‘Please Don’t Leave Us Behind. We Will Be Great Americans.’
‘Please Don’t Leave Us Behind. We Will Be Great Americans.’
An interview with a U.S.-trained Afghan Air Force pilot, now hiding from the Taliban.
Leading The Bulwark…
‘Please Don’t Leave Us Behind. We Will Be Great Americans.’
THE EDITORS: An interview with a U.S.-trained Afghan Air Force pilot, now hiding from the Taliban.
🎧 On the Pods… 🎧
Kevin Kruse on the Bipartisan Afghanistan Disaster
On today's podcast, historian Kevin Kruse joins host Charlie Sykes to discuss the Trump/Biden Afghanistan fiasco; the history of normalcy; and the madness over masking.
For Bulwark+ Members… 🔐
MORNING SHOTS: Now Comes The Blame Game 🔓
CHARLIES SYKES: Who lost Afghanistan?
THE TRIAD: Broken Clocks and Vaccine Mandates 🔓
TIM MILLER: It’s time for Democrats to go on offense.
SUNDAY SHOTS: A Plea for Afghanistan 🔓
CHARLIE SYKES with our Sunday Bulwark mailbag.
WEEKEND TRIAD: Robots Can Invade Your Home and Kill You. But They Can't Lay Bricks. Why Is That? 🔓
JVL’s Newsletter of Newsletters, Volume 10.
From The Bulwark Aggregator…
Stranded Outside Kabul During the Fall of Afghanistan – Lynzy Billing, Intelligencer
Defiant and defensive, a president known for empathy takes a cold-eyed approach to Afghanistan debacle – Anne Gearan and Cleve R. Wootson Jr., The Washington Post
‘Lay out the strategy’: Corporate America grows impatient on Biden’s China trade review – Gavin Bade, Politico
‘I Believed in the U.S. But That Turned Out to Be Such a Big Mistake’ – An Anonymous Afghan Journalist, Politico
Blinken argues Taliban would have launched offensive even if US had stayed – Joseph Choi, The Hill
In Today’s Bulwark...
How the Afghanistan Debacle Harms U.S. Interests
WILLIAM INBODEN: Even beyond the humanitarian toll, the retreat from Afghanistan increases the risk of terrorism and damages America’s credibility.
‘A Total and Unmitigated Defeat’
WILLIAM KRISTOL: We have an obligation to begin thinking about how to mitigate the horrors that will take place within Afghanistan.
Why the Afghan Army Fell to the Taliban
SHAY KHATIRI: When the U.S. withdrawal was announced, logistical support evaporated.
Too Little, Too Late: The Botching of the Afghan Refugee Evacuation
ALI NOORANI: And what the Biden administration must do now.
We Didn’t Think Our American Friends Would Leave Us in the Dead of Night
MARTIN AMIN RAHMANI: In 2001, Afghanistan was a failed state. Twenty years later there were many bright spots.
America Has a Moral Obligation to Get Our Translators Out of Afghanistan
ALAN CROSS WITH ANDRÉ MANN: We promised we would get them out. We promised we would stand by the thousands of Afghan translators and their…
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend, despite all the difficult images and stories coming out of Afghanistan. I felt guilty taking my kids to the county fair and having a great time, frankly. But I will tell you it is more cost effective and fun than Sesame Place.
Since everything is (rightly) focused on Afghanistan today, I’ll give you some other things to read about. But remember, decline is a choice. But if you want to read something fascinating about the Kabul airlift, read this.
Can anything convince them?
How London’s Tower Bridge works.
How Lodge has become King of Cast Iron.
The price of Tucker Carlson’s soul… As Andrew Sullivan writes:
But the Hungary obsession suggests that these are not the core lessons some on the right have learned. They seem rather to want a leader whose corruption they are happy to enable as long as he exercises the full power of the state against their enemies; they want to counter the illiberal propaganda from left elites with illiberal propaganda from right-wing government; they regard the judiciary as an obstacle to be overcome or packed into submission rather than an essential check on executive and legislative power; they want the state to legally ban the teaching of certain subjects in schools; and they seem to admire a man who neutered the liberal press and criminalized free expression if it went against the regime’s party line.
He doesn’t hold anything back. Read it all.
What’s the solution to the problem of social media? Ben Dreyfuss observes:
Twitter killed blogs—and Google was an accomplice when it axed Google Reader—and for many years it became the spot for both extemporaneous casual conversation and also semi-formed blog post-type publishing. That didn’t help anyone. Twitter threads making thesis arguments didn’t help anyone. It made it harder to tell the difference.
Substack, the successor of the blog, is a publishing platform. Twitter and Facebook have at various times been described as publishing platforms as well but in a sillier and less-helpful way. They’re chat rooms, where humans bang into one another. They’re a Slack chat with a billion members. I love it! And I hate it! And I am addicted to it! But my hope is that as we all continue down this river of time, everyone will get better at thinking about what they encounter on social media like that. Excited and unexcited utterances.
How Trump Lackies Failed to Take Over a Reddit Dating Site. This, at Mel Magazine (which is back, under new ownership) is well worth your time to see how the neckbeard incels are getting their MAGA propaganda stifled.
Is Amy Coney Barrett a commie or something? Hardly. Read this from our friends at The Ordinary Times.
While much of social media is focused on Afghanistan, we cannot forget Haiti. And the rescue experts from Virginia Task Force One are on the ground, thank God, to help deal with the deadly earthquake there.
Prayers for Cardinal Burke. That he may recover and discover the error of his ways and how he misled the Catholic flock.
That’s it for me for today. We’ll see you back here tomorrow. Tech support questions? Email support@substack.com. Questions for me? Drop me a line: swift@thebulwark.com
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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. For full credits, please consult the article.