Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today.Please reply to this email to arrange an interview.
<[link removed]>Blame Joe Biden For The Afghanistan Disaster. No One Else. <[link removed]> – Biden claimed his hands were tied by the Trump administration’s deals with the Taliban. They were not. Biden, not Trump, chose to schedule a complete departure in the middle of the fighting season. Biden chose to close Bagram Airfield that provided logistical, security, and strike assets including broader capability to exfiltrate U.S. citizens and visa applicants. Biden chose not to find a pathway forward for contractors to be protected and assist maintaining Afghan aircraft purchased by U.S. taxpayers. Biden chose bureaucratic intransigence in processing the backlog of Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applications prior to withdrawing U.S. forces. Real leaders take responsibility for their decisions, including ones that have led to untenable situations and demand action. Biden didn’t. Heritage expert: Dustin Carmack <[link removed]>
Biden’s Afghanistan Exit Ignores Lessons from Iraq <[link removed]> – As in Iraq, Biden disregarded the advice of military officials, who argued that a small residual force was a sustainable option that could help stabilize the situation at a relatively low cost, just as small U.S. military contingents helped stabilize Iraq and eastern Syria. The resulting debacle is a self-inflicted stain on America’s reputation, a humanitarian catastrophe, and a major setback in fighting terrorism. The global jihadist movement is likely to be energized and emboldened by the Taliban’s victory, just as it was by the initial success of ISIS. The Biden Administration claims that it can adequately monitor, deter, and defend against terrorist threats based in Afghanistan from outside the country. But the credibility of this claim has been severely devalued by the administration’s stunning failure to anticipate the severity of the risks inherent in its rush to exit the country. The Pentagon already is warning that terrorist networks could re-establish themselves in Afghanistan faster than expected due to the swift Taliban
victory. Heritage expert: Jim Phillips <[link removed]>
Almost all eligible Georgians are registered to vote, data shows <[link removed]> - This shows that all of the outrageous “voter suppression” claims made about Georgia by
Joe Biden, Stacey Abrams, and others are false and nothing more than political propaganda. Georgia residents have no problems registering or voting in the state and the state has seen record registration and turnout since its voter ID law went into effect in 2008. This also shows just how frivolous the partisan lawsuit is that was filed against the state by the U.S. Justice Department by Biden political appointees. Heritage expert: Zack Smith <[link removed]>
Curriculum, COVID, and
Choice <[link removed]> – Some 18 states this year have either created or expanded laws allowing education savings accounts, private school scholarship options and public charter schools. We should celebrate the learning options available for the first time to families in West Virginia and Kentucky and to more children in states such as Ohio and Arizona. Parents who responded to nationally representative surveys saying they do not want their children taught that America is irredeemably racist will welcome having new options in how and where their children are educated. Allowing parents to choose how and where their children learn is an education policy that respects our rights and allows competing ideas
to flourish. We must still defend those rights, though, from pernicious ideas such as racial prejudice. So to parents and policymakers: Embrace the new choices in education, and do not retreat from condemning racial prejudice. The former is our hope for the future. The latter is required in the meantime. Heritage expert: Jonathan Butcher <[link removed]>
The Diversity Fundamentalism of Morty Shapiro <[link removed]> – One might think that a
president of a major university when asked about how he allocates resources in the midst of promoting a book on being open to criticism and different perspectives might not have been so dismissive. It would have been nice if he had taken the question seriously and provided his rationale for why it is good for Northwestern and good for the goal of promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion to have 52 people with nearly identical sounding titles. Shapiro’s actual response is disappointing. The hypocrisy of dismissing alternative perspectives while promoting a book on being open-minded suggests that even university leaders who make rhetorical commitments to heterodox academic inquiry do not really mean it in practice. It is extra disappointing because Shapiro seems like a good guy and capable university leader. I’ve been particularly sympathetic to him because he has been the target of the progressive cancel mob in his own right. But perhaps that is why, to protect himself, he must have his own fundamentalism that he defends to stave off those who have been pushing to drive him out Heritage expert: Jay
Greene <[link removed]>
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