World

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the world situation is grim for America. And it could actually get far worse. Why, then, are many of our national leaders acting as if things are going well? We need not doubling down but fundamental change. That starts with understanding that we are in serious trouble. The war in Ukraine, which is manifestly the Biden administration’s priority, is sadly likely to be protracted. While the Ukrainian counteroffensive is still ongoing, the best analysis indicates that the war has become a struggle of attrition. Russia is substantially mobilizing its economy and society for a long-haul war effort — and its armed forces appear to have at least partially adapted from their earlier failures.

In May 2021, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the remains of 215 children had been found buried at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. The Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation band had confirmed the story, they claimed, quoting Chief Rosanne Casimir. “To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” she said. “Some were as young as three years old. We sought out a way to confirm that knowing out of deepest respect and love for those lost children and their families, understanding that Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc is the final resting place of these children.”  The outcry was enormous.

On a recent trip to Taiwan as a guest of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I knew that war with an increasingly belligerent China is a daily possibility. Chinese ships are in constant circulation in the Taiwan Strait. Chinese aircraft unceasingly fly near the island, getting close to Taiwanese air space. Beijing’s increasingly threatening language about forced “unification” seems to bring a catastrophic attack closer. Genuine fear fluttered in the wake of Nancy Pelosi’s visit in August last year when China launched three days of drills that paid no regard to what they called the “imaginary” median line, which divides Chinese from Taiwanese territory.

The administration’s utter failure to plan for the inevitable Afghanistan evacuation meant that it had barely enough resources to focus on getting (some) US citizens out of the country. If the government was the only actor calling the shots — normally standard procedure in war zones, to say the least — then the tens of thousands of Afghan allies who had risked their lives based on years-long US promises of loyalty would be on their own.  Colonel Seth Krummrich, a twenty-two-year Green Beret who served as the chief of staff for Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT) during the withdrawal, told us that US special forces had had just enough capacity to rescue Americans stranded across the country, but evacuating SIV applicants was simply beyond their bandwidth.

The Biden administration’s Covid obsession interfered with the execution of the Afghanistan evacuation, just as it had with Special Immigrant Visa applicants’ evacuation planning. The administration’s Covid vaccination requirements deprived critical units of key personnel. The problem was especially acute for the Marines in 2/1. From April to October 2021, the battalion rotated in as the combat arms unit of the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force — Crisis Response — Central Command (SPMAGTF-CR-CC). In classic military fashion, the task force has an eleven-word name but a straightforward mission: part of the battalion safeguards embassies in the region, and the other part serves as the region-wide “Oh, shit!” response team.

Escondido, California “I will fight till my last breath to get the truth,” said Coral Briseño, the mother of Humberto Sanchez, who was killed in Afghanistan during the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal. Her son told her that if he didn’t come back, he wanted her to tell his story.  Briseño and her fellow Gold Star family members had their first opportunity to address the nation in a hearing that was aired live on Fox News — but completely absent from CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS.  The field hearing marked the first time the group of parents addressed the public as one. The chaotic exit from Kabul, marred by suicide bombings and people falling off of planes, was praised by everyone from the president to his top military brass as historically successful.

It’s August 6, which means that it is the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.   Every year at this time there are a spate of articles about that horrific event. Some of the articles are condemnatory; some hand-wringing; some are defiantly supportive.  This year, the recent release of Christopher Nolan’s new movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the making of the atomic bomb has given the controversy over the development and deployment of that awesome weapon a new urgency.   Something else that has contributed to the fraught atmosphere is the war in Ukraine. After all, one side in that conflict, Russia, controls the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, more than 6,000 warheads. My friend Roger L.

A US soldier, Private Second Class Travis King, entered North Korea through the Joint Security Area (JSA) today for currently unknown reasons. “It's clear that he willfully, of his own volition, crossed the border,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a briefing Tuesday afternoon. According to the Wall Street Journal, King apparently had “served time in detention” in the South and was heading back to the US when he decided to participate in a tour of the JSA. Another individual on the tour says that King laughed as he crossed into the North. The reasons for King’s actions are still not clear. US soldiers have deserted and defected to North Korea before, often to get out of service, but it is an exceedingly rare occurrence.

Former president Donald Trump is in a world of legal trouble. Not only is he the first president in history to be impeached twice, he holds the unenviable distinction of being the first president to be indicted. He doesn’t do things by half-measures — he’s been indicted twice. So far he faces a total of seventy-one criminal charges of various severity in two separate investigations, from falsifying business records and retention of national defense information to obstruction of justice. And as this magazine goes to press, we still haven’t heard from Fani Willis in Georgia, or from the second Jack Smith investigation. Yet despite his legal woes, Trump remains a top contender for the highest office in the land.