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      After 20 years, Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal has finally ended the 9/11 era | Ben Rhodes

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      OpinionSeptember 11 2001After 20 years, Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal has finally ended the 9/11 eraBen RhodesThe US’s departure has prompted a national sense of shame and a recognition there will be no victory in the ‘war on terror’Ben Rhodes was a US deputy national security adviser in the Obama administration Fri 10 Sep 2021 12.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 10 Sep 2021 12.43 EDTForeign policy, for better or worse, is always an extension of a nation’s domestic politics. The arc of America’s war in Afghanistan is a testament to this reality – the story of a superpower that overreached, slowly came to terms with the limits of its capacity to shape events abroad, and withdrew in the wake of raging dysfunction at home. Viewed through this prism, President Joe Biden’s decisive yet chaotic withdrawal comes into focus.The story begins with trauma and hubris. On September 11 2001, American power was at its high-water mark. The globalisation of open markets, democratic governance, and the US-led international order had shaped the previous decade. The spectre of nuclear war had been lifted, the ideological debates of the 20th century settled. To Americans, mass violence was something that took place along the periphery of the post-cold war world. And then suddenly, the periphery struck the centres of American power, killing thousands.As a young New Yorker, I saw a plane plough into the World Trade Center and the first tower fall. I smelled the air, acrid from burnt steel and death, for days afterwards. Like most Americans, I assumed my government would retaliate against the people who did this. But President George W Bush’s administration had larger ambitions. Speaking days after 9/11 to an audience that included the US Congress and British prime minister, Tony Blair, Bush declared: “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaida, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.”Out of this trauma, the American public supported Bush’s declaration of a “war on terror” as a kind of blank slate, with details to be filled in by his administration. Most Americans were afraid, wanted to be protected, and were rooting for their government to succeed. Within weeks, Congress granted Bush open-ended powers to wage war, passed the Patriot Act, and set to work reconstructing the US national security apparatus. But rapidly toppling the Taliban and scattering al-Qaida did not meet the ambitions of Bush, who had likened this conflict to the second world war and the cold war. Instead of wiping out al-Qaida’s leadership (who escaped into Pakistan) and coming home, the Bush administration decided to build a new Afghan government and then promptly shifted its attention to Iraq – while tarring its political opponents as weak and unpatriotic. The die was cast.The objectives of those early years – to defeat every terrorist group of global reach and also build liberal democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq – appear unfathomable with the distance of 20 years, but they were broadly accepted after September 11, in a climate of American hegemony and post-9/11 fervour. By 2009, when Bush’s presidency ended amid the ruins of Iraq and the wreckage of the global financial crisis, it had become clear that those objectives were unachievable, and that American hegemony itself was receding.But the US national security establishment had been charged with achieving those objectives, and was therefore both invested in their completion and increasingly detached from shifting public opinion.The Obama presidency, which I was a part of for eight years, was a gradual reckoning with this reality. Paradoxically, the 2009-2011 troops surge in Afghanistan coupled diminished ambitions and increased resources: the US, Obama concluded, could not defeat the Taliban militarily, but needed to create time and space to defeat al-Qaida and build up an Afghan government to fight the Taliban. This conclusion reflected public opinion: in the politics of post-9/11, post-Iraq, post-financial crisis America, there was zero tolerance for terrorist attacks and zero appetite for nation building. This was the view that Biden, then vice-president, represented in the White House situation room – arguing against the surge on the grounds that we had to understand the limits of what could be achieved in Afghanistan.By May 2011, the killing of Osama bin Laden removed what many Americans regarded as the original rationale for the war in Afghanistan, just as the surge was approaching its endpoints. At the same time that our counter-terrorism mission achieved its greatest success, the expansive new counter-insurgency campaign was proving far more difficult than promised, suggesting that Biden’s warnings had been prescient. In June 2011, the American drawdown began.Obama’s downsized ambitions for the “war on terror” triggered harsh reactions from both the jingoistic right and the US national security establishment. For prominent military leaders, congressional hawks, and thinktank warriors who had set out to achieve these impossible objectives, Obama was insufficiently committed to the missions. To admit otherwise, you would have to accept that the mission itself was flawed – and that was a bridge too far for national security elites shaped by post-1989 American exceptionalism. For the Republican party, which had promised great victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was impossible to acknowledge there were any limits to our power; instead, it was easier to shift focus to other perceived threats to the US and American identity, which now came not just from “radical Islam”, but from any available Other – be it a black president or immigrants at the southern border.As president, Donald Trump waged war against a shifting cast of enemies at home with far more gusto than he approached Afghanistan. For a time, he maintained an awkward detente with hawkish elements of the US establishment, signing off on a small surge in Afghanistan. His disregard for the Afghan people was initially manifest through increased civilian casualties. After he removed national security advisers like HR McMaster and John Bolton, it morphed into a deal with the Taliban that cut out the Afghan government and set a timeline to withdraw American troops. To the right, national security was tied up with white identity politics at home. To the left, terrorism was more evident in the Capitol insurrection than in distant lands. Trump’s withdrawal barely registered in US politics.The lesson we failed to learn from 9/11: peace is impossible if we don’t talk to our enemies | Jonathan PowellRead moreIn this context, there was no way Biden was going to cancel Trump’s deal and extend America’s presence in Afghanistan. Having long doubted the capacity of the US military to reshape other countries, he was not going to continue a policy premised on that assumption. Given the existential threat to American democracy that clouded his transition into power, Biden presumably felt that the purpose of his presidency was to pursue policies responsive to restive public opinion – from a sweeping domestic agenda to a foreign policy for the middle class.Biden’s decision, and the haste with which he carried it out, provoked a firestorm among much of the US national security establishment for several reasons. First, because Biden’s logic carried a rebuke of the more expansive aims of the post-9/11 project that had shaped the service, careers, and commentary of so many people. Second, because unlike Trump, Biden is a part of that establishment – the former chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, a Washington fixture for decades. Biden’s top aides also come from that establishment. These are not illiberal isolationists. Instead, Biden and his team saw the war in Afghanistan as an impediment to dealing with other external threats: from a Russia waging an asymmetric war on western democracy, to a Chinese Communist party aiming to supplant it.Most importantly, the abandonment of Afghans to the Taliban, and Biden’s occasionally callous rhetoric laying the blame on Afghan security forces, who had fought on the frontlines for years, evoked a sense of national shame – even if that emotion should apply to the entirety of the war, and not simply its end. Indeed, in the chaotic days of withdrawal, the predominant concerns in US politics often had little to do with Afghans. The evacuation of Americans, the danger of Islamic State Khorasan Province, and the loss of US service members eclipsed the gargantuan Afghan suffering. Overwhelming public support for Biden’s decision, though undercut by dissatisfaction with the process of withdrawal, confirmed Biden’s core instinct: the thing most Americans agree upon is that we went to Afghanistan to take out the people who did 9/11 and prevent further attacks, and it was past time to abandon the broader aims of post-9/11 foreign policy, no matter the subsequent humanitarian cost.In short, Biden’s decision exposed the cavernous gap between the national security establishment and the public, and forced a recognition that there is going to be no victory in a “war on terror” too infused with the trauma and triumphalism of the immediate post-9/11 moment. Like many Americans, I found myself simultaneously supporting the core decision to withdraw and shuddering at its execution and consequences. As someone who worked in national security, I have to recognise the limits of how the US can shape other countries through military intervention. As someone who has participated in American politics, I have to acknowledge that a country confronting virulent ethno-nationalism at home is ill-suited to build nations abroad. But as a human being, I have to confront how we let the Afghan people down, and how allies like Britain, who stood by us after 9/11, must feel in seeing how it all ended.It is a cruel irony that this is the second time the US has lost interest in Afghanistan. The first time was in the 1990s, after much of the mujahideenwe supported to defeat the Soviets evolved into dangerous extremists, plunged the country into civil war, and led to Taliban rule.The final verdict on Biden’s decision will depend on whether the US can truly end the era that began with 9/11 – including the mindset that measures our credibility through the use of military force and pursues security through partnerships with autocrats. Can we learn from our history and forge a new approach to the rest of the world – one that is sustainable, consistent, and responsive to the people we set out to help; that prioritises existential issues like the fight against the climate crisis and genuine advocacy for the universal values America claims to support?A good place to start would be fighting at home to strengthen our multiracial and multi-ethnic democracy, which must be the foundation of America’s global influence. That effort must include welcoming as many Afghan refugees as we can. What the US needs at the end of the 9/11 era – more than any particular policy, or assertion that “America is back” – is to pursue the kind of politics that makes us a country that cares more about the lives of other human beings like the Afghans we left behind, and expresses that concern in ways other than waging war.
      Ben Rhodes is author of After the Fall: Being American in the World We Made. He served as a deputy national security adviser for Barack Obama from 2009-2017
      TopicsSeptember 11 2001OpinionUS foreign policyUS politicsAfghanistanAl-QaidacommentReuse this content More

