Foreign desk: The Truth About the USSR’s Afghan Invasion
President Trump’s recent “mischaracterization” of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan “contained no single scrap of truth, let alone logic,” charges Gregory Feifer at The Atlantic. Indeed, his new policy “risks undermining the very few gains almost two decades of Western-led effort have produced by ignoring lessons from both the Soviet and NATO-led campaigns.” Fact is, the invasion “was more thanks to accident and blunder than a conscious decision to invade.” Contrary to Trump’s claim, “terrorism had nothing to do with Russia’s incursion.” It was meant to foment a coup against the Afghan President Hafizullah Amin. Nor, as Trump also claimed, did the resulting years-long war trigger the Soviet Union’s collapse. Truth is, the Soviets “blundered into a civil war they never fully understood.” But Trump’s announced troop withdrawal is “making them look relatively wise.”
Political scribe: Anti-War Dems vs. Anti-Trump Dems
Last time Nancy Pelosi became speaker, recalls James Antle at The Week, Democrats had won the House thanks to an unpopular GOP president and an unpopular war. This time, the president “sufficed on his own.” Still, anti-war progressives are “poised to play a key role inside the new majority,” even as President Trump is planning to end US involvement in two wars. Ironically, “it’s a Republican president who Democrats were elected to oppose who offers the best chance to excise America from its endless, often undeclared, wars.” Only now it’s “MSNBC, not Fox News, that is engaged in a full-on freakout” and many Democrats who are questioning the withdrawal. The question for Democrats is whether they “would like to change the country’s sputtering foreign policy or merely the commander-in-chief.”
Urban critic: Cuomo Goes With the Progressive Flow
You can’t get more “woke” than Gov. Cuomo, who kicked off his third term with an inauguration on Ellis Island dedicated to immigrants — even if “the irony was as thick as swamp-muck,” says City Journal’s Bob McManus. Because even as it sought to evoke “timeless American values,” his inaugural address “oozed contempt for the rule of law.” Nowhere did Cuomo use the word “legal,” which willfully obscured the distinction between Ellis Island’s lawful immigration and today’s “unremitting border-dashing.” Nor did he mention any of the “legacy-building possibilities that a smart Democratic governor working with the first unambiguously Democratic-controlled legislature in memory might seize.” Look for Cuomo to simply “go with the progressive flow now emerging in the capital.”
Culture critic: How Trump Got Bad at Twitter
One of 2018’s biggest surprises was that President Trump, who “redefined the possibilities of social media, single-handedly turning a chatty platform into a must-read political assault weapon,” has become “bad at Twitter,” contends Joanna Weiss at Politico. Yes, his tweets still drive news cycles. But “the crisp, unpredictable tweets from the start of his presidency have largely become rambling and verbose.” And their sheer volume has made “each one seem less essential.” This has been especially true since Twitter expanded to 280 characters. Compare his feed to that of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who “wields social media much like the president used to do.” Trump “used to tweet like a 29-year-old, newly flush with power. Now, he’s tweeting like a 72-year-old who doesn’t want to lose it.”
From the right: Dems Go Wild on Policy
“The Democratic Party’s presidential contest is shaping up like a mirror image of the GOP’s vexing 2016 primaries,” notes Commentary’s