finally a bit of reality in the news...

In the last few days - FINALLY - various mainstream media are beginning to acknowledge the impossibility of anything except a "messy" departure of the US from Afghanistan. As both the NY Times news summary newsletter wrote yesterday and Ezra Klein opined today: given all of the moving parts and players, the Biden administration has executed the best of a bad situation with verve and clarity. It has been ugly and tragic - we should not have expected anything less after 20 years of war-making we could never win fueled by realities we have never understood with in-country allies we could never trust. Our people could have expediated the visa process a bit; that is true. But all the other Monday morning quarterbacks and pundits have posted unrealistic and improbable alternative strategies for how we might have left Afghanistan - and as Klein puts it: they are attempting to "rescue the reputation of bad ideas by attributing their failure to poor execution."

To state the obvious: There was no good way to lose Afghanistan to the Taliban. A better withdrawal was possible — and our stingy, chaotic visa process was unforgivable — but so was a worse one. Either way, there was no hope of an end to the war that didn’t reveal our decades of folly, no matter how deeply America’s belief in its own enduring innocence demanded one. That is the reckoning that lies beneath events that are still unfolding, and much of the cable news conversation is a frenzied, bipartisan effort to avoid it. (Ezra Klein @ https://www.nytimes.com /2021/08/26/opinion/afghanistan-us-withdrawal.html?)

David Leonhardt was equally clear in his daily news summary for the Times when he wrote:

What might a more successful exit from Afghanistan have looked like? I have spent some time talking with colleagues and experts about that question, and it is a difficult one to answer. President Biden’s exit certainly has not gone well. The “orderly” withdrawal he had promised did not happen, and the world has watched agonizing scenes of Afghans trying to escape. But I’ve also noticed a naïveté about some of the commentary on Afghanistan. It presumes that there was a clean solution for the U.S., if only the Biden administration (and, to a lesser extent, the Trump administration) had executed it. The commentary never quite spells out what the solution was, though. There is a reason for that: A clean solution probably did not exist. The fundamental choice, as my colleague Helene Cooper told me, was between a permanent, low-level U.S. war in Afghanistan — a version of what John McCain once called a 100-year war — and a messy exit. “The pullout was never going to be a simple thing,” says Helene, who covers the Pentagon. “It was always going to be an ugly pullout.”

I encourage you to read the full article @ https://www.nytimes.com /2021/ 08/ 25/briefing/afghanistan-policy-biden.html. It is clear-headed, well-written, and strategically insightful. He answers the woulda/coulda scenarios put forth by those trying to sanitize their hopeless war with a variety of smoke screens that accuse the current leadership team for failing to execute the ever-shifting goals of what the late John McCain called "the 100 years of war" plan. You may also find the daily newsletter, "Letter from an American" by Heather Cox Richardson edifying (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-25-2021) She notes that:

The first days of the evacuation after the Afghan army crumbled and the Taliban swept into control of the country in nine days were chaotic, indeed, but since August 14, the U.S. has evacuated more than 82,300 people, bringing out 19,000 people yesterday alone. It has evacuated at least 4500 U.S. citizens and has sent more than 20,000 emails and made more than 45,000 phone calls to Americans who had notified the embassy they were in the country (since Americans do not have to register with the embassy, it is unclear how many citizens are there). A rough estimate says there are probably 500 U.S. citizens who want to leave, while another 1000 are not certain or want to stay.

From my perspective, it is high time clarity cut through the confusion, posturing, and obfuscation. I expected propaganda stations like Fox News to emphasize the authentic pain of this extraction. But I've been surprised that PBS News and CNN are fanning the flames of critique that are nothing but fantasy, manipulation, and wishful thinking. One old friend recently suggested that in their obsession with appearing fair and balanced, these news outlets have gone overboard in painting a bleak picture when, in reality, over 100,000 people have now been evacuated safely from this hell hole. Critique and accountability of any administration is essential, and there are places where the Biden team might have done things differently. But fabricating sensationalistic analysis and then masquerading it as the truth with cherry-picked video clips that isolate the inevitable horrors of this departure strikes me as unethical and dangerous.

I accept that broadcast news has become another commodity. I don't have to like it to acknowledge that selling advertising is the name of the game. Twenty years ago, while serving a parish not far from David-Monthan Airforce Base in Tucson, AZ, I had the privilege of being the pastor of young men deployed to Afghanistan (as well as Iraq.) We corresponded from time to time, periodically used the internet to check-in, and then spent a LOT of time after they returned to the US from their various tours of duty. These dedicated young people were circumspect about the war - and their role in it. They were loyal to the US and honest to their conscience. And they carefully called into question what the hell was really going on without ever once betraying their commitments to serve and defend. I learned a lot from them. I know that while they are heart-broken over the current melee, they are equally sickened by the way the media is describing the evacuation as a dark comedy of errors. Even with the new attack from ISIS, our troops and leaders are proceeding with clarity in the chaos and integrity under unimaginable stress. 

My prayer is that we are extravagant in welcoming to the US (and other locales) Afghani refugees. We owe them a debt of gratitude.