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      in World Politics

      Did 9/11 Change Everything?

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      Twenty years ago, the United States sustained the first substantial attacks on the mainland since the War of 1812. It was a collective shock to all Americans who believed their country to be impregnable. The Cold War had produced the existential dread of a nuclear attack, but that always lurked in the realm of the maybe. On a day-to-day basis, Americans enjoyed the exceptional privilege of national security. No one would dare attack us for fear of massive retaliation. Little did we imagine that someone would attack us in order to precipitate massive retaliation.

      Osama bin Laden understood that American power was vulnerable when overextended. He knew that the greatest military power in the history of the world, deranged by a desire for vengeance, could be lured into taking a cakewalk into a quagmire. With the attacks on September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda turned ordinary American airplanes into weapons to attack American targets. In the larger sense, bin Laden used the entire American army to destroy the foundations of American empire.

      360° Context: How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

      READ MORE

      The commentary on this 20th anniversary of 9/11 has been predictably shallow: how the attacks changed travel, fiction, the arts in general. Consider this week’s Washington Post magazine section in which 28 contributors reflect on the ways that the attacks changed the world.

      “The attack would alter the lives of U.S. troops and their families, and millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq,” the editors write. “It would set the course of political parties and help to decide who would lead our country. In short, 9/11 changed the world in demonstrable, massive and heartbreaking ways. But the ripple effects altered our lives in subtle, often-overlooked ways as well.”

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      The subsequent entries on art, fashion, architecture, policing, journalism and so on attempt to describe these subtler effects. Yet it’s difficult to read this special issue without concluding that 9/11, in fact, didn’t change the world much at all.

      The demonization of American Muslims? That began long before the fateful day, cresting after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The paranoid retrenchment in American architecture? US embassies were rebuilt not in response to 9/11, but the embassy bombings in Beirut in 1983-84 and Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

      The impact of 9/11 on the arts can be traced through a handful of works like Spike Lee’s “25th Hour” or the TV series “24” or Don DeLillo’s “Falling Man,” but it didn’t produce a new artistic movement like Dada in the wake of World War I or cli-fi in response to the climate crisis. Even the experience of flying hasn’t changed that much beyond beefed-up security measures. At this point, the introduction of personal in-flight entertainment systems has arguably altered the flying experience more profoundly.

