There is so much I find baffling in Max Boot’s most recent Washington Post column I hardly know where to start. He’s very upset about the present state of affairs in Afghanistan. After describing the situation:

The situation in Afghanistan is going from bad to worse. The Taliban has captured nine provincial capitals, including seven in northern Afghanistan — making it more unlikely that its adversaries can regroup in that region, as they did in the 1990s. The Long War Journal reports that the Taliban already controls 57 percent of the country’s districts, compared with only 16 percent for the government. (The rest are contested.) The Taliban is now besieging major cities, including Mazar-e Sharif, Herat and Kandahar, and U.S. military officials are now reportedly warning that Kabul could fall in 30 to 90 days.

followed by quoting Biden Administration spokespersons:

Here is White House press secretary Jen Psaki: “If the Taliban claim to want international legitimacy, these actions are not going to get them the legitimacy they seek.… They could choose to devote the same energy to their peace process as they are to their military campaign. We strongly urge them to do so.”

Here is Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “We’re actively engaged in diplomacy because there is no military solution to this conflict.”

And here is Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy to the Afghan peace talks, who is trying in vain to persuade the Taliban to stop its offensive: “We don’t see a military solution to the war in Afghanistan. There must be a political solution, a political agreement for a lasting peace, and we will stay with it.”

he makes his assessment:

I’m sorry, but this is simply delusional. The administration has convinced itself that the Taliban desires international “legitimacy” so badly that it will refrain from achieving its aims by force of arms. There is no evidence for this view.

I’m not as convinced as he. I think the Biden Administration is trying to get out of a no-win situation in Afghanistan by removing our troops from the country. They’re making diplo-speak happy noises to cover up the bitter reality.

What baffles me? What’s the unit of measure of “delusion”? When has Mr. Boot ever advocated a position on Afghanistan that was not delusional? How can you compare Mr. Boot’s delusions with the Biden Administration’s? After removing the Taliban and occupying the country there have only been two alternative strategies for the country that border on not being delusional. Maybe call them “delusion adjacent”. Either we could leave troops there and occupy the country permanently or we could do what we are doing now. Every other position has been delusional.

Furthermore no president in the years that have intervened since we invaded and occupied Afghanistan has ever advocated a permanent occupation. It’s been one delusion after another. I opposed the invasion of Afghanistan. Punitive raid—yes; invasion and occupation—no. I thought that President Bush was remiss in neither attempting to prepare the American people for a permanent occupation of the country (it would have been entertaining to watch him try) nor withdrawing our troops back in 2005. Everything else has just been temporizing.

Farhad Manjoo’s latest New York Times column is to my eye a great example of how two people can look at the same phenomena and draw completely different conclusions. Consider:

Hollywood is in Hollywood rather than in West Orange, N.J., for many of the same reasons that California’s Central Valley produces about a quarter of the nation’s food, and why the Beach Boys wished for all of America to be like “Californi-a.” It’s why John Muir, looking from the summit of the Pacheco Pass, described a landscape that appeared “wholly composed” of light, “the most beautiful I have ever beheld.”

And it is the same reason that a lot of Californians first came here, and the reason so many of us, despite everything, still can’t help but stay: sunshine and natural splendor. We are hooked not just on California’s weather, pleasantly temperate and accommodating to seemingly any pursuit, but also the way life here feels defined just as much by what’s outdoors as what’s in.

A state that lives by nature, though, risks dying by it, too. In the last few years, as California battled heat waves and drought and fire, intensifying as the planet warms, I have found myself wondering about my home state’s future and, in a deeper sense, its purpose.

Is California still California when our weather becomes an adversary rather than an ally? What is California for when summertime, the season in which the Golden State once found its fullest luster, turns from heaven into hell?

