Thursday’s attacks were a reminder that ‘the enemy always gets a vote.’ With the Afghanistan pullout, the long war against jihadists has become more daunting.
When small, even middle-sized powers make grievous mistakes like fighting a losing war or ignoring deadly threats, they risk their place in the global hierarchy or, worse, their existence. Thus did France and Britain when they failed to fight Nazi Germany in the Thirties while still in position of strategic superiority.
The United States has lost its longest war. After twenty years of conflict and nation building in Afghanistan, the U.S.-backed Afghan regime collapsed like a house of cards in just a few weeks after the announced departure of American and NATO troops from the country. A final flurry of activity by the U.S. military managed to rescue 123,000 people from Kabul, but as Winston Churchill once said of Dunkirk, “Wars are not won by evacuations.”
It’s hard to win a war when you refuse to understand your enemy. It’s harder still when you cannot realistically define your strategic mission. You lame yourself further when you reduce a complex history to a single inaccurate cliché; i.e., “Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires.”
quoting Darrell Duffievia The London School of Economics and Political Science
Thursday, September 23, 2021
A survey explored US economists’ views on President Biden’s vaccine mandates. Will the mandates promote a faster and stronger economic recovery? Romesh Vaitilingam writes that the 42 economists who took part in the survey were unanimous in replying “yes”, with many adding nuanced comments.
This article describes the problem of suspicionless searches of consumer databases, explains the threat these searches pose to privacy interests, argues that the legal arguments put forth by law enforcement in defense of these practices are flawed, and suggests what should be done about the problem, both in courts and in the legislature.
In the name of an ‘emergency,’ the administration is invoking a 50-year-old statute of doubtful relevance to justify a sweeping and unprecedented mandate over the private sector.
