Arnold Schwarzenegger Makes Impassioned Plea to 'End This War' in Ukraine (VIDEO)

This is quite an address. Schwarzenegger's father fought for the Nazis in Leningrad during WWII.

At SF GATE, "Arnold Schwarzenegger's plea to Russian people, soldiers amid Ukraine invasion goes viral."

Thirty-Five Killed as Russia Strikes Ukraine Military Base Near Polish Border (VIDEO)

War is hell. Bloody fucking hell.

At WSJ, "Russian Missiles Strike Ukrainian Military Training Base Near Polish Border":

Attack kills at least 35 and increases risk of war encroaching on NATO territory, after Moscow says arms shipments to Kyiv won’t be tolerated.

A Russian airstrike on a Ukrainian military training center close to the Polish border threw into sharp relief the hazards of the Western push to deliver arms support to Kyiv while avoiding direct conflict with a nuclear adversary.

The airstrike killed 35 people at the facility in Yavoriv about 10 miles from the Polish border early Sunday, far to the west of where the conflict has been concentrated, one day after Moscow warned the West that it would consider arms deliveries to Ukraine as legitimate targets.

A large portion of the military aid from the West—one of the largest transfers of arms in history—passes through Poland into western Ukraine, part of the fine line the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, allies are walking between aiding Ukraine militarily while steering clear of providing troops or enforcing a no-fly zone that Ukraine has called for.

The expansion of Russia’s aggression to a target close to Poland also increases the risk of the war encroaching on NATO territory, which the U.S. has warned would be treated as an attack on the alliance. Any strike on Poland would bring “the full force of the NATO alliance to bear in responding to it,” Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said in an interview Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said more attacks aimed at supply lines and foreign mercenaries supporting Ukraine were in the offing. Armaments supplied to Ukraine by the U.S. and its European allies—especially antitank and antiaircraft weapons—have played an important role in checking the advance of Russian ground troops, who have suffered heavy casualties in the north as they have tried to encircle the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that military aid alone might not be enough to enable Ukraine to fight off Russia’s invasion, and has made increasingly urgent calls for a no-fly zone that would protect the supplies entering the country and the refugees fleeing to neighboring countries.

The U.S. and its European allies have said a no-fly zone that involved other countries’ air forces risks escalating the conflict because it would only be effective if it were empowered to deter Russian planes. The U.S. also last week declined to support a Polish plan to give the U.S. Soviet-built MiG-29 combat jets after the U.S. had broached the prospect of Poland supplying the planes directly to Ukraine.

While the West aids Ukraine, Russia has asked China for military equipment and other assistance for its war effort, according to U.S. officials, who didn’t specify what Russia had requested.

News of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s request for help from Beijing, first reported by the Washington Post, comes as Mr. Sullivan heads to Rome on Monday to meet with a top Chinese official to discuss Ukraine.

Mr. Sullivan spoke on CNN on Sunday of the growing concern inside the Biden administration that Russia might be looking for help in the conflict, though he didn’t acknowledge a specific request from Russia to China.

“We are also watching closely to see the extent to which China actually does provide any form of support, material support or economic support, to Russia,” Mr. Sullivan said. “It is a concern of ours, and we have communicated to Beijing that we will not stand by and allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses from the economic sanctions.”

In addition to supplying arms, the Biden administration and its allies have shared intelligence with Kyiv and inflicted sweeping economic sanctions against Russia. But they are facing calls from some quarters to do more...

 

Demand for Bomb Shelters and Iodine Pills Skyrockets in Europe

As noted earlier, I seriously doubt World War III is imminent, but the Europeans aren't taking any chances.

At NYT, "Pandemic Fears Give Way to a Rush for Bomb Shelters":

Since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, European anxiety has shifted from Covid to nuclear annihilation. Bunkers, survival guides and iodine pills are flying off the shelves.

BAGNOLO SAN VITO, Italy — Across a footbridge from a busy shopping outlet surrounded by verdant fields in northern Italy, workers in a nondescript warehouse are preparing for a nuclear attack, its radioactive fallout and the end of the world as we know it.

“We have found ourselves in the midst of this giant cyclone of demand,” said Giulio Cavicchioli, as he showed off an underground air filtration system that “cleans” radioactive particles, nerve gas and other biological agents and played a video tour of a nuclear shelter that was “ready to use.” His company, Minus Energie, has gone from working on 50 bunkers in the past 22 years to fielding 500 inquiries in the past two weeks.

“It’s a hysteria for construction of bunkers,” he said, driven by the fear of Russian nuclear warheads reaching across Europe. “It’s much scarier now.”

In the days since President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia launched his war on Ukraine, and put his nuclear forces into “special combat readiness,” the intensifying violence and the legacy of two world wars has revived fears in Europe of nuclear calamity for the first time in decades.

Europe has already spent two years on high alert against the pandemic. But now the manifestations of its anxieties and desires for self-defense have shifted from the masks, vaccines and lockdowns of Covid to the bunkers, iodine pills and air raid sirens of nuclear war.