      And isn’t the assertion that 9/11 changed everything exceptionally America-centric? Americans were deeply affected, as were the places invaded by US troops. But how much has life in Japan or Zimbabwe or Chile truly changed as a result of 9/11? Of course, Americans have always believed that, as the song goes, “we are the world.”

      More Than a Mistake

      In a more thoughtful Post consideration of 9/11, Carlos Lozado reviews many of the books that have come out in the last 20 years on what went wrong. In his summary, US policy proceeds like a cascade of falling dominos, each one a mistake that follows from the previous and sets into motion the next.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Successive administrations underestimated al-Qaeda and failed to see signs of preparation for the 9/11 attacks. In the aftermath of the tragedy, the Bush administration mistakenly followed the example of numerous empires in thinking that it could subdue Afghanistan and remake it in the image of the colonial overlord. It then compounded that error by invading Iraq in 2003 with the justification that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with al-Qaeda, was building up a nuclear program, or was otherwise part of an alliance of nations determined to take advantage of an America still reeling from the 9/11 attacks. Subsequent administrations made the mistake of doubling down in Afghanistan, expanding the war on terror to other battlefields and failing to end US operations at propitious moments like the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011.

      Lozado concludes by pointing out that Donald Trump is in many ways a product of the war on terror that followed 9/11. “Absent the war on terror, it is harder to imagine a presidential candidate decrying a sitting commander in chief as foreign, Muslim, illegitimate—and using that lie as a successful political platform,” he writes. “Absent the war on terror, it is harder to imagine a travel ban against people from Muslim-majority countries. Absent the war on terror, it is harder to imagine American protesters labeled terrorists, or a secretary of defense describing the nation’s urban streets as a ‘battle space’ to be dominated.”

      But to understand the rise of Trump, it’s necessary to see 9/11 and its aftermath as more than just the product of a series of errors of perception and judgment. Implicit in Lozado’s review is the notion that America somehow lost its way, that an otherwise robust intelligence community screwed the pooch, that some opportunistic politicians used the attacks to short-circuit democracy, public oversight and even military logic. But this assumes that the war on terror represents a substantial rift in the American fabric. The 9/11 attacks were a surprise. The response wasn’t.

      The United States had already launched a war against Iraq in 1991. It had already mistakenly identified Iran, Hamas and jihadist forces like al-Qaeda as enemies linked by their broad religious identity. It had built a worldwide arsenal of bases and kept up extraordinarily high levels of military spending to maintain full-spectrum dominance. Few American politicians questioned the necessity of this hegemony, though liberals tended to prefer that US allies shoulder some of the burden and neoconservatives favored a more aggressive effort to roll back the influence of Russia, China and other regional hegemons.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The “war on terror” effectively began in 1979 when the United States established its “state sponsors of terrorism” list. The Reagan administration used “counterterrorism” as an organizing principle of US foreign policy throughout the 1980s. In the post-Cold War era, the Clinton administration attempted to demonstrate its hawk credentials by launching counterterrorism strikes in Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq.

      What changed after 9/11 is that neoconservatives could push their regime-change agenda more successfully because the attacks had temporarily suppressed the Vietnam syndrome, a response to the negative consequences of extended overseas military engagements. Every liberal in Congress, except for the indomitable Barbara Lee, supported the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, as if they’d been born just the day before. That just happens to be one of those side-effects of empire listed in fine print on the label: periodic and profound amnesia.

      In this sense, Trump is not a product of the war on terror. His views on US foreign policy have ranged across the spectrum from jingoistic to non-interventionist. His attitude toward protesters was positively Nixonian. And his recourse to conspiracy theories derived from his legendary disregard for truth. Regardless of 9/11, Trump’s ego would have propelled him toward the White House.

      The surge of popular support that placed him in the Oval Office, on the other hand, can only be understood in the post-9/11 context. Cyberspace was full of all sorts of nonsense prior to 9/11 (remember the Y2K predictions?). But the attacks gave birth to a new variety of “truthers” who insisted, against all contrary evidence, that nefarious forces had constructed a self-serving reality. The attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon were “inside jobs.” The Newtown shootings had been staged by “crisis actors.” Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

      The shock of the United States being so dramatically and improbably attacked by a couple dozen foreigners was so great that some Americans, uncoupled from their bedrock assumptions about their own national security, were now willing to believe anything. Ultimately, they were even willing to believe someone who lied more consistently and more frequently than any other politician in US history.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Trump effectively promised to erase 9/11 from the American consciousness and rewind the clock back to the golden moment of unipolar US power. In offering such selective memory loss, Trump was a quintessentially imperial president.

      The Real Legacy of 9/11

      Even after the British formally began to withdraw from the empire business after World War II, they couldn’t help but continue to act as if the sun didn’t set on their domains. It was the British who masterminded the coup that deposed Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953. It was the British at the head of the invasion of Egypt in 1956 to recapture control of the Suez Canal. Between 1949 and 1970, Britain launched 34 military interventions in all.

      The UK apparently never received the memo that it was no longer a dominant military power. It’s hard for empires to retire gracefully. Just ask the French.

