1. A big thing I see driving the Afghanistan conversation that no one is talking about is something I've seen quite often in 40 years in journalism: People's personal relationships -- a.k.a., access journalism -- matters more than looking at the big picture
2. There's a large foreign policy community -- especially journalists at places like NYT or WP who worship "objectivity" 99% of the time -- for whom Afghanistan is personal. They have human ties there, with no greater priority -- human nature, understandable -- than...
3 ...keeping their friends alive. It's like when you have a family member in the hospital -- you're suddenly not on a soapbox about the outrageous cost of U.S. healthcare. These folks could never support leaving Afghanistan to the inevitable, and I understand why. Thus...
4. It's on the rest of us without personal ties to point out the obvious bigger picture: That a government that collapses in days without America propping them up wasn't worth $2.2 trillion and thousands of U.S. lives. Biden was right to leave but...
5. ...I think we can all also agree Biden should have seen how fast the end would come and have been faster and smarter about evacuating our allies. That needs to be the focus now. We're way behind the 8-ball, but in the best world we save our Afghan allies yet also...
6. ...be honest with ourselves, that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan was the height of wasteful, imperial folly, that our role had to end some time and that time was always going to be ugly - 30 -

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More from @Will_Bunch

7 Aug
Some personal news: I’ve finally entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown*

(* with a $25 ticket)
In honor of the 1st place 2021 Phillies, a homage to the great pennant-winning Whiz Kids of 1950
The baseball hero of my former past life, the late great Tom Seaver
Read 5 tweets
29 Jun
1. I'm writing a thread about today's column because I'm so worked up, and because more people need to know the history

What's so disturbing about what's happening in Florida is that it's copied from the playbook of a shameful episode in its history inquirer.com/columnists/att…
2. In fact, the abuses of Florida's so-called Johns Committee were so great that a current lawmaker, Rep. Evan Jenne, is pushing for the state to issue a formal apology

Instead, Gov. DeSantis and friends are bringing back the 'Red Scare'

Here's the deal tallahassee.com/story/news/201…
3. Despite its name, the Johns Committee didn't probe prostitution. After WW2, the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee was chaired by Sen. Charley Johns, head of a white segregationist caucus called the Pork Choppers who held sway in Tallahassee thefloridasqueeze.com/2013/07/20/rem…
Read 14 tweets
8 Jun
Here's my bid for most unpopular take of 2021. I think the billionaire tax-return leak confirms our worst fears and could even lead to real tax reform, which would be great, but...

As a progressive, I'm troubled by a leak of private IRS data

Maybe that's because I came... 1/4
... of age during Nixon, whose worst sins included misusing the IRS against his enemies. But a leak of government private tax info seems COINTELPRO-ish

If IRS returns of Democratic donors had been leaked during Trump, liberals would be screaming bloody murder. Even if... 2/4
... the lowest level IRS employee took it upon himself to do this, it's wrong. That this dovetails with Biden's agenda - raising taxes on the rich - could be a coincidence, or not

If you don't want the government reading people's email, you probably don't want them... 3/4
Read 4 tweets
22 May
1. Andrew Yang's NYC mayoral campaign is backed by a super PAC heavily supported by Philly-area hedge fund billionaire Jeff Yass
2. Yass has also been implicated as a major donor to an Israeli, right-wing pro-settlement think tank whyy.org/articles/jewis…
3. Yang recently got in hot water for his unabashedly pro-Israel tweet in its conflict with Palestine cnn.com/2021/05/19/opi…
Read 4 tweets
20 May
1. The move by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill trustees to block tenure for Pulitzer Prize-winner Nikole Hannah-Jones (@nhannahjones), author of the #1619Project on race in America, is an attack on academic freedom -- a stunning yet... 19thnews.org/2021/05/unc-wo…
2. ...inevitable bad place we've been heading with the politicization of state universities, mainly by a Republican Party that hates college. Since a GOP takeover of its state legislature in 2010, NC has handed the keys for public higher ed to right-wing extremists such as...
3. Art Pope, the so-called "Godfather" of the Tarheel State's right turn in Raleigh. Pope and other GOP trustees had already killed academic programs perceived as "liberal," such as an anti-poverty center at Chapel Hill. In fact, a recent list... chronicle.com/article/adding…
Read 11 tweets
26 Mar
1. You've probably seen this picture of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and his gaggle of white men signing the state's voter suppression law -- the new, new Jim Crow. But there's a shocking angle to this story that you haven't heard. Sit down for this one...
2. Notice the antebellum-style portrait behind Kemp as he signs the suppression law? Thanks to Twitter crowdsourcing and particularly @TheSeaFarmer, I can report the measure to limit Black voting was signed under the image of a notorious slave plantation in Wilkes County, GA
3. If you scroll about halfway down this PDF link, you can see that the painting is clearly "Brickhouse Road -- Callaway PLNT" (PLNT for "Plantation...subtle, right?) by artist Olessia Maximenko from Wilkes County, GA gaarts.org/wp-content/upl…
Read 17 tweets

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