civilian casualties in a single year” since the U.N. mission there began keeping records. Meanwhile, civilians unharmed by the war’s violence have endured “elevated rates of disease due to lack of clean drinking water, malnutrition, and reduced access to health care” as a result of the conflict, according to the Watson Institute’s “Costs of War” project. American involvement in Afghanistan has not only harmed civilians indirectly by perpetuating civil war; our nation also directly incinerated and tortured Afghans in the course of defending their freedom.

Every “child with a teddy-bear backpack separated from a parent” may reinforce the impression that America withdrew from Afghanistan too soon. Or every child killed in the course of a doomed counterinsurgency campaign may reinforce the impression that America withdrew far too late. It all depends on where one chooses to look.

Until America’s bleeding-heart correspondents reckon with their field’s endemic biases, their reporting will routinely devolve into advocacy, if not rationalizations, for future bloodshed. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/media-bias-biden-polls-approval-afghanistan-withdrawal.html?

Michael Crowley: Trump’s Deal With the Taliban Draws Fire From His Former Allies

In a February 2020 deal under which the United States agreed to withdraw in return for Taliban promises not to harbor terrorists and to engage in their first direct negotiations with the Afghan government. Mr. Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, attended the signing ceremony in Doha and posed for a photo alongside the Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, which resurfaced this week on social media. Mr. Baradar is widely expected to become the head of a new Taliban government based in Kabul.

Some former senior Trump officials now call that agreement fatally flawed, saying it did little more than provide cover for a pullout that Mr. Trump was impatient to begin before his re-election bid. They also say it laid the groundwork for the chaos unfolding now in Kabul.

“Our secretary of state signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban,” Mr. Trump’s second national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said of Mr. Pompeo during a podcast interview with the journalist Bari Weiss on Wednesday. “This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves.”

Nor is there evidence that top Trump officials prioritized planning for the eventual evacuation of Americans, or of Afghans who might be subject to Taliban reprisals for working with the United States. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/us/politics/trump-biden-afghan-taliban.html

Michelle Cottle: The Trump Clown Car Has a Smashup in Arizona

The clown-car chaos in Arizona is a near-perfect distillation of what Mr. Trump has done to the Republican Party, as well as much of the broader public. On what feels like a daily basis, he beats the drum about a stolen election, setting a tuneful lie that many Republican voters still dance to as the party mandarins look on, in either active support or silence. The political ramifications of this disinformation will be on display in Arizona’s U.S. Senate race next year, as well as those elsewhere, as independents and moderates assess if this is the party they want to reward.

But there’s another cost that should worry all of us: the integrity of election audits, which are important and are necessary. While many secretaries of state are now pushing for new standards for such audits, the Arizona recount stands as an object lesson about the embarrassing damage to democracy that one party can inflict when led by a sore loser who still manages to scare people.

For those who have blissfully forgotten the Arizona back story: Mr. Trump was mad about narrowly losing the state to Joe Biden. He was madder still when two recounts of vote-rich Maricopa County confirmed his loser status. Desperate to appease him and his devoted base, a gaggle of Republican state senators arranged for yet another review, this one run according to their preferences and overseen by private contractors of their choosing. The result has been a poisonous, partisan P.R. stunt so poorly executed that it makes the hunt for a new “Jeopardy!” host look smooth by comparison. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/opinion/arizona-results-trump-republicans.html

Margaret Renkl: Republicans Have Gone Too Far in the Region Hit Hardest by Covid

In case you’re wondering how things are going here in the Delta Rising region of the United States, I regret to report that things are going badly. Very, very badly.

Our intensive care units are full. Our children are getting sick in record numbers. Nevertheless, a small subset of unmasked, unvaccinated humanity has taken to yelling during school board meetings, and the most extreme protesters have issued threats against nurses and physicians who dared to speak publicly on behalf of such reasonable pandemic mitigation measures as masks and vaccines.

It’s so bad that the Tennessee Medical Association had to issue a statement in support of the exhausted heroes who for the past 18 months have been risking their own lives to care for strangers. “The enemy is the virus, not health care workers,” the statement read.

This is what some of us have become here in the American South: people who need to be reminded that our doctors are not our enemies. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/opinion/covid-masks-students.html

Jennifer Rubin: Why so many people find Biden an easy target

The vehemence with which many politicians and media pundits on the left and right have attacked President Biden should not be surprising. Given the chaotic and heart-wrenching scenes in Afghanistan, the commander in chief becomes an obvious target, especially for a press corps desperate to show they do not have a liberal bias.