He attributes the change to global climate change; I attribute it to too many people trying to live in a fragile environment suited for only a few. As evidence Mr. Manjoo produces the bleak present weather patterns:

Seven of the 10 largest wildfires in California history have occurred in the last three years. This fire season has already put an entry in the books. The Dixie Fire, which has been raging for nearly a month near Lassen National Forest, is already the second largest fire in the state’s history; it has consumed nearly half a million acres and destroyed hundreds of structures, and it’s only 25 percent contained.

Smoke from the Dixie Fire and other blazes this summer has blown more than a thousand miles away, choking the air in Denver and Salt Lake City. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live, the air has so far remained short of noxious, but nobody I know is expecting it to remain that way. As they did last year, face masks will soon likely serve a dual purpose for Californians — wear one indoors to evade the virus, and wear one outdoors to filter out smoke and raining ash.

which certainly appears to have become a regular, recurrent pattern. I take a more longitudinal view. There are records of weather in the Los Angeles Basin going back for millennia, everything from tree rings to actual written records starting in about 1770 when the Spanish began to develop the region. When the Spanish came they planted orange, lemon, and olive trees and the weather became cooler and wetter; during the great post-war influx of people into the region they cut the orange, lemon, and olive groves down and replaced them with cement and houses—the temperature rose and it became drier.

Furthermore I think that California’s fires are pretty obviously a consequence of expanding residential areas into where more scrub and trees are conjoined with bad land management.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t dispute that global climate change could play a role. I do wonder how you’d go about disaggregating local conditions from global ones. It reminds me a bit of blaming problems on “systemic racism”. It tends to remove any possibility of the problem’s being because of your own behavior.

In his latest Wall Street Journal column Walter Russell Mead assesses the prospects for a new agreement with Iran:

Given that the nuclear deal or anything like it has zero chance of attracting the two-thirds majority of senators necessary for treaty ratification, the most Tehran can get out of the negotiating process is a Biden pinky-swear. For hard-nosed Iranian mullahs and Revolutionary Guards raised on tales of U.S. perfidy, the idea of trusting the Great Satan’s word—after he’s already fooled you once—is laughable. They see no real reason to pay any kind of price for such a weak agreement.

On the American side, too, the deal is looking less attractive within and without the administration. In retaliation for Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and the additional sanctions he imposed, Iran accelerated its uranium enrichment and other bomb-related activities to the point where the 2015 nuclear deal begins to look meaningless. Sunset provisions built into the original agreement have already begun to kick in, and key restraints on both bomb-making and missile-development programs begin to disappear this presidential term.

This all puts the administration in a tricky spot. The JCPOA remains a sacred cause for many Democrats, and some believe that without re-entering the Iran deal the U.S. will be forced into an impossible choice between accepting an Iranian bomb or launching yet another Middle East war. But as Tehran delays negotiations while launching one provocation after another across the region, it’s making Mr. Biden’s path back to the JCPOA as awkward and humiliating as it possibly can.

I was skeptical of the JCPOA on the grounds that for it to accomplish anything we had to be able to trust the Iranians which I think a dubious prospect. However, I also think that President Trump erred in scrapping the JCPOA on sunk costs grounds. We had already borne the JCPOA’s costs. If it were to provide any benefit, that resided in continuing with the agreement.

Now how are we in even as good a position as we were a decade ago to negotiate a treaty with Iran. Either Iran will develop a nuclear weapon or they won’t. There isn’t much we can do about it either way. I disagree with Dr. Mead’s observation that they see in recent U. S. actions evidence that they can defy the U. S. with impunity or, rather, I think they will defy the U. S. regardless of what we do.

While I was researching the changes over the years in the wholesale price of denim fabric (yes, it is relevant to something), I stumbled across this post by apparel consultant, Stefano Aldighieri. Here’s the part that caught my eye:

• The quality of apparel has consistently dropped.
• Disposable fashion is not a savings. Customers spend more buying several cheap items than if they bought better quality, longer-lasting garment.
• Over-production generates a strain on resources and an increase in waste; about 80 percent of the apparel made ends up in landfills, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
• The race to the bottom is not helping anyone. No investment in product development is possible. When the only thing that matters is price, people stop investing and trying to make better things.
• Whenever we buy something that has a price too good to be true, we know that someone along the supply chain was not paid a living wage. Nobody really wonders how some companies can possibly sell so cheap, and nobody really cares enough to ask the right questions.