From Italy to Sweden, Belgium to Britain, the specter of nuclear war, which had seemed a relic of the past, is permeating a new generation of European consciousness. And it is prompting a new look at defense infrastructure, survival guides and fallout shelters that not long ago were the purview of camouflage-wearing, assault-weapon-toting survivalists or paranoid billionaires.

“We are extremely concerned by the nuclear safety, security and safeguards risks caused by the Russian invasion on Ukraine,” the European Union said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Since the fall of the Soviet Union, we’ve all forgotten about it and put it to bed, until, you know, the madman invaded,” said Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, the former commander of the United Kingdom’s and NATO’s Chemical, Biological and Nuclear Defense Forces, and now a visiting fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge...

 

Russia Asked China for Military Assistance in Ukraine

Thus making Putin's regime look all the weaker. 

And China's supposedly guarded in its newfound partnership. 

At the Financial Times, "US officials say Russia has asked China for military help in Ukraine":

Russia has asked China for military equipment to support its invasion of Ukraine, ​according to US officials, sparking concern in the White House that Beijing may undermine western efforts to help Ukrainian forces defend their country.

US officials told the Financial Times that Russia had requested military equipment and other assistance since the start of the invasion. They declined to give details about what Russia had requested.

Another person familiar with the situation said the US was preparing to warn its allies, amid some indications that China may be preparing to help Russia. Other US officials have said there were signs that Russia was running out of some kinds of weaponry as the war in Ukraine extends into its third week.

The White House did not comment. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for a comment.

The revelation comes as Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, heads to Rome for talks on Monday with Yang Jiechi, China’s top foreign policy official.

Before leaving Washington on Sunday, Sullivan warned China not to try to “bail out” Russia by helping Moscow to circumvent the sanctions that the US and its allies have imposed on President Vladimir Putin and his regime...

The apparent request for equipment and other kinds of unspecified military assistance comes as the Russian military struggles to make as much progress in Ukraine as western intelligence believe they expected.

It also raises fresh questions about the China-Russia relationship, which has grown increasingly strong as both countries express their opposition to the US over everything from Nato to sanctions.

China has portrayed itself as a neutral actor in the Ukraine crisis and has refused to condemn Russia for invading the country. The US has also seen no sign that Chinese president Xi Jinping is willing to put any pressure on Putin...

 

Brent Renaud, Renowned Filmmaker and Journalist, 'Gunned Down' by Russian Forces in Ukraine

The Washington Examiner links Nick Stylianou, who reports, "Head of the Kyiv Police Department says that Russian troops opened fire on a car with foreign journalists in and shot dead 51-year-old New York Times videojournalist Brent Renaud in Irpin. One of his colleagues is injured and is in hospital."

The Times' story is here, "Brent Renaud, an American Journalist, Is Killed in Ukraine." The report indicates, "The Ukrainian authorities said he was killed in Irpin, a suburb that has been the site of intense shelling by Russian forces in recent days, but the details of his death were not immediately clear." 

You'd think the Times might have mentioned that Renaud's auto came under fire by Russian troops. Folks on Twitter are peeved by this section of the story:

Mr. Renaud had contributed to The Times in previous years, most recently in 2015, but he was not on assignment for the company in Ukraine. Early reports that he was working for The Times in Ukraine circulated because he was found with a Times press badge that had been issued for an assignment years ago...

Renaud was on assignment for Time. The magazine's statement is here, "A Statement from TIME on the Death of Journalist Brent Renaud," via Memeorandum.

No Breakthrough in Russia and Ukraine's High-Level Diplomatic Talks

Diplomacy won't work if one side not negotiating in good faith. Nothing I've seen so far demonstrates Moscow's interest in winding down the war, to say nothing of developing humanitarian corridors, relieving besieged cities, and protecting Ukrainian human rights.

At the New York Times, "Russia Batters and Encircles Ukrainian Cities, as Diplomacy Falters":

The top diplomats of Russia and Ukraine failed to make even a hint of progress Thursday in their first face-to-face meeting since the Russian invasion began, while Russian bombardments spread more carnage in a two-week-old war that Ukraine estimated had already inflicted $100 billion in damage.

The Russian side, which has refused to call the conflict a war, insisted that it would not end until Ukraine was “demilitarized,” dousing flickers of hope that the meeting in Turkey of Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba of Ukraine and his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, might lead to even a brief cease-fire. Mr. Lavrov later told reporters that was not even discussed.

“The broad narrative he conveyed to me,” Mr. Kuleba said afterward, “is that they will continue their aggression until Ukraine meets their demands, and the least of these demands is surrender.”

Across swaths of Ukraine, the fighting continued and suffering deepened, especially in besieged and bombarded cities like Mariupol in the southeast and Chernihiv in the north.

Near Kyiv, Russian forces gained control of the town of Bucha and moved southwest in an attempt to encircle the capital. They were also approaching Kyiv from the east, with heavy fighting involving a line of Russian tanks reported in the suburb of Brovary, according to videos posted online on Thursday.

In Mariupol, 70 bodies have been buried since Tuesday, without coffins, in a mass grave, according to video recorded by The Associated Press, and local officials said an airstrike that destroyed a maternity hospital on Wednesday had killed three people, including a child. In Chernihiv, residents lacked electricity, gas for cooking or warding off the winter cold, or even space to bury the dead, said the mayor, Vladyslav Atroshenko.

“Dozens of people have died,” he said. “Dozens of multistory buildings have been ruined. Thousands of people have no place to live.” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, in his latest video message, said the hospital bombing in Mariupol, a port on the Sea of Azov, was further “proof that the genocide of Ukrainians is taking place.”

Despite photographs of the ravaged hospital and victims of the bombing, corroborated by the United Nations, Russian officials denied having hit the hospital, or alternatively said it had not been used as a hospital. Attacks on medical facilities can constitute war crimes.

The chief economic adviser to Ukraine’s government, Oleg Ustenko, estimated that his country had already suffered $100 billion in damage since the invasion began Feb. 24. “The situation is a disaster that is really much deeper than somebody can imagine,” Mr. Ustenko said at a Peterson Institute for International Economics virtual event.

Vice President Kamala Harris, in Warsaw to meet with Polish officials, said Russians should be investigated for war crimes in Ukraine, though she did not name any individuals. Ms. Harris, a former prosecutor, said, “I have no question the eyes of the world are on this war and what Russia has done in terms of the aggression and these atrocities.”

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has insisted that Ukraine disarm, guarantee that it will never join the NATO alliance and officially cede parts of its land by recognizing two Russian-backed separatist regions as independent countries and accepting Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Mr. Putin’s false claims that Ukraine’s government is run by Nazis and that his goal is “denazification” of the country suggest, as Western governments have charged, that he intends to install a puppet government in Kyiv. But conflicting statements from Moscow have left unclear whether he intends to occupy some or all of the country, or annex more of it, or how far he would go in devastating Ukraine in order to subjugate it...

 

Ukrainian Forces Destroy Russian Tank Convoy Near Kyiv (VIDEO)

At the New York Post, "Video shows Russian armored convoy caught in Ukrainian ambush on way to Kyiv."

And Sky News, "Ukraine war: Sky News examines drone video from village near Kyiv that shows Russian convoy 'ambushed'."

Mass Graves in Mariupol Ukraine (VIDEO)

The city's completely besieged and cut off from all supplies --- medicine, food, and water. It's a desperate situation. And there's been no progress in setting up humanitarian corridors to facilitate evacuation for civilians.

At Reuters, "Ukraine says Russia snubs plea for humanitarian access to besieged civilians."

And at the New York Times, "After a Week of Siege, Bloodied Mariupol Plans Mass Graves":

Under a relentless Russian barrage, there is no heat or electricity, and people are boiling snow for water. A 6-year-old died of dehydration, the authorities said.

LVIV, Ukraine — Marina Levinchuk said she received an alarming text message from the local authorities in the besieged city of Mariupol several days ago, before she decided to flee. “If somebody dies in your family,” she said, recalling the message in her own words, “just put the body outside, cover it, tie up the hands and the legs and leave it outside.”

“That’s what’s going on in Mariupol now,” she said of the city, currently ringed by Russian forces pounding it with bombs, missiles and artillery, and hitting a maternity hospital on Wednesday. “There are just bodies lying in the streets.

“There is no water, no heating, no gas,” she continued in a video call on WhatsApp on Wednesday. “And they are collecting snow, melting the snow, and boiling the snow.”

It has been seven days since Russian forces encircled the city, an important port on Ukraine’s southern coast, and began to lay siege to the roughly half a million people living there. Most communications with the outside world were severed, leaving primarily those with access to satellite phones to alert Ukraine and the rest of the world to the increasingly dire state of affairs.

Having failed to defeat the Ukrainian army in the war’s first weeks, and encountering stiff resistance in major cities like Mariupol, Kharkiv and Kyiv, Russian commanders appear to be resorting to tactics used in previous wars in Chechnya and Syria: flattening cities with overwhelming and indiscriminate firepower.

A video uploaded to Facebook on Wednesday evening showed the center of Mariupol after an aerial bombardment. It looked like a wasteland, with tree branches singed, windows blasted out of entire apartment blocks and the destroyed maternity hospital.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, condemned the strike on the hospital, berating world powers for failing to stop the killing and echoing his calls for NATO to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

“Mariupol. Direct Strike of Russian troops at the maternity hospital,” he wrote in a Twitter post Wednesday afternoon. “People, children are under the wreckage. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity.”

In all, 17 people were injured in the hospital attack, including staff members and maternity ward patients, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the regional governor, told a Ukrainian television station.

Efforts to negotiate a cease-fire to give civilians a chance to escape have failed repeatedly. For three days, the prospect of relief reaching the city though a “humanitarian corridor” fell apart in a hail of mortar and artillery fire.

The fighting around the city has been some of the most intense of the war, residents who managed to escape the conflict say...

Bernard-Henri Lévy, the 'Last Liberal Interventionist'

A phenomenal, wondrous interview, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "A Conversation With the Last Liberal Interventionist":

Do you think the U.S. was prudent and principled to invade Afghanistan?

Yes. Doing so was the essence of prudence. It was necessary to prevent another 9/11. To do that, it was necessary to destroy the regime. Afterwards, it will not have escaped your attention that the “invasion” turned gradually into a symbolic, very light, noncombatant presence that nevertheless served as a shield behind which a civil society came together. Let’s not fall for the propaganda of the Trumpists and their de facto allies on the so-called far left. Contrary to what the world says, the United States could have stayed far longer at a cost many times less than what their other deployments cost.

Is it paternalistic to assume that people around the world crave Western democratic norms? According to a Pew study from 2013, 99% of Afghans—men and women—desire to live under Sharia law.

I am aware of that poll. The same words do not necessarily mean the same things. When a woman in Kabul refers to Sharia, she is not advocating for the right to be stoned in the event of adultery. By the way, a real liberal, an interventionist worth his salt, would never deny that broad principles are flexible. We know well that they obviously cannot be applied identically in Afghanistan or Burma, but that they must be adapted.... 

The Covid-19 pandemic has made travel exceedingly difficult and even taboo. Moreover, many environmentalists (Greta Thunberg is one example) discourage air travel in an effort to reduce humanity’s carbon footprint. Travel has been instrumental in your life. And you sort of ignored the lockdowns and traveled around the world during Covid. What is the importance of travel and why should we encourage it?

For the same reason. The world of Greta Thunberg, a world without travel, a world where we closed ourselves off from others, would be an impoverished world. Spiritually, of course. Civilizationally, no doubt. But also, in the most trivial sense of the word, economically. Globalization must be reformed. The ecological battle must be fought. And to correct the damaging effects of technology, we need much, much more technology. But the tragic error would be to try to undo everything...

Read the whole thing. It's worth your time.

Exclusive: Congressional Republicans Seek to Give Biden War Powers for Cuba.

At the American Conservative:

West Virginia GOP Rep. Alex Mooney is planning to introduce a new congressional joint resolution to grant President Joe Biden the ability to use war powers to deliver humanitarian aid to Cuba amid growing unrest in the country.

Images of the resolution reviewed by The American Conservative show that “The Authorization for the Use of Military Forces Against Cuba to Ensure the Delivery of Humanitarian Aid” has three specific goals:

* “ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid to the people of Cuba, including but not limited to food, water, and medicine;” * “create a safe zone in Cuba for the Cuban people to safely receive humanitarian aid;” and 

* “prevent humanitarian aid from being stolen by the Cuban government or its forces.” Mooney’s office stated, “The Congressman hasn’t introduced any legislation related to Cuba. If he does introduce legislation we’ll be happy to comment at that time. Our office doesn’t comment on hypothetical legislation.”

Congressional Republicans have also held separate, virtual, member-level meetings regarding how to respond to the protests in Cuba and have invited representatives of large corporations to them. Emails also reviewed by The American Conservative show an official from Sen. Rick Scott’s office coordinated a meeting on July 19 with members of Congress and representatives with Amazon, Facebook, Google, Verizon, and the wireless communications trade association CTIA.

Sources detailed that senators spoke to companies from Silicon Valley to see what was technically feasible as far as getting internet access into Cuba...

Keep reading.

 

Why America Failed in Afghanistan

 At Foreign Affairs, "Chronicle of a Defeat Foretold":

In 2008, I interviewed the United Kingdom’s then outgoing military commander in Afghanistan, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, in a dusty firebase in Helmand Province, where international troops had been battling the Taliban on a daily basis for territory that kept slipping away. The war in Afghanistan could not be won militarily, Carleton-Smith told me. He was the first senior coalition military officer to say so publicly, and the story made the front page of the British Sunday Times. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates promptly denounced Carleton-Smith to the news media as “defeatist.”

Thirteen years on, U.S. President Joe Biden appears to have reached the same conclusion as the British brigadier. In April, Biden announced that the United States would pull all its remaining troops out of Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11, ending what he referred to as “the forever war.” But by now, such a withdrawal was all but a foregone conclusion: the Taliban had proved a stubborn enemy that was not going anywhere and that indeed controlled close to half the country’s territory.

How the conflict once known as “the good war” (to distinguish it from the war in Iraq) went so wrong is the subject of a new book, The American War in Afghanistan, which claims to be the first comprehensive account of the United States’ longest war. Its author, Carter Malkasian, is a historian who has spent considerable time working in Afghanistan, first as a civilian official in Helmand and then as a senior adviser to the U.S. military commander in the country. A sprawling history of more than 500 pages, the work stands in stark contrast to Malkasian’s previous book, War Comes to Garmser, which tells the compelling story of one small district in Helmand. In his new book, Malkasian considers just how it could be that with as many as 140,000 soldiers in 2011 and some of the world’s most sophisticated equipment, the United States and its NATO allies failed to defeat the Taliban. Moreover, he asks why these Western powers stayed on, at a cost of more than $2 trillion and over 3,500 allied lives lost, plus many more soldiers badly injured, fighting what the British brigadier and others long knew was an unwinnable war.