But “chaotic" does not equal “failed,” and just because our intelligence community blew it big time — again — does not mean the United States has abandoned its Afghan partners. Since Aug. 14, we have evacuated over 37,000 people. The United States has enlisted a slew of allies to help receive refugees. And our allies remain united that they will not recognize nor extend aid to the Taliban until we are satisfied they have not hindered our evacuation and are respecting human rights.

Despite the torrent of angry media coverage, a recent CBS News poll found that 63 percent of Americans still want out of Afghanistan. And while Biden’s approval ratings have dipped (largely due to the covid-19 surge), the decline is less than one might expect. In NBC News’s poll, for example, he has dropped only one point among registered voters — from 51 to 50 percent — since April. So why is the media so determined to convey that Biden’s effort has “failed”? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/23/why-so-many-people-find-biden-an-easy-target/

Bess Levin: Surprise: Fox News Hosts Are Following Strict COVID Protocols While Telling Viewers Masks and Vaccines Are Liberal Plots

Early on in the pandemic, the conservative media decided that following the advice of medical experts was for liberal commies, and that they‘d be damned if they were going to listen to a bunch of people trying to help them avoid illness and death. Thanks to these talking heads, a disturbing percentage of Americans have refused to get vaccinated or wear masks, even as the far more contagious delta variant rips through the country, disproportionately hospitalizing and killing those who’ve chosen not to get inoculated. In fact, between June 28 and August 8—as ICUs became overwhelmed and COVID cases among children in the U.S. jumped—Fox News’ anti-vaccination campaign got even worse; according to a report from Media Matters, the network aired 840 claims undermining or downplaying vaccinations, with hosts and guests suggesting the lifesaving immunizations were unnecessary, dangerous, a violation of personal freedom, and a plot by Democrats to win elections. Which is obviously a uniquely f--ked-up position to take considering vaccines have been proved to work and are our only hope of one day getting out of this nightmare. Also f--ked up? That Fox hosts obviously know this and are personally following COVID protocols off the air, but assume their viewers are stupid enough to buy that they’re all in this together.

On Wednesday night, Hannity had Florida governor Ron DeSantis—under whose stewardship Florida has become a COVID-infested hellhole—for a fact-free discussion about vaccines that included the claim that the shots are “not protecting many people,” when in fact they’re protecting 99.999% of them. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/08/fox-news-hosts-are-following-strict-covid-mandates

Michael Gerson: Govs. DeSantis and Abbott, in denial and risking lives, have betrayed the public trust

The challenge for the governors is that public health is not the same as other issues. Their actions will lead, directly and predictably, to deaths in their states. This constitutes a betrayal of public trust so grave — a violation of moral responsibilities so depraved — that I am not sure there is a word for it. Selling the lives of your fellow citizens to a foreign power is treason. What is the proper description of selling the lives of your fellow citizens to a crazed political interest group?

The problem for the Republican Party is that one of the central demands of a key interest group is now an act of sociopathic insanity. Some of the most basic measures of public health have suddenly become the political equivalent of gun confiscation.

It’s as if the activist wing of the GOP decided that municipal trash pickup is a dangerous socialist experiment. Or chlorine in public pools is an antifa plot. There can be no absolute political right to undermine the health and safety of your community. Or else community has no meaning. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/19/desantis-abbott-florida-texas-covid-denial-risks-lives/

Daily Kos: The Florida Fascist: The next Trump may succeed, and will be much worse

In November 1923, Adolf Hitler demanded his followers “March on Berlin” to overturn the democratic government of Germany. The violent coup didn’t succeed, and he was jailed briefly. However, less than 10 years later, he would have firm control of the government. As evil as Hitler was, he wasn’t stupid. He learned from his mistakes and changed his tactics. Thankfully, Trump is incapable of that kind of insight—but Trump is not the only dangerous person within the Republican Party.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is one such person. He is every bit the fascist, if not more, that Trump is. He has supported killing protesters, fired officials who refused to lie to the public, tried to make mocking him a criminal offense, and ordered students and professors to report their beliefs to the state. He knows his executive order to forbid school mask mandates will kill children, even under the threat of losing funding, but he doesn’t care in the least because he wants to run for president in 2024. As deadly as this decision is, it’s extremely popular with the GOP base—especially now that he blamed immigrants for the spike, and that’s all that matters to him. He’s even now threatening to remove school officials who “disobey” him.