The only strategy I can think of that would really change that state of affairs would be a radical change in values. I don’t see that as forthcoming even from those who express so much concern about the environment. It’s not a question of priorities but one of subpriorities.

In an op-ed in the New York Times Greg Weiner laments the sorry state of American government:

We have become a de facto parliamentary system in which competing parties battle for executive power. The problem is that we have acquired all the vices of such a system but none of its virtues.

A parliamentary system typically has the effects of discouraging demagogues and ensuring competence, by seasoning leaders on the journey from the backbenches to the ones at the front. By contrast, three presidents who served before Joe Biden — George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Mr. Trump — arrived in the White House as either newcomers or latecomers to national office. Parliamentary systems also feature vigorous debates with real consequences. Governments rise and fall on the basis of their legislative agendas. Debates in Congress are largely stagecraft, with actual governing being relegated to a vast executive branch empowered to turn vague laws into detailed policy.

He proposes no solutions.

One aspect of the failure of our government that is conspicuous by its absence in Dr. Weiner’s account is the judicial branch. For decades both the legislative and executive branch have been eager to let the Supreme Court do the heavy lifting. I don’t think that can be attributed, as Dr. Weiner does, to the arising of an ersatz parliamentary system. I think there are multiple causes.

The first is that the Congress is far too small for a country the size of the U. S. Some hold to the “cube root rule”. Using that as your gauge the U. S. Congress is the least representative legislative body of any OECD country. To fit the rule the Congress must be half again as large as it is now. I’m skeptical and think the so-called rule is a post hoc observation. By that standard France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are all over-represented.

The second is that federal elective office has become far too cushy a gig. Why give up a lifetime sinecure? The way to maneuver without leaving any fingerprints which might cause you to lose that sinecure is by having some other branch of government do the heavy lifting for you.

The third is the most serious and that is that I think the American consensus has broken down. I see no consensus on practically any subject, including the benignity of the United States. It has been known since the time of Plato that consensus is a requirement for republican government. Throughout history all multi-ethnic, multi-confessional empires have been autocracies.

The reforms that would be required to remedy any of those are so numerous and so extensive it’s hard for me to imagine any peaceful resolution. That suggests we will either continue our drift towards tyranny or break up into none-too-friendly regions.

An Indiana man has been arrested making a “straw purchase” of the gun used to kill the Chicago police office to evade federal law. The Trib reports:

The gun used to kill Chicago police Officer Ella French during a traffic stop Saturday was bought in a sham purchase by an Indiana man on behalf of another man, who was in the car French and her partner pulled over before they were shot, federal prosecutors allege.

Jamel Danzy now faces charges of conspiring to violate federal firearms laws. A bond hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

French was killed and her partner was critically wounded over the weekend after the traffic stop in West Englewood. Chicago police have two men in custody connected to the shooting, one of whom was arrested in possession of a Glock semi-automatic pistol, authorities said. Charges against those two suspects have not yet been announced.

But shortly after the shooting, investigators traced both the gun and the car to Danzy, a restaurant worker in northwest Indiana, according to the complaint.

ATF agents on Sunday tracked down Danzy at the restaurant where he works, and he agreed to be interviewed on tape in an agent’s car in the parking lot.

Agents showed him the paperwork from the dealer, and at first, he claimed to have bought the gun for himself, the complaint states. But “after further questioning,” he admitted he instead had bought it for someone in Chicago, Individual A, who had a felony record and could not buy a gun for himself.