FATAL BEGINNINGS

The Afghan intervention seemed, at the start, a success story. The United States entered Afghanistan in October 2001 with the backing of the United Nations and fueled by worldwide outrage over the 9/11 attacks. It dispatched B-52 bombers, laser-guided missiles, and Green Berets, who worked alongside local militias to topple the Taliban within 60 days, with the loss of only four U.S. soldiers (three a result of friendly fire) and one CIA agent. The operation seemed a model of intervention and cost a total of $3.8 billion: President George W. Bush described it as one of the biggest “bargains” of all time. Observes Malkasian: “The ease of the 2001 success carried away sensibility.”

The Taliban fell, Osama bin Laden fled to Pakistan—and the Bush administration no longer seemed to know what it was trying to achieve in Afghanistan. Bush made much of women’s rights, declaring in his State of the Union address in January 2002 that “today women of Afghanistan are free,” after “years as captives in their own homes,” when the Taliban forbade girls from going to school and women from working, wearing lipstick, or laughing out loud. But Washington had no appetite for rebuilding Afghanistan and almost no understanding of the war-ravaged country, let alone of how much work would be needed to secure and reconstruct it.

Malkasian argues that the United States made mistakes between 2001 and 2006 that set the course for failure. The catalog of errors he recounts is by now familiar. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did not want to invest in the Afghan army—and by the end of 2003, just 6,000 Afghan soldiers had been trained. Warlords, whom most Afghans blamed for the country’s descent into violence in the first place, roamed free and even became ministers and members of parliament. At the same time, the United States and its allies shut the Taliban out of talks on a political settlement, failing to appreciate that the group represented a point of view that many among the majority Pashtuns shared. The United States should have pressed its advantage, Malkasian suggests, at a time when the Afghan government had popular support and the Taliban were in disarray. Instead, it empowered militias and conducted overly aggressive counterterrorism operations that alienated ordinary Afghans and led the excluded Taliban to resort once more to violence.

Nonetheless, the Bush administration classed Afghanistan as a success and turned its attention to Iraq. The Taliban fled across the border to Pakistan, where they regrouped, raised funds, recruited in the madrasahs, and trained with the assistance of Pakistan’s security service, the Inter-Services Intelligence. Many ISI officers had worked with Taliban leaders for decades and shared their worldview. Moreover, Malkasian notes that Islamabad’s strategic thinking centered on its rivalry with India. Pakistan had fought four wars with its neighbor and feared that India would encircle it by gaining influence in Afghanistan. India had 24 consulates in Afghanistan, Pakistani officials complained; in fact, it had only four.

Pakistan’s role turned out to be fatal. Even as the United States prosecuted its war in Afghanistan, those it fought found refuge and training in the country next door. But the Bush administration not only turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s machinations; it provided Pakistan with $12 billion, more than half of which was a reimbursement for military operations, as American officials believed that Islamabad was helping in what they saw as the more important fight against al Qaeda.

THE HEART OF AFGHANISTAN

Afghan officials like to blame Pakistan for the deepening war. But the Taliban had something more in its favor—something Malkasian calls “the Taliban’s tie to what it meant to be Afghan.” The heart of Afghanistan, by Malkasian’s description, is the atraf, or countryside, with its mud-walled homes, hidden-away women, and barefoot children, a realm where “other than cell-phones, cars, and assault rifles, the 21st century was invisible.” Into this space came American soldiers with night-vision goggles and missiles the price of Porsches. The last foreigners the villagers had seen were the Russians who occupied their country in the 1980s. The Taliban were able to use that memory as a powerful motivator in a country that prided itself on defeating superpowers and never having been colonized.

Malkasian believes that the Taliban profited from their posture as a force for Islam, against infidels. But my own reporting in Afghanistan suggests a somewhat more ambiguous dynamic. Mullahs in villages would rage against the foreign presence, but they collected their salaries from a government dependent on foreigners. Ordinary Afghans I spoke to suggested that religion was less important to them than pride in their history of defeating superpowers. The fact that the Taliban paid unemployed farmers further boosted the group’s advantage. Moreover, as Malkasian details, the Taliban exploited tribal rivalries that Western forces didn’t understand. Many powerful Pashtun tribes, such as the Ghilzais, the Ishaqzais, and the Noorzais, felt cut out. They resented foreign troops for disrespecting their culture (entering women’s quarters, bombing wedding parties) and attempting to eradicate their poppy crops.

The United States had created conditions that called for a more robust Afghan state than it had built. As Malkasian writes, “If a state faces a hostile safe haven on its border and mistreats various segments of its population, it had best have capable military forces of one form or another.” When the Taliban reemerged in earnest in 2006, their forces were estimated at only 10,000, which should have been containable. But the foreign forces in Afghanistan were unfamiliar with the terrain, both geographic and cultural; the U.S. leadership was distracted by Iraq, where a civil war was spinning out of control; and Afghanistan had not even a small, capable army...

 Still more.

Afghanistan Bomb Attack on Girls Highlights Threat to Women’s Education

Things are going badly in Afghanistan.

And at almost 20 years, I doubt the U.S. could do more to secure the country, besides sending in 500,000 troops and just take the whole place over. We're still in Germany, Japan, and South Korea, for darned sake, and as it is the U.S. would probably defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion, although who knows that "China Joe" Biden has up his sleeves? Both China and Russia are major threats, and it'd be nice to know exactly which country --- or countries --- hacked the East Coast power grid a few days ago. But it probably doesn't matter, because this kind of thing is going to happen more often, a lot more often, and the Dems probably do not care.

In any case, I'm not against the Afghan pullout, though I've also thought the most noble element of our intervention in that country has been our great earlier success at improving human rights, especially for women.

At WSJ, "Kabul residents on Sunday buried dozens of schoolgirls killed by explosions outside a school":

KABUL—Zainab Maqsudi, 13 years old, exited the library and walked toward the main gate of the Sayed Shuhada school to go home on Saturday when she was blown backward by an explosion. When she stood up, the air was thick with dust and smoke, and she was surrounded by shattered glass.

“Suicide attack!” everyone yelled, she said, reflecting how common such attacks have become in Afghanistan. She noticed she was bleeding from her arms. An older sister took her to hospital.

“I’m not sure if I will go back to school when I recover,” Zainab, who is in seventh grade, said from her hospital bed Sunday, with her parents by her side. “I don’t want to get hurt again. My body shakes when I think about what happened.”

Preventing girls like Zainab from going to school was the likely goal of the terrorists behind Saturday’s attack in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Kabul. Widening access to women’s education was one of the most tangible achievements of the 20-year U.S. presence in Afghanistan—progress that could be reversed once American forces leave the country later this year.

Afghan authorities on Sunday raised the official death toll from Saturday’s attack that targeted schoolgirls at Sayed Shuhada to 53. It was the latest assault on the area’s mostly Shiite Hazara minority, which in recent months has suffered horrific attacks by Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, including on a maternity ward and an education center.

No group has claimed responsibility for Saturday’s attack. The Afghan president blamed the Taliban. The Taliban denied responsibility and condemned the bombings, accusing Islamic State of being behind them.

On Sunday, residents of the Afghan capital spent the day burying dozens of schoolgirls on a hillside on the outskirts of the capital. Hospitals across the city treated dozens of injured, including several who remained in intensive care.

The attack followed a rise in targeted assassinations of activists, politicians and female journalists. “We know if there is further violence, the groups who will be most vulnerable are women and girls,” said Shaharzad Akbar, chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. “The message this attack sends to children, especially to girls going to school, is a very bleak one, a very scary one.”

The Biden administration last month set Sept. 11 as the deadline for all U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan, but U.S. officials have suggested the drawdown could be completed as soon as July. The agreement follows a February 2020 deal between the Taliban and the Trump administration that committed the insurgents to enter peace talks with the Afghan government. However, American efforts to clinch a peace settlement before a full withdrawal have stalled, and bloodshed across the country continues.

The neighborhood of Dasht-e Barchi where Saturday’s bombings occurred is one of Kabul’s most disenfranchised areas. It is populated mostly by the Hazara minority, which historically has been marginalized and oppressed, especially during Taliban rule in the 1990s...

More at that top link.

 

Conservative Amnesia

Center-right parties in Europe have forgotten how to be conservative, argues Jan-Werner Mueller, at Foreign Policy, "Europe Forgot What ‘Conservative’ Means":

Whether or not to adapt to right-wing populism constitutes the major strategic dilemma for Europe’s center-right today, writes Jan-Werner Mueller. https://t.co/2hYxTYgKKd

— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) March 21, 2018

Conventional wisdom has it that Europe’s social democrats are in terminal decline. In recent elections in Italy, Germany, and France, once proud left-wing mass parties have been reduced to at best getting a fifth of the vote. The obvious flip side of the mainstream left’s decline seems to be that populists but also the center-right are faring well. In fact, this picture is highly misleading. Center-right parties — European Christian democrats above all — face a real crisis. It is increasingly unclear what they stand for, and, unlike social democrats, they are in real danger of being replaced by the populist right.

Social democrats have been struggling because the “Third Way” pursued by leaders such as Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder during the late 1990s left them with an enormous credibility problem. They had not just tolerated but actively furthered finance capitalism; deregulation and increasing inequality happened under the watch of nominally left-wing governments, which today are perceived as having betrayed socialist ideals. But, importantly, it is not really in doubt what these ideals are. As the surprise success of Jeremy Corbyn in last year’s British general elections demonstrated, the left can still do remarkably well, under two conditions: Social democrats have to restore their credibility and reorient public attention away from the one issue that is most likely to split its core constituency — immigration. Whether one likes Corbyn’s ideas or not, it is remarkable that a grassroots movement, Momentum, largely captured the Labour Party and effectively erased its toxic association with the widely discredited Blairism.

In somewhat similar fashion, Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) has been trying to assert an agenda offering better protection for workers and more accessible health care. While this month’s decision to re-enter a grand coalition with the Christian Democrats has temporarily obscured this reorientation, the SPD will likely continue to sharpen its profile as a distinctively left-wing party in government.