With serious gerrymandering and laws to suppress votes, the GOP is desperate to win back a congressional majority in 2022. This would be a disaster, as a competent authoritarian leader would have no issue utilizing the GOP’s new authority to overturn state elections. Trump’s ridiculous claims for winning the election, backed by laughable characters like the Pillow Guy, have opened the door for the GOP to try a “more respectable coup” using arcane legal arguments and the power of state legislatures. Ron DeSantis is power-hungry enough and dangerous enough to be the one to try it. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/8/19/2040351/-The-Florida-Fascist-The-next-Trump-may-succeed-and-will-be-much-worse

Bess Levin: Republicans Who Stood By A Presidential Lunatic Are Now Demanding Biden Be Removed Via 25Th Amendment

Over the weekend, it became clear that the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan had become an unmitigated disaster as images of Afghan civilians clinging to a military plane in the hopes of escaping the Taliban emerged. As the disaster continues to unfold, there’s obviously been a considerable amount of criticism of Joe Biden and his administration. Some of it is entirely reasonable—they clearly should have figured out, among other things, a way to evacuate more people before the country completely collapsed—and some of it is typical hysteria from the right, which has conveniently forgotten that Donald Trump and the GOP have been cheerleading a full pullout from Afghanistan until very recently, and that it was actually the last president who negotiated a deal with the Taliban to pull out U.S. troops, which many believe cost the U.S. leverage it could have applied to force the Taliban “to adhere to the peace deal and a cessation of hostilities,” according to Insider. And some of these Republicans are so shameless in their denunciation of Biden that they’re calling for him to be removed from office via 25th Amendment, despite standing by Trump as he engaged in behavior worthy of invoking the 25th on a near-daily basis during his time in office.

One of those people is Senator Rick Scott, the chairman of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, who on Monday tweeted, “We must confront a serious question: Is Joe Biden capable of discharging the duties of his office or has time come to exercise the provisions of the 25th Amendment?” To be clear, at no time during Trump’s first term did Scott suggest that the 45th president was no longer fit to hold office, not when he was trying to extort Ukraine and not when he incited a violent mob to attack the Capitol. To also be clear, Scott is a partisan hack who was one of just eight GOP senators who tried to overturn a free and fair election even after MAGA rioters tried to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s win, and he gave Trump a “Champion of Freedom Award” in April. Oh, and before he got into politics, he was CEO of a company that committed “historic medicare fraud,” in case you were wondering if you should trust literally anything he ever says. And he asked for Biden’s assistance in Florida on the same day he claimed the guy might not be “capable of discharging the duties of his office.” https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/08/rick-scott-joe-biden-25th-amendment

Jamelle Bouie: The 9 Democrats Making Nancy Pelosi’s Life Harder Are Making a Big Mistake

Popular or unpopular, good economy or bad, the president’s party almost always loses seats in midterm elections. That there are so few exceptions — Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats in 1934, Bill Clinton and the Democrats in 1998, and George W. Bush and the Republicans in 2002 — proves the rule.

The upshot is that if you are a member of Congress in the majority — and you share a party with the president — the die has been cast. Your party will most likely lose seats in the next elections. You might lose your seat. With that in mind, you can fret and tinker and try to save yourself, or you can do as much as possible with the time you have in power. Voters may not reward productivity, but they almost always punish failure.

I say all of this apropos of the Democrats’ two-pronged infrastructure strategy. Moderate and conservative Democrats want a bipartisan bill for roads and transit that they can tout to their voters; progressive Democrats want a partisan bill for new programs and benefits to shore up and expand the American welfare state. Some moderates also fear that anything more aggressive than the bipartisan bill might expose them to backlash in their districts.

If, in 2020, Democrats had won the kind of overwhelming majority they enjoyed at the outset of the Obama administration, one side or the other might be able to win an outright struggle over the party’s agenda. But razor-thin margins in the House and Senate give each side the power to kill most of the other side’s top priorities. The solution is to do both bills at the same time — to link the passage of one to the other. There will be no bipartisan bill if the partisan one isn’t passed and no partisan bill if the bipartisan one does not come to a vote. If the two sides don’t hang together, then they will both go down to defeat. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/opinion/democrats-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill.html