What law could have prevented this? It was already against the law. The problem is not that we need more laws or even that we need better enforcement, a common complaint of mine. It is that people are breaking the law.

I think this may be the first time I have ever linked to a post in The Federalist. Josiah Lipincott delivers a scathing indictment of the general staff:

Instead of profiles in courage, America’s military leaders deserve profiles in grifting. Current Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made $7 million once leaving the service. Gen. James Mattis is reportedly worth $5 million, including $150,000 annual payouts from Theranos for serving on their board. Theranos was a blood-testing company indicted for fraud. Not a single senator asked Mattis about the connection at his confirmation hearing as secretary of defense. Gen. David Petraeus, after leaving the CIA in disgrace after revelations of leaking classified information to his mistress and personal biographer Paula Broadwell, went on to a successful career in academia, public speaking, and private equity. His net worth is estimated at $2 million.

The generals lied, America lost, and the people got looted.

I’m more inclined to blame the Congress than the generals. The numbers he cites above are a rather horrifying illustration that even 60 years later the Military-Industrial Complex is alive and well.

I have been in favor of federal support of rural broadband. Unfortunately, the provision in the present infrastructure bill is about three years late and there’s little actual need for it. Elon Musk is already in the process of doing what the federal government declined to do.

Consequently, I have little to say about the Washington Post’s editors’ full-throated endorsement of the provision but I did want to open their closing paragraph up for discussion. Here it is:

In an ideal world, society might ensure that every household has adequate income, and let people decide for themselves how to allocate it, rather than creating separate bureaucracies to help pay for food, rent, child care and, now, Internet bills. But that’s not our current world. Congress is prepared to make a massive investment in a defining element of modern-day infrastructure. Every member should want to help make this history.

Is that a Kinsley gaffe? Far from being ideal, I think that would be dystopian. The run-on effects would overwhelm the presumably benign intentions. Maybe in an ideal world with ideal humans but I don’t think I can even imagine ideal humans. I think that being flawed is part of the package.

I see that the Biden Administration’s performance on our southern border is beginning to alarm the editors of the Washington Post:

What is mostly missing from the sweeping rhetoric and broad-strokes analysis is an actual plan for action.

Ms. Harris and administration officials have also described short-term steps designed to get a handle on deterring the current tsunami of migrants and asylum seekers at the border. But the convoluted messaging — telling migrants not to seek entry to the United States while at the same time relaxing or scrapping an array of measures that would actually dissuade them, and providing relief to migrants on both sides of the border — has been a failure.

That failure is measurable, and it is politically toxic. As of mid-July, a staggering 1.1 million unauthorized border crossers had been apprehended so far in the current fiscal year, which began last Oct. 1. Nearly 190,000 migrants, a record monthly total high, were taken into custody by border officers in June alone, when the early summer’s heat often deters many from making the trek. At the current pace, officials project that apprehensions will reach 1.5 million by the end of the fiscal year, the most in more than two decades.

They characterize the administration’s policy as incoherent. I don’t think it’s incoherent at all. I think they’re wrong. I think it’s constituent service for a very small constituency—about the same size as that for the “Latinx” neologism which offends a lot more people than it pleases.

Allow me to acquaint Vice President Harris with the work of another Harris, Sydney, who drew the cartoon at the top of this post. Waiting for divine intervention is not generally the greatest policy and there are no mulligans in politics. Unfortunately, I think the administration has little choice but to double down on its present approach of doing things that convince people in Mexico and Central America to do the opposite of what they’re telling them to do. Being charitable I do not believe that is intentional but feckless.

I have no idea of how they can mitigate the risks of the approach they’ve taken. The “it happens every year” explanation fell apart when the summer heat rose and the numbers of “encounters” did not decline. It probably doesn’t help that the presidents of Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras all attribute the increase in illegal migration to President Biden’s campaign rhetoric. Blaming him certainly takes them out of the crosshairs but it’s hard to hold him completely blameless.