      The final US withdrawal from Afghanistan last month was in many ways a courageous and successful action by the Biden administration, though it’s hard to come to that conclusion by reading the media accounts. President Joe Biden made the difficult political decision to stick to the terms that his predecessor negotiated with the Taliban last year. Despite being caught by surprise by the Taliban’s rapid seizure of power over the summer, the administration was able to evacuate around 120,000 people, a number that virtually no one would have expected prior to the fall of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Sure, the administration should have been better prepared. Sure, it should have committed to evacuating more Afghans who fear for their lives under the Taliban. But it made the right move to finally end the US presence in Afghanistan.

      Biden has made clear that US counterterrorism strikes in Afghanistan will continue, that the war on terror in the region is not over. Yet, US operations in the Middle East now have the feel of those British interventions in the twilight of empire. America is retreating, slowly but surely and sometimes under a protective hail of bullets. The Islamic State group and its various incarnations have become the problem of the Taliban — and the Syrian state, the Iraq state, the Libyan state (such that it is) and so on.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Meanwhile, the United States turns its attention toward China. But this is no Soviet Union. China is a powerhouse economy with a government that has skillfully used nationalism to bolster domestic support. With trade and investment, Beijing has recreated a Sinocentric tributary system in Asia. America really doesn’t have the capabilities to roll back Chinese influence in its own backyard.

      So that, in the end, is what 9/11 has changed. The impact on culture, on the daily lives of those not touched directly by the tragedies, has been minimal. The deeper changes — on perceptions of Muslims, on the war on terror — had been set in motion before the attacks happened.

      But America’s place in the world? In 2000, the United States was still riding high in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War. Today, despite the strains of MAGA that can be heard throughout America’s political culture, the United States has become one major power among many. It can’t dictate policy down the barrel of a gun. Economically it must reckon with China. In geopolitics, it has become the unreliable superpower.

      Even in our profound narcissism, Americans are slowly realizing, like the Brits so many years ago, that the imperial game is up.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden says ‘we can and we will turn the tide on Covid-19’ in White House speech – live

      by

      Key events

      Show

      5.14pm EDT
      17:14

      Key points: Biden’s pandemic plan

      5.05pm EDT
      17:05

      Biden explains Covid-19 strategy

      5.00pm EDT
      17:00

      Today so far

      4.44pm EDT
      16:44

      DeSantis suffers legal defeat over anti-riot law

      3.23pm EDT
      15:23

      Biden administration sues Texas over six-week abortion ban

      3.03pm EDT
      15:03

      Charter flight from Kabul safely lands in Qatar, White House says

      2.27pm EDT
      14:27

      Federal workers will have 75 days to get fully vaccinated under Biden’s new policy

      Live feed

      Show

      5.36pm EDT
      17:36

      “We have the tools. Now we just have to finish the job,” Biden said in his concluding remarks.
      More details of his pandemic plan will be revealed in the coming weeks, he said. He ended his speech with a whisper: “Get vaccinated”.
      He did not take questions from the press.

      5.27pm EDT
      17:27

      The president said he will also enact measures to disincentivize those seeking to undermine vaccine and masking mandates.
      Implicitly referring to leaders like Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who threatened to withhold salaries from school board members and superintendents in districts with mask mandates, Biden said: “Talk about bullying in schools.”
      “Right now, local school officials are trying to keep children safe in a pandemic while their governor picks a fight with them and even threatens their salaries or their jobs,” he said.
      If teachers’ pay is withheld by states, the federal government will step in to pay it, he said. “I promise you, I will have your back.”
      The president also said that the TSA will double fines for passengers who refuse to wear masks. “And by the way, show some respect,” he said.

      5.18pm EDT
      17:18

      “My message to unvaccinated Americans is this: what more is there to wait for? What more do you need to see?” Biden said. “We’ve made vaccinations free, safe and convenient.”
      “We’ve been patient but our patience is wearing thin and your refusal has cost all of us,” he said.
      Here’s an overview of vaccination stats across the US:

      5.14pm EDT
      17:14

      Key points: Biden’s pandemic plan

      David Smith

      The Labor Department will require all employers with more than 100 employees to ensure their workers are vaccinated or tested weekly. Employers must also provide paid time off to allow workers to get vaccinated. This will affect more than 80 million workers in private sector businesses. Companies that do not comply could face fines of up to nearly $14,000 per violation.
      Workers in healthcare settings that receive Medicaid or Medicare reimbursement must be vaccinated, a move that applies to 50,000 providers and covers more than 17 million healthcare workers.
      All federal government workers, as well as employees of contractors that do business with the federal government, must get vaccinated, or regularly tested.

      Updated
      at 5.14pm EDT

      5.09pm EDT
      17:09

      “We are in a tough stretch and it could last for awhile,” Biden said, stressing that the Delta variant had complicated the US recovery.
      Stressing that vaccines protect people from hospitalizations and deaths from the Delta variant, he called the surge in cases a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
      A quarter of adults still haven’t gotten any vaccine shot, he said. “That 25% can cause a lot of damage, and they are,” he said. He implicitly called out the Republicans who are hindering a vaccination push – calling the behavior “unacceptable”.

      Updated
      at 5.50pm EDT

      5.05pm EDT
      17:05

      Biden explains Covid-19 strategy

      “We can and will turn the tide of Covid-19,” the president said.
      Speaking from the White House, Biden started by recapping progress made so far in getting Americans vaccinated.
      “We have the tools to combat the virus if we come together and use those tools,” he said, acknowledging frustrations with the 80m who are unvaccinated.

      5.00pm EDT
      17:00

      Today so far

      That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
      Here’s where the day stands so far:

      Joe Biden will soon lay out his new strategy to combat the spread of coronavirus. The White House has said the president will outline six steps to boost vaccinations and limit the spread of the Delta variant. Biden is expected to announce he is requiring coronavirus vaccinations for all federal workers, without the option to undergo regular testing instead of getting vaccinated.
      The justice department filed a lawsuit against Texas over its six-week abortion ban, a week after the supreme court declined to block the law’s implementation. “The act is clearly unconstitutional under longstanding supreme court precedent,” attorney general Merrick Garland said at a press conference this afternoon.
      Biden confirmed he will withdraw the nomination of David Chipman to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Chipman had attracted intense criticism from Republicans and a handful of Democrats for his advocacy work with the gun control group Giffords. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the White House is in “active discussions” with Chipman to find another role for him in the administration.
      Liz Cheney signaled she is ready for a fight following Donald Trump’s endorsement of one of her primary opponents, Harriet Hageman. After Trump mocked Cheney as the “number one provider of sound bites” for Democrats, the Republican congresswoman replied, “Here’s a sound bite for you: Bring it.” Cheney has repeatedly criticized Trump over his lies about fraud in the 2020 election, and she supported his impeachment for inciting the Capitol insurrection.
      A charter flight carrying US citizens out of Kabul has safely landed in Qatar, the White House said. The flight’s departure was facilitated by the US government, as the Biden administration continues its efforts to evacuate American citizens out of Afghanistan, even after the military formally ended its Kabul mission last week.

      Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

      4.44pm EDT
      16:44

      DeSantis suffers legal defeat over anti-riot law

      Richard Luscombe

      It’s been another busy day in court for Florida’s litigious Republican governor Ron DeSantis, who followed up yesterday’s rebuff by a federal judge over his ban on mask mandates in schools with another defeat on Thursday – this time over his flagship anti-riot law.
      US district court judge Mark Walker, in a 90-page ruling, determined that the state’s HB 1, which DeSantis signed into law in April, is unconstitutional. Touted by the governor as a means of enhancing public safety and clamping down on mob violence in the wake of protests nationwide in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, the law created, among other provisions, a new crime of “mob intimidation” and protected motorists who hit protestors during a riot.
      Walker, however, was not impressed with the language contained in the law. “[Its] new definition of ‘riot’ both fails to put Floridians of ordinary intelligence on notice of what acts it criminalizes, and encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement, making this provision vague to the point of unconstitutionality,” he wrote.
      His temporary injunction effectively prohibits enforcement of the law while legal challenges to it make their way through the courts.
      If DeSantis’s recent actions are anything to go by, it won’t be long before the issue is back in the courtroom. On Thursday, DeSantis filed an emergency appeal to reverse Wednesday’s mask mandate ruling, asserting a “high likelihood” of winning the case on appeal, and claiming that the court of district judge John Cooper “abused its discretion” by lifting a stay the governor had previously won that halted Cooper’s earlier order freeing school districts to require masks.
      A decision is likely within the next few days.

      4.27pm EDT
      16:27

      Kamala Harris sharply criticized the Texas abortion law this afternoon, as the vice-president met with reproductive health providers and patients to discuss abortion rights.
      Harris noted many US states beyond Texas have enacted restrictive laws that have made it extremely difficult to access abortion services, underscoring the need for a robust response to such policies.

      Tim Perry
      (@tperry518)
      NEW: @VP Kamala Harris makes first on camera comments about the DOJ lawsuit filed against the state of Texas following TX Senate Bill 8. Harris says the DOJ understands that the TX law is “patently unconstitutional” pic.twitter.com/LUJrAxibQp

      September 9, 2021

      “The United States department of justice has spoken loudly in saying that this law is patently unconstitutional,” Harris said of the new federal lawsuit against Texas.
      Asked what other steps the Biden administration can take to protect abortion rights, the vice-president said, “We need to codify Roe v Wade.”

      4.10pm EDT
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      The abortion rights group NARAL praised the Biden administration for filing a lawsuit against Texas over its six-week abortion ban.
      “We are pleased to see the Biden administration taking action to fight for Texans’ reproductive freedom by filing a lawsuit to block SB 8—the harshest and most extreme ban on abortion in the country,” NARAL acting president Adrienne Kimmell said in a statement.
      “Let’s be clear: Texas is the tip of the iceberg. This lawsuit sends a strong message to anti-choice lawmakers across the country who are racing to enact copycat versions of SB 8 in their own states. The threat to the future of safe, legal abortion is looming larger than ever, and safeguarding reproductive freedom requires bold and immediate action.”

      3.54pm EDT
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      Merrick Garland noted the justice department is seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent enforcement of the Texas abortion law, out of concern for private citizens acting as “bounty hunters” to ensure the statute is respected.
      “The department of justice has a duty to defend the Constitution of the United States and to uphold the rule of law,” the attorney general said at his press conference.
      “Today, we fulfill that duty by filing the lawsuit I have just described.”

      3.41pm EDT
      15:41

      A reporter asked Merrick Garland whether he expected the justice department to file additional lawsuits against states threatening to pass laws similar to Texas’ six-week abortion ban.
      “The additional and further risk here is that other states will follow similar models with respect not only to this constitutional right but theoretically against any constitutional right,” the attorney general said.
      “So if another state uses the same kind of provisions to deprive its citizens of their constitutional rights, and in particular to deprive their citizens of the ability to seek immediate review, we will bring the same kind of lawsuit.”

      3.23pm EDT
      15:23

      Biden administration sues Texas over six-week abortion ban

      The Biden administration is suing Texas over its six-week abortion ban, which went into effect last week after the supreme court declined to block the law’s implementation.