If one asks, by contrast, what exactly Europe’s center-right stands for today, most citizens will be unable to articulate an answer. This has partly to do with historical amnesia — including forgetfulness on the part of center-right leaders themselves. After World War II, Christian democrats dominated politics in Germany, Italy, and, to a lesser extent, France. The circumstances were uniquely favorable for such moderate center-right parties, which claimed a religious, though nonsectarian, inspiration. Fascism had discredited the nationalist right; the horrors of the midcentury made many Europeans look for moral certainty in religion; and in the context of the Cold War, Christian democrats presented themselves as quintessentially anti-communist actors. Not least, they suggested that there was an affinity between the materialism of classical liberalism on the one hand and communism on the other — and that they were the only parties that clearly rejected both in favor of communitarian values. It is virtually forgotten today that Christian democratic parties had strong progressive elements — even if one occasionally gets a glimpse of that past: Matteo Renzi, who resigned as leader of Italy’s major left-wing party this month, had actually started his political life as a Christian Democrat.

Above all, Christian democrats were the original architects of European integration. They deeply distrusted the nation-state; the fact that, in the 19th century, both the newly unified Italy and the Germany united by Otto von Bismarck had waged prolonged culture wars against Catholics was seared in their collective memory. European integration also chimed with a distinct Christian democratic approach to politics in general: the imperative to mediate among distinct identities and interests. Ultimately, this quest for compromise among different groups (and, in Europe, states) went back to Pope Leo XIII’s idea — directed against rising socialist parties — that capital and labor could work together for the benefit of all in a harmonious society. Christian democracy had been a creation to avoid both culture war and class conflict.

Little is left of these legacies today. Christian democrats and other center-right parties continue to be pragmatists, but it is often unclear what, other than the imperative to preserve power, animates them in the first place. The European Union’s three main presidents — of the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the European Council — are all Christian democrats. Yet none of them has advanced a bold vision for the union as a whole. All seem to take it for granted that citizens are wary of further integration. To be sure, this is the narrative right-wing populists push, but evidence from surveys is far more ambiguous.

Whether or not to adapt to right-wing populism constitutes the major strategic dilemma for Europe’s center-right today...

Actually, Christian Democrats today --- think Angela Merkel --- are basically leftists. Yeah, they better learn how to be conservative again, or be relegated to the dustbin of history. They need to conserve their own societies, for one thing. Sheesh.

But keep reading.

The Gift of Goats

They're so tame. I guess they'd make a nice gift to some Sudanese children?



More at World Vision, "Donate Goats":

Goats can change everything.

Their milk provides great protein to help children grow. The family can also sell any extra to earn money for medicines and other necessities.

A healthy dairy goat can give up to 16 cups of milk a day. Goat’s milk is easier to digest than cow’s milk and is an excellent source of calcium, protein, and other essential nutrients that growing children need. Goats are practical animals — flourishing in harsh climates while producing valuable manure to fertilize crops and vegetable gardens...

Sweden Steps Up Deportation

Sweden's stepping back into the real world.

At Foreign Affairs, "Asylum Is Hard to Find: Most of the unaccompanied minors who made it to Sweden have yet to receive their asylum decisions."

Good I say. Good on Sweden. Boot those "unaccompanied minors."

Rise of the Populists: A Problem for Merkel and Germany

At Der Spiegel, "The state election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania gave the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany a significant boost. It is a challenge for Chancellor Merkel and the entire country":

The rise of the right-wing populist AfD party in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is a problem for Merkel and Germany: https://t.co/JSae52FwfS

— SPIEGEL English (@SPIEGEL_English) September 5, 2016

From a national political perspective, the eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, with its sparse population of 1.6 million, is a lightweight and largely meaningless. Usually. But this time around, following state parliament elections held there on Sunday, the situation is different. This vote, after all, was essentially a referendum on Chancellor Angela Merkel and her policies, which makes it quite meaningful indeed.

The results of that referendum don't look good for Merkel. Her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) lost four percentage points relative to the last time the state's voters went to the polls in 2011 for a result of just 19 percent -- while the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) brought in fully 20.8 percent of the vote. The party didn't even exist five years ago.

To be sure, the CDU hasn't done particularly well in the state for 20 years, but it is home to the chancellor's own parliamentary constituency, which means that the AfD has essentially staged a revolution in Merkel's backyard. And it did so by turning the elections into a single-issue vote: Merkel's refugee policies.

The strategy was so successful that the CDU has been relegated to being just the third-strongest party in the state, behind the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the AfD. It marks the first time in Germany that the anti-Merkel party has come out ahead of Merkel's party -- and in some parts of the German leader's electoral district, AfD was the strongest party of all.

For the chancellor, it is a political debacle. Merkel must now come to terms with a challenge at least as monumental as the one which faced her predecessor Gerhard Schröder back in the mid-2000s. Back then, the SPD chancellor found himself trapped between, on the one hand, having to explain his cuts to social welfare benefits and, on the other, the rise of the Left Party, a political movement to the left of the SPD that was fueled by exactly those cuts. In the end, he failed on both counts.

The parallels to Merkel's situation -- a CDU that has been divided by her approach to the refugee crisis combined with the rise of a right-wing protest party -- are significant. But the end doesn't have to be the same. The Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania vote, after all, is only symbolically a debacle for Merkel. Her position as chancellor isn't (yet) at stake.

Emotions over Reason

But the returns on Sunday made clear that an increasing number of voters, at least in Germany's east, are turning their backs on the established, democratic party system. Furthermore, it doesn't seem to matter much if the economy is improving, cities are being renewed and the tourist sector is doing well, all of which are the case in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which has been structurally weak since German reunification in 1990. And it is possible for a party to campaign on fears of refugees even in a state that very few foreigners call home.

In short, emotions would seem to have triumphed over reason. Facts took a back seat.

It is precisely here that the challenge lies for Merkel, a politician who has always staked her political success on clear arguments based on facts and figures. She will have to do more explaining and more communicating -- and she will have to embed her policies within an approachable, meaningful framework in order to keep her party behind her. She may also have to take a few rhetorical steps toward the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), which has been sharply critical of her stance on the refugee issue. That could include admitting that she has made some missteps...

I expect her to double down, and she may well decide not to seek reelection, leaving office satisfied that her administration did the humanitarian thing. She'll leave to her successors to clean up the mess. Fortunately, Germany's wealthy and prosperous. It'll work out for them. Perhaps not so much for all the other European countries who were brought along for the refugee ride, largely against their interests.

More.

Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union Finishes Third in Regional Elections (VIDEO)

I've been waiting for this, and believe me, it's just the beginning.

German federal elections are scheduled for next year.

Meanwhile, from Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "UNEXPECTEDLY. German Electoral Shocker: Merkel’s Party Finishes 3rd in Regional Election."



Flashback: From August, "Angela Merkel's Popularity Plunges After Wave of Jihad Attacks in Germany — Unexpectedly!"

Angela Merkel's Popularity Plunges After Wave of Jihad Attacks in Germany — Unexpectedly!

Well, this is a total surprise.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Merkel’s Popularity Plunges After July Attacks":

Support for Angela Merkel drops 12 points, to 47%, after July attacks in Germany: https://t.co/FR7iBTaBuh

— WSJ Think Tank (@WSJThinkTank) August 5, 2016

BERLIN — Mounting concerns about terrorism, migration and relations with Turkey are eroding support among German voters for Europe’s long-dominant leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, as she decides whether to run for a fourth term.

A poll released late Thursday showed Ms. Merkel’s approval rating plummeting 12 points in the space of a month and confidence in her handling of refugee policy at a new low.

It was conducted Monday and Tuesday, following a wave of violence in southern Germany in late July that included two terrorist acts by migrants, allegedly linked to Islamic State, that injured 20 people.

“Of course we can do it. The country won’t collapse,” said Karl-Georg Wellmann, a lawmaker with Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats, referring to the chancellor’s slogan regarding the recent wave of around a million migrants.

“But people don’t want to hear this anymore,” he said. “They want to hear that we have things under control.”


The poll conducted by Infratest Dimap found Ms. Merkel’s approval rating at 47%, down from 59% a month before. Nearly two thirds said they disapproved of her refugee policy, the highest level since the pollster started asking the question last fall. The poll had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

In addition to terrorism fears, recent polls register deep discomfort with Ms. Merkel’s bid to keep working closely with Turkey to stem the tide of migrants and refugees trekking to Europe, especially in the wake of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on domestic opponents after last month’s failed military coup.

Germans follow events in Turkey closely, in part because of worries that tensions there could spill over into Germany’s large Turkish community.

In the latest poll, 88% said the German government should be more assertive in confronting Turkey.

“The German people clearly believe that Germany should be tougher towards Mr. Erdogan,” said Oskar Niedermayer, professor of political science at Berlin’s Free University. “If Mr. Erdogan moves even more towards dictatorship than he is already doing,” and possibly calls the migration deal with the European Union into question, “this would of course be a very difficult situation for Ms. Merkel,” he said.

A top aide to Ms. Merkel said neither the attacks in Germany nor events in Turkey would affect the basics of the government’s migration policy...

I guess the German government's never heard of the first rule of holes.

More.

500 Migrants May Have Died After Boat Sinks in Mediterranean (VIDEO)

That's a horrific toll.

At Time, "500 Feared Dead After Migrant Boat Sinks in Mediterranean."

Germany Plans New Law to Require Migrants to Integrate and Learn German – Or Get Deported

At Blazing Cat Fur:

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maziere said he is intending to implement a new law that will require migrants to learn German and be part of society - or lose their permanent right of residency.

Many people in Germany have turned their backs to Chancellor Angela Merkel following her open-door refugee policy and turned towards the anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany.

The Alternative for Germany party (AFD) has developed an anti immigration stance over the past year, the party has made huge gains in popularity since the refugee crisis hit the EU and the group powered into three state legislatures...