7.11.21: Should We Have Stayed or Were We Right to Get Out of Afghanistan?

Should we have stayed or should we go?  The messiness that is foreign policy; such decisions are never clear cut and the results are unpredictable. In the case of Afghanistan, it's even more so. Consider Rep. Adam Kinzinger's (R-IL) perspective, who fought in the country and has a deep personal feeling to the soldiers he fought alongside of and to the Afghans that helped the U.S. military. From his perspective it is a crushing defeat, as characterized by an Economist headline, because he sees the Taliban coming back into power, which naturally makes one ask, "Why did we sacrifice blood and treasure?"

Mr. Kinzinger said that he would see to see a residual force left there - the 2,500 soldiers - to keep the Taliban at bay and the population, especially women, safe. It's a reasonable position, for the right reasons because we do not want Afghanistan return to being a safe haven for terriorist, but you have to understand that that would be another 20-year commitment, in the same sort of policy positioning we have with South Korea or other places where the U.S. has military bases.

To quote Mr. Kinzinger, "The Americans have the watches, but the Taliban have the time." There is no changing that dynamic and in realizing that, a decision on the commitment has to be made. Always complicating factors further is carrying through policy from one administration to another.

Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) explained that the Trump Administration set a date for full withdrawal from Afghanistan as May 1st, instead of creating a withdrawal scenario based on conditions on the ground. In keeping the word of the U.S. government, even if it was lead by a different president, it said it would withdraw so that it what President Biden has done. However, it hasn't been done well. 

The visas and refugee status for Afghans whose lives are in danger for helping the Americans should have already been expedited, with people on planes as we speak, leaving from Bagram Airbase. Speaking of which, there seemed to be no formal handover plan of the airbase to the Afghan military... that has an air force.

Staying in Afghanistan would reinforce the notion of the U.S. Military as the world's police force and that's not sustainable. Will the U.S. be involved in Afghanistan with military advisors and aid? For a long time. But here is where diplomacy can make a difference.

Best case scenario for Afghanistan is that it gets to resemble Pakistan, without the nukes of course. Where there is a civilian government and a military that can take on the Taliban. If the Afghani and Pakistani governments could work together to squeeze the Taliban, then there could be some stability achieved, and that's the opportunity the U.S. has. 

And there is no doubt that the U.S. would have been more successful in Afghanistan if it had not been for the war in Iraq. That's the history we have to take with us and learn from, no white washing it away.

And speaking of which, Republicans white wash the insurrection of January 6th at their own political peril. The commission is going to move forward and when there is a full accounting, we believe that you're going to see some names in Congress change. 

Panel: Kasie Hunt, NBC; Stephanie Cutter, Democratic Strategist; Al Cardenas, Republican Strategist; Mark Leibovich, The New York Times.

Today's "Meet The Press" was cut short for a special report on Richard Branson's Virgin Galatic making a suborbital flight, the first 'space' flight for commercial aircraft. We're write more about this later in the week, but the significance of the flight can not be understated.

Have a great Sunday and thank you for reading.

7.4.21: Normal Left a Long Time Ago

Definitely not the direction we would have gone for this week's "Meet The Press" considering it is Independence Day here in the States. We're 245 years old, by the way. Maybe discussing the state of our democracy and the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution would have been more appropriate for today given the fragile state that it's in at present, but we get it. President Biden set Independence Day as the date for his goal of having at least 70 percent of adult in the U.S. vaccinated with at least one shot, against Covid-19 so where are we?

We've fallen short of that goal, but for the administration's part it has provided enough doses so that every person has easy access to a free vaccination. However, what we see, as Dr. Fauci described, are regions of the country where the vaccination rate is low are seeing increased infections and hospitalizations due the new highly transmittable delta variant of the virus.  

Regional outbreaks... The lowest vaccination rates are in the Southern regional states and other that with the exception of North Carolina are all run by Republican governors who either made a political issue out of the vaccine or didn't push hard enough to dispell misinformation. Mississippi has the lowest vacination rate in the United States... for once, just once we'd like to see Mississippi not bringing up the rear, but here we are... again. 

There are many who have genuine concerns about getting vaccinated and for vaccines in general, what ever they are it's understandable, but given above how can one say that it hasn't been politicized? The sad political commentary about this is that a Republican president continuously touted the speed in which the vaccine was coming and delivered but because he lost the election and it was left to a Democratic president to distribute it and then encourage people to get vaccinated. 

Because of politics, people don't want to listen. Yet, we have the foremost expert on infectious disease in the world telling us that 99.2 percent of the deaths occuring right now in the United States are among the unvaccinated, and are 'entirely avoidable and preventable,' Dr. Fauci explained.

 With all that, this holiday weekend is being viewed as a beginning to 'getting back to normal,' but it's going to be a long time in the making, if it's coming back at all. Most of us would agree with NPR's Audie Cornish that "normal left a long time ago." We add: on so many levels...

A lot of the panel discussion focused on physically going back to work and the overall change in work culture. Interestingly, psychologist Adam Grant explained that flexibility in the workforce (hybrid) should be the way going forward citing a study in which people working from home were 13 percent more productive. But employers, especially corporations, are willing to eat that 13 percent in productivity as they have too much invested in infrastructure and they want bodies in seats, thinking that there will be greater accountability. Time will tell, but 'normal,' yeah, not so much.

NBC's Kate Snow viewed this summer's opening up as a mental health reset. And damn, do we all need it.

HAPPY FOURTH EVERYONE, and thank you as always for reading.

Panel: Audie Cornish, NPR; Kate Snow, NBC; Adam Grant, psychologist