Roundup

Biden Must Tell the Truth about Afghanistan to Save his Presidency

by Michael Kazin

The impact of the unpopular Vietnam War on LBJ's political capital holds two lessons: tell the truth, even if it makes you look bad, and keep your coalition united. 

It's a White Christmas in Afghanistan

by Claire Potter

"The crush of refugees waiting to be rescued is tragic and predictable--because this is what surrender looks like."

The All-American Base World

by Patterson Deppen

Despite the withdrawal from Afghanistan, there are still 750 US military bases around the world, showing that America's "forever wars" may only be briefly paused. 

Off Main Street: Black Space, Agency, And Community Building In The Jim Crow South

by Kirin Makker

Nostalgic references to "Main Street" are common today, but conceal the racially exclusionary nature of both business ownership and consumption in American history. 

Prison Tech Comes Home: Tenants and Residents in the Surveillance State

by Erin McElroy, Meredith Whittaker and Nicole E. Weber

Landlords have combined technologies developed for screening tenants in the 1970s with more recent digital surveillance and facial recognition systems developed in prisons to dramatically increase control over their tenants during an affordable housing crisis. 

How Empires Fall

by Matt Wehmeier

"Decisive political moments are rarely expected, and even more rarely planned. Governments change all the time. But every once in a while, empires fall."

Debt and Disillusionment

by Rebecca Gordon

"We know, in other words, that there are only a relatively small number of spaces in the cockpit of today’s economic plane. Nonetheless, we tell our young people that the guaranteed way to get one of those rare gigs at the top of the pyramid is a college education."

GOP Revives Old Tactic: Blame Outsiders for Disease

by Jonathan Zimmerman

"The coronavirus is spreading most rapidly in places with low vaccination rates, not high immigration."

How Native Students Fought Back against Abuse and Assimilation at US Boarding Schools

by Sarah Klotz

Young Native students like Ernest Knocks Off were not passive victims of forced assimiliation in Indian residential schools; they fought – in his case, to his death – to retain the language and culture the schools sought to expunge.

One Big Thing Biden Got Right about Afghanistan

by Fred Kaplan

"Quite apart from the way Biden pulled out of Afghanistan (and I’ve been among those who are critical of his way), he was right, and has long been right, that the widening mission of the 20-year war was doomed to failure and that no amount of time or money would ever have changed that."

Scrapping the Color Code: A Post-Racial America is Inevitable

by Jim Sleeper

The 2020 Census is showing that whiteness is no longer the civic and cultural norm, but also that bureacratic color-coding can't support a version of civic Americanism that can stand up to a growing white backlash. 

Race, Redistricting, and the 2020 Census: Will the Majority Tolerate Minority Rule Much Longer?

by Heather Cox Richardson

"For a century now, the machinery of redistricting has favored rural whites. With the 2020 census information reinforcing the idea that white, rural Americans are under siege, it seems unlikely that lawmakers in Republican states will want to rebalance the system."

Biden Was Wrong: Afghan Government Fall Wasn't Inevitable

by Max Boot

"It will be up to future historians to figure out why this happened — but, like most historical events, it was hardly predetermined."

CRT Debate "Abstract and Uninformed," Says AHA President

by Jacqueline Jones

"CRT does not explain all of American history; rather, it provides insights into why achieving the ideals enshrined in the Founders’ declaration that “all men are created equal” has been so elusive over the centuries."

The Media Needs to Acknowledge the African American History in Barbecue

by Adrian Miller

As industry has reduced the labor intensity of barbecue and the media has made culinary celebrities, contemporary white chefs have supplanted the African American pitmasters who were once considered indispensable to the art.

Afghanistan Is Your Fault

by Tom Nichols

Can the shotgun approach to strategy in Afghanistan by military leadership, or military leadership's polishing of the facts, be blamed on the general American public's selfishness and incuriosity?

The Odd Place of one Savannah Neighborhood in the History of Redlining

by Todd Michney

The history of the Cuyler-Brownville area shows that HOLC risk assessments and Federal lending practices were responsive to local banks' perception of lending risk and desire for profit, factors which resulted in the rarity of an African American community retaining a "green" rating. 

The US Repeated Mistakes of the Past in Afghanistan

by Ali A. Olomi

"By flooding Afghanistan with payoffs, bribes and aid, the British created a system of endemic corruption in which local chieftains and favorable bureaucrats would enrich themselves while the rest of the country remained relatively poor."

Will the US's Answer to Failure in Afghanistan be More War?

by Stephen Wertheim

"The war was given so long to work that advocates of a new surge hope Americans have forgotten the last one."

Biden’s Chamberlain Moment in Afghanistan

by Walter Russell Mead

Arguments about the relationship of Afghanistan to American national interst miss the point that that interest is damaged by Joe Biden's visibly poor decision-making.