As I write this column, the Taliban are on a roll. They’ve taken 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals in a single week, including the country’s second and third largest cities (Kandahar and Herat), and Ghazni, which sits astride the main highway connecting Kandahar to the national capital of Kabul.

The US occupation’s puppet president, Ashraf Ghani, blames his government’s debacle in progress on the “abrupt” withdrawal of US forces. Apparently 20 years of the US doing his heavy lifting — contributing not just troops but money, training, and support for his own army — followed by 15 months’ notice of withdrawal, then a three-month extension of the withdrawal deadline, just didn’t give him time to prepare.

American hawks aren’t complaining about the “abruptness” of the withdrawal timeline. They’re  appalled that the US would ever, under any circumstances, consider withdrawing at all. The fiction they’d have us subscribe to is that until and unless Afghanistan becomes a western-style “liberal democracy,” withdrawing means that the 2,500 Americans killed there will have “died for nothing.”

Not true. Those men and women did die for something — something the hawks would rather not talk about. They died to keep the hawks’ campaign coffers (and, via insider stock trading and revolving-door job opportunities, personal bank accounts) full of money from US “defense” contractors.

They did, however, “die for nothing” if the goal was to turn Kandahar into Kokomo. That was never going to happen. And the current situation explains why.

The Taliban’s march down the road toward Kabul didn’t come out of nowhere. The Taliban didn’t wake up one morning, realize US forces were withdrawing, and start planning to take over. They’ve been fighting  to re-establish their rule of Afghanistan for two decades now, and for most of that time they’ve been winning.

Even at the heights of the US occupation and its “surges,” Taliban forces have controlled significant portions of the country and enjoyed the support of significant portions of the population.

The Taliban’s impending victory isn’t a function of “abrupt” US withdrawal. The US was always going to leave sooner or later, and the Taliban were always going to be in good position for a final offensive when it did.

The only question is, and always has been, just how much more blood and treasure the US is willing to waste before acknowledging that fact of reality. And the answer to that question should have always been “no more.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

As the US Centers for Disease Control moves to extend a federal eviction moratorium that (including its original CARES Act version) has now been in place for most of 18 months and that President Joe Biden himself concedes is “not likely to pass constitutional muster,” most of the public rhetoric and advocacy boils down to “what about the tenants?”

That’s understandable. Nobody — at least nobody who’s ever faced the prospect of homelessness and has any heart at all — wants to see tenants kicked to the curb with nowhere to go, especially tenants who, through no fault of their own, have been pushed into a financial corner by nearly a year-and-a-half of lockdowns, business closures, and other fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Much less often asked, though, is the question “what about the landlords?” When that question does come up (and it’s coming up in the courts again as the National Apartment Association and other landlord groups sue for compensation pursuant to the Fifth Amendment’s “takings” clause) one can almost literally hear the world’s smallest violin tuning up in the background.

I’m aware of, and reasonably well versed in, the centuries-long arguments over the ethics of rent and of property in land. I don’t aim to settle those arguments here.

Given the long history of land ownership and home/apartment rental in the United States, though, it seems to me that the plaintiffs have a good case, and that the American “landlord class” deserves a far more sympathetic ear than it’s had lately.

I’ve been a renter for most of my adult life, including times when I could have swung a down payment and qualified for a mortgage to own instead of rent. Renting made more sense for various reasons, including my somewhat itinerant lifestyle — following jobs, following love, etc.

Most of my landlords haven’t been giant corporations with deep pockets. They’ve been regular people who worked hard, put their money into real estate down payments, and tried to keep that real estate occupied by paying tenants until the property was paid off and might perhaps turn a profit or be sold. And even the giant corporations with deep pockets are providing a service to willing customers. They’re not charities and shouldn’t be expected to act like charities.

During the eviction moratoria, landlords haven’t shed themselves of responsibility for keeping the water running, keeping the heat and air conditioning in working order, and making mortgage payments. They’re still paying, or trying to pay, those costs. But they’re not getting the rent that tenants freely agreed to pay before moving in.

If you’re looking for a solution that pleases and protects everyone, I’m sorry to say you’re reading the wrong column. I have no such solution to offer.

However, given that the government’s solution to every COVID-19 problem so far has been to kick the printing presses into high gear and mail out checks,  it seems to me that America’s landlords have a better case than most in suing for checks of their own.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

“I Stand By My Tweet,” Erick Erickson thunders, trying to seize some moral high ground from the bully pulpit of his SubStack presence, “Confessions of a Political Junkie.” “While leftwing progressives accuse Trump, Trump supporters, Tucker Carlson, and anyone they dislike of authoritarianism, fascism, totalitarianism, and a host of other -isms, it is quintessential totalitarianism to silence and disappear the views of those unacceptable to the rulers.”

The anti-Trump-before-he-was-pro-Trump “evangelical conservative” blogger and talking head finds himself suspended from Twitter for violating the platform’s “rules against hateful conduct.” Namely, insisting that transgender athlete Laurel Hubbard “is a man even if Twitter doesn’t like it.”

Unfortunately, for Erickson, the moral high ground he’s trying to hold is too small to stand on, let alone build a sturdy fighting position on. If it exists at all, it’s the size of a postage stamp.

The problem isn’t that his imperious ruling on the matter of Laurel Hubbard’s gender — and, in the Substack post, Caitlyn Jenner’s and Elliot Page’s — is kind of dumb, especially when he resorts to appointing himself God’s spokesperson on the matter. He’s not really in charge of anything or empowered to impose his will on anyone, and he’s entitled to his opinion.

The problem is that he thinks he’s entitled to someone else’s microphone to announce his rulings on such issues (he isn’t), and that denying him that microphone somehow “silences” and “disappears” him (it doesn’t).

In this day and age, in America, there’s simply no way to “silence” or “disappear” speech. If Twitter doesn’t want to host Erickson’s opinions, he’s still got a raft of social media platforms available to him, not to mention his blog, his radio and podcast presences, and “conservative” media aching to breathlessly cover situations like his.

The postage stamp of moral high ground Erickson enjoys is this:

Twitter, and most other social media platforms, are built in such a way that “rules against hateful conduct” are not only unnecessary but constitute exceedingly poor user service.

Anyone who doesn’t want to hear what Erick Erickson has to say on social media has easy access to some form of “block” or “ignore” button.

Social media platforms which emphasized offering users a broad array of engagement choices instead of wrestling their (or the political class’s) opinion straitjackets onto everyone would respond to content complaints with tutorials on how to use those buttons instead of with suspensions and bans.

Ignorance, not regulation, makes a ceasefire in the social media wars possible. Don’t want to read it? Ignore it!

We’ll always have would-be dictators demanding that this or that bad actor be banned. The platforms which ignore such demands will send the more compliant ones the way of MySpace.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY