Afghanistan's agony and America's responsibility

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Afghanistan's agony and America's responsibility

January 26, 2022

Stephen Collinson and Shelby Rose

'Economic mayhem and human misery'

There were strong arguments in favor of President Joe Biden's withdrawal from America's longest war last August. But when the United States and its allies quit Afghanistan, they seeded an economic and humanitarian disaster.

Six months later, Afghan health infrastructure is crumbling. Basic services are folding. The World Food Program warns that 98% of Afghans are not getting enough to eat. The Taliban, meanwhile, have clamped back their signature oppression of women and cracked down on the free media, and there are multiple reports of civilians being killed and human rights abuses. Cheerleaders who countered criticism over Biden's chaotic departure by insisting the Taliban 2.0 might be more benevolent might want to take stock.

One of the issues is that when the US suddenly left, it was followed by outside commerce, a flight of cash and a cutoff of humanitarian aid. Since Afghanistan has been unusually dependent on aid and the false economy of an international military and nongovernmental community for so long, the money supply dried up. A feudal security environment under the Taliban also scared off outsiders. The US, meanwhile, froze billions of dollars in assets in the Afghan central bank and in other government accounts to avoid benefiting the extremist movement.

The result is economic collapse. There's not enough food. Teachers, civil servants and doctors aren't getting paid. Society simply isn't functioning. David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, wrote in a recent CNN op-ed that the polices of the US and other Western powers had delivered "isolation, economic mayhem and human misery."

Aid groups, some US lawmakers and campaigners are pressing the Biden administration and allied leaders to restore funding for basic services in Afghanistan even as they seek to maintain leverage over the Taliban.

The White House announced this month it was giving more than $300 million in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. And Western diplomats spent the last three days meeting representatives of the Taliban, which they don't recognize as a legitimate government, in talks facilitated by Norway on alleviating the humanitarian crisis.

Hanging over the discussions was this question: What do the US and the West owe a nation in which they waged a two-decade war to ensure their own security and a people who have suffered for far too long?

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'It's nothing personal, pal'

About an hour after President Joe Biden called a Fox reporter a "son of a b*tch" on an open mic on Monday, he got on the blower and apologized.

"He called my cell phone and he said, 'It's nothing personal, pal,'" the reporter, Peter Doocy, said.

"He cleared the air, and I appreciated it. We had a nice call," he added.

The President had erupted after Doocy asked him whether rising inflation rates could be a liability for Democrats in November's midterm elections. Doocy said he told Biden he plans to continue asking him unexpected questions, and that the President responded positively to the comment.

How to 'comport' on the court

The days when Supreme Court justices were neither seen nor heard are long gone.

Politicized cases, bitterly ideological confirmation battles for nominees and the increasing visibility of its members on the lecture circuit and TV means the court no longer orbits Washington on its own isolated legal planet.

Still, despite growing controversy over the court, one of its three liberal members, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, is insisting that justices do think carefully about how to "comport" themselves as the public's opinion of them worsens, CNN's Devan Cole reports for Meanwhile.

Sotomayor spoke to NBC News on Tuesday, a week after a kerfuffle over whether she was hearing cases from her chambers because she's diabetic and her seat mate, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, refused to wear a mask.

But attempts by the court to preserve its drama-free, apolitical image might be too little, too late.

Some observers trace the modern politicization of the court to its awarding of the 2000 election to George W. Bush over then-Vice President Al Gore. Others note the decades-long effort by right-wing legal scholars to build the court's new conservative majority. Partisan bile spilled over when Senate Republicans wouldn't even consider then-President Barack Obama's nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. And hearings over President Donald Trump's three picks triggered full-scale partisan warfare.

Though Supreme Court hearings are still not televised, some justices have become icons. The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020, was a liberal heroine, but even she broke the court's lofty behavioral codes. Before Trump was elected she called him a "faker," a statement she came to regret. Her fellow opera buff Scalia remains a paragon for arch conservatives. But their odd couple friendship did prove that even sharp disagreements need not impair collegiality on the court.

Sotomayor hasn't exactly been holding back. When the conservative majority allowed a controversial Texas abortion law to remain in place, she warned in a fiery dissent of a "catastrophic" impact. In 2020 she blamed colleagues for a "breakdown in the appellate process" after they repeatedly granted the Trump administration emergency relief.

Comportment is one thing. But America's divided reality means it is inevitable the justices will get dragged deeper into the partisan crossfire. That's likely to further worsen public trust and confidence in this once above-the-fray branch of government.

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Thanks for reading.

Pope Francis declared Wednesday a universal day of prayer for peace in Ukraine. India celebrates its Republic Day with pageantry and a military parade. US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is scheduled to hold a news conference.