      CBS News
      (@CBSNews)
      Garland says Texas’ abortion ban is “clearly unconstitutional” and the state doesn’t dispute that. He says the ban creates “bounty hunters” who can file lawsuits “to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights by thwarting judicial review for as long as possible” pic.twitter.com/jPwMJHFf02

      September 9, 2021

      Attorney general Merrick Garland confirmed the news at a press conference this afternoon.
      “The act is clearly unconstitutional under longstanding supreme court precedent,” Garland said.
      The attorney general warned that the law “deputizes all private citizens, without any showing of personal connection or injury, to serve as bounty hunters” to ensure the law is respected.
      “The obvious and expressly acknowledged intention of this statutory scheme is to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights by thwarting judicial review for as long as possible,” Garland said.

      Joe Biden had previously promised that he would pursue a “whole-of-government effort” to respond to the supreme court’s decision, specifically looking at what tools the justice department may have to push back against the Texas law.

      Updated
      at 5.04pm EDT

      3.03pm EDT
      15:03

      Charter flight from Kabul safely lands in Qatar, White House says

      A charter flight carrying American citizens out of Kabul has now safely landed in Qatar, the White House said in a new statement.
      The flight’s departure was facilitated by the US government, as the Biden administration continues its efforts to evacuate American citizens out of Afghanistan, even after the military formally ended its Kabul mission last week.
      “The Taliban have been cooperative in facilitating the departure of American citizens and lawful permanent residents on charter flights from HKIA,” Emily Horne, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said in the statement.
      “We will continue these efforts to facilitate the safe and orderly travel of American citizens, lawful permanent residents, and Afghans who worked for us and wish to leave Afghanistan.”
      It’s unclear how many US citizens were on the charter flight and how many Americans remain in Afghanistan. Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, said on Sunday that there were roughly 100 Americans still in Afghanistan.

      2.45pm EDT
      14:45

      Jen Psaki hinted that Joe Biden will be pursuing actions to put pressure on major employers to set coronavirus vaccine requirements for their workers.
      A reporter asked the White House press secretary at her briefing, “Can the Department of Labor or anybody else compel major employers, large employers, to force the vaccine mandates on their employees?”
      Psaki replied, “Yes. Stay tuned. More to come this afternoon.”

      CBS News
      (@CBSNews)
      Reporter: “Can the Department of Labor or anybody else compel major employers, large employers, to force the vaccine mandates on their employees?”Jen Psaki: “Yes. Stay tuned. More to come this afternoon.” https://t.co/yRbPtR0ZVi pic.twitter.com/HsNZGEDUWb

      September 9, 2021

      The president is scheduled to deliver a speech on his new strategy to boost coronavirus vaccinations and limit the spread of the Delta variant in about two hours.
      Biden is expected to sign an executive order requiring coronavirus vaccinations for all federal workers, without a testing alternative to opt out of the mandate.
      Some major private-sector employers, including McDonald’s, Google and United Airlines, have already established vaccine mandates for their workers.

      2.27pm EDT
      14:27

      Federal workers will have 75 days to get fully vaccinated under Biden’s new policy

      Jen Psaki offered some details on Joe Biden’s speech this afternoon, in which he will outline his new strategy to boost coronavirus vaccinations and limit the spread of the Delta variant.
      The White House press secretary said federal workers will have 75 days to get fully vaccinated under an executive order that Biden will sign later today.

      Bloomberg Quicktake
      (@Quicktake)
      Federal employees will have about 75 days to get fully vaccinated under the executive order Biden will sign Thursday, Psaki says https://t.co/jYfQW3U8gY pic.twitter.com/jNVpgN4qng

      September 9, 2021

      Psaki noted the vaccine order will include “limited exceptions for legally recognized reasons,” such as religious objections and disabilities that prevent vaccinations.
      Biden announced in July that federal workers would be required to get vaccinated or undergo regular coronavirus testing, but the newest order will not include a testing option.
      Psaki confirmed that federal workers who do not comply with the vaccination mandate will go through the “standard HR process,” which could include facing “progressive disciplinary action”. She later added that employees could potentially be terminated if they do not get vaccinated.

      2.08pm EDT
      14:08

      One reporter asked Jen Psaki whether Joe Biden intends to name another nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, now that David Chipman’s nomination has been withdrawn.
      “We certainly would at an appropriate time,” the White House press secretary said. “I don’t have a timeline on that at this point in time.”
      As Psaki previously noted, there has only ever been one Senate-confirmed ATF director in the history of the bureau, so it will likely be extremely difficult to get any nominee confirmed. More

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      in World Politics

      The Aftershocks of the Saudi and American Debacle in Afghanistan

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      Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan have a complex relationship. Their ties date back to the 19th century when Afghanistan became the first Muslim country to recognize the second Saudi state of 1824 to 1891. In 1930, Ibn Saud recognized King Nadir Shah’s rule in Afghanistan, in 1932, the two countries signed their first friendship agreement, and in 1950, King Zahir Shah’s visit to Saudi Arabia was commemorated on a Saudi stamp.

      Ties over the following decades remained close. This was not so much because of Saudi geopolitical interests in Afghanistan, but rather how the country affected Saudi Arabia’s relations with Iran and Pakistan, a major rival and an important ally of the kingdom respectively.

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      The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 marked the summit of Saudi influence. In coordination with Pakistan and the United States, the Saudis famously supported the mujahideen and also assisted many Afghan refugees. Throughout the 1980s, the kingdom exercised direct interference over various Islamist groups in Afghanistan and many Saudis traveled there to fight the Soviets.

      After the Soviet Union departed in 1989 and throughout the subsequent civil war in Afghanistan, the Saudis continued their role of manipulating Afghan politicians and factions, using their petrodollars and religious influence on behalf of the US, with mixed results. In 1993, all of the Afghan mujahideen factions signed a peace agreement in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, but that failed to stop the conflict.

      Saudi Ties With the Taliban

      Following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, some commentators have encouraged the Saudis to try to play the religious card again. In June, Muslim scholars from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia signed a “declaration of peace” in Mecca, which Arab News described as a “historic, landmark event on the path toward reconciliation between warring factions.” But the Taliban rejected the move — which, in any event, had no impact on peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government — as a theatrical attempt to steal the diplomatic limelight from Qatar using Islamic mercenaries.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Saudi influence over the Taliban began with funding hardline religious schools, or madrassas, in Pakistan where the movement started. It effectively ended in 1996 when the Taliban first took over Afghanistan. At the end of the 1990s, Saudi citizens were officially barred from giving money to any charity that was not state-approved, which meant Saudi public funding for the Taliban was largely cut off, except for a few individuals acting without the explicit knowledge of the government. A 2013 research paper by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs stated that Saudi “fundraisers for the Taliban … are believed to extensively exploit networks and use old mechanisms dating back to the times of Saudi cooperation with mujahedeen and Taliban functionaries.”

      When the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, Saudi Arabia was one of only three countries to officially recognize their government; Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates were the other two. This was not because the Saudis supported the Taliban regime, but rather because they were looking for a way to grease the wheels for an approach by Prince Turki al-Faisal, the head of Saudi intelligence, to persuade the Taliban to extradite Osama bin Laden, the Saudi leader of al-Qaeda.

      The Saudis calculated that by recognizing the Taliban government, they could win influence as they had done in the past with other factions and warlords. But in 1998, when Prince Turki traveled to Afghanistan with a delegation of Muslim figures, the former Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, turned him down.

      The Saudi View of the Taliban

      The House of Saud now faces a disconcerting moment over Afghanistan, not least because like the former Afghan government, the royal family depends on the US for protection against external enemies and internal threats.

      In a report by Wikistrat about the implications of the Taliban takeover on Saudi Arabia, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, comments: “Questions are likely to be mounting in Riyadh about the sincerity and the reliability of US security guarantees which themselves have been a matter of considerable uncertainty since the September 2019 attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure.” He adds that the “sudden abandonment of Afghan partners, spelled out clinically and coldly in [Joe] Biden’s televised address, may resonate strongly among US regional partners for whom President [Barack] Obama’s perceived abandonment of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 set in motion a questioning of US motivations that then continued into the Trump era.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Neil Quilliam, a Middle East analyst at Chatham House, continues in the same Wikistrat report: “The Taliban leadership will likely begin a campaign to challenge the legitimacy of the Al Saud and appeal directly to the Saudi population to challenge the ruling family’s authority.” He adds that the “nature of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is a cause for concern in Saudi Arabia. President Biden’s speech about the withdrawal, wherein he noted that remaining in Afghanistan no longer constitutes a vital interest, has also sent shockwaves through the Saudi leadership.”

      The Taliban may turn on Saudi Arabia in the media war. Transnational jihadist groups like al-Qaeda could also threaten the Saudis from Afghanistan again. But as Sami Hamdi explained in the Arab Digest podcast, there are reasons why Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman might benefit from the situation in Afghanistan in terms of finding a renewed utility toward the US. A foreign diplomat in Riyadh, quoted by Reuters, predicted that the kingdom will take a pragmatic approach. “The Saudis have a historical relationship with Afghanistan and will eventually have to accept the Taliban [again] … They have no other option,” he said.

      In 2019, Jalaluddin Shinwari, the former Taliban deputy minister of justice, told the New York Times: “What [we] are saying to Americans is this: You have accepted Saudi Arabia, and we won’t do more than their basic code — retribution for murder, chop off the hand for robbing. If you have accepted Saudi, what’s wrong with us being another? The rest will be your priorities: aid, friendship, economic relations.”

      The US Would Never Pull Out of Saudi Arabia

      The Taliban can dream of a relationship with the US akin to that which the Saudis enjoy. Yet that relationship is completely different from whatever ties the US has with Afghanistan. The United States would never pull out of Saudi Arabia the way it did from Afghanistan, not only because of hydrocarbons — although with the Middle East still providing around 31% of world oil production and 16% of global natural gas supply, this remains an important factor. Nor is American support just about Israel’s security — although the US and its Western allies certainly wish to ensure this, and they are ready to work with any Arab regime, particularly Saudi Arabia, that is ready to officially recognize Israel on US terms.

      The main reason the US can never pull out of Saudi Arabia is because of the unthinkable consequences of losing Saudi control of the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina to al-Qaeda or another jihadist movement. That is why US support for the Saudis remains solid despite misgivings on both sides.

      *[This article was originally published by Arab Digest, a partner organization of Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Jonathan Mirsky obituary

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      The ObserverChinaJonathan Mirsky obituaryJournalist and historian of China who went from admiring the regime to being one of its sternest critics Jonathan SteeleThu 9 Sep 2021 12.15 EDTLast modified on Thu 9 Sep 2021 12.17 EDTJonathan Mirsky, who has died aged 88, was a prominent American historian of China who switched to journalism and won the international reporter of the year title in the 1989 British Press Awards for his coverage in the Observer of the Tiananmen uprising.Getting the story had been a bloody experience. Armed Chinese police gave him a severe beating when they discovered he was a journalist. He was lucky to be rescued by a colleague from the Financial Times who led him away, his left arm fractured and three teeth knocked out.Mirsky’s career encapsulated the shifts in the way the western left viewed China, from the first decades of communist rule to Beijing’s move to capitalism while still under single-party control.He began as an early and prominent academic critic of the US’s role in the Vietnam war, starring in numerous protest marches and campus teach-ins. Opposing the US strategy of isolating China in the years before Nixon and Kissinger’s 1972 visit to Mao Zedong in Beijing, Mirsky supported the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, a group of radical US academics who criticised the senior faculty elite of US Asian studies for their silence on the immorality of the war.He had his first direct encounter with Maoism on an extraordinary boat trip led by Earle Reynolds, a Quaker peace activist. In 1969 Reynolds took Mirsky and four other Americans on his ketch, Phoenix, heading for Shanghai. It was meant as a goodwill gesture in the hope of starting a dialogue between Americans and Chinese officials. When they were stopped by a Chinese naval vessel 20 miles from the coast and ordered to leave, Mirsky – according to his account to friends – thought: “OK. In that case I’ll swim to China.” He jumped into the sea. The Chinese vessel hurriedly pulled away, and the Phoenix sailed back to Japan.Mirsky was never a “110 percenter” like some western admirers of Maoism but he was prepared to be impressed on his first foray to China in April 1972. With a dozen other young China scholars he spent six weeks travelling around the country with official guides. As he recalled in a book of essays by alumni of King’s College, Cambridge, he had gone “convinced that the Maoist revolution and even the Cultural, which was still going on, were good for China”. After only a few days he became convinced something bad was happening that their hosts were covering up. Many colleagues on the trip resented his growing scepticism. Some years later Mirsky met one of the guides again and complained about his deception. The guide replied: “We wanted to put rings in your noses and you helped us put them there.”Over the next four and a half decades Mirsky was to develop into one of China’s sternest and most knowledgable critics, a trajectory that he described as “From a Mao fan to a counter-revolutionary” in his contribution to the book My First Trip to China: Scholars, Diplomats, and Journalists Reflect on Their First Encounters with China (2012). He regularly lambasted western leaders for downplaying human rights violations for the sake of trade.In typically colourful language in a 2014 article for the New York Review of Books, he deplored the lack of political and social progress. “I may have been inadvertently right in May 1989 [just after Tiananmen] when I said China would ‘never be the same again’. It is sleeker, richer, internationally more reckless, more corrupt – and its leaders are ever more terrified … I am reminded of the old street sweeper in 1990 at a corner in Beijing. She was shovelling donkey dung into a pail. I asked her if she thought things had changed for the better. She replied, ‘This city is like donkey dung. Clean and smooth on the outside, but inside it’s still shit.’”Mirsky was born in New York to Reba Paeff, a children’s author and harpsichord player, and Alfred Mirsky, a pioneer in molecular biology. Educated first at Ethical Culture Fieldston school in the city, he went on to obtain a BA in history at Columbia University. He spent a year at King’s, Cambridge, in 1954, during which he met an American woman who had been a missionary in China and who urged him to study Mandarin. Three years of language study in the US followed before Mirsky, with his first wife, Betsy, also a Mandarin student, went to Taiwan to run a language school for four years.Back in the US he was awarded a PhD in Chinese history at the University of Pennsylvania in 1966. He and Betsy divorced in 1963 and he married Rhona Pearson, a British neurobiologist, with whom he moved to Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, in 1966. There he became co-director of the East Asia Language and Area Studies Center. However, he was refused tenure, in part because of his anti-Vietnam protest activity, and in 1975 he and Rhona moved to London.Mirsky was attracted to journalism and became the Observer’s China correspondent, based in London but frequently travelling to the country. His critical views of communist rule were strengthened when he made the first of six visits to Tibet for the paper. He decided the fault was not just communism but racist imperialism by Han Chinese towards ethnic minorities. Later he visited the exiled Dalai Lama in north India, who became a close friend. They shared the same sense of humour, and Mirsky was delighted to receive a long message from the Dalai Lama a few weeks before he died.During a trip to China in 1991 Mirsky was asked by the foreign ministry to leave the country and told he would never again receive a visa. In 1993 he moved to Hong Kong to become East Asia correspondent of the (London) Times until he resigned in 1998 in protest at its owner, Rupert Murdoch’s, accommodating line on China. Back in London, Mirsky wrote dozens of book reviews, mainly for the New York Review of Books. They were always erudite and colourful, and are admired today by scholars of China for their astute observation.For at least a quarter of a century Mirsky loved to hold court with friends over lunch at the same table at Fortnum and Mason’s in Piccadilly, usually enhanced by at least one Jewish and one off-colour joke. In the words of a close friend, Michael Yahuda, a former professor at the London School of Economics, “Jonathan was a master of anecdotes and he was never shy of embellishing them in favour of a good story. Above all, he enjoyed friendships and a good meal. Life with him was never dull.”He and Rhona divorced in 1986. While in Hong Kong, a decade later Mirsky married Deborah Glass, an Australian specialist in financial regulation who became deputy chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission when they moved to London. In 2014 they separated and Deborah returned to Australia.He is survived by his sister Reba. TopicsChinaHistory booksNewspapers & magazinesUS politicsThe ObserverobituariesReuse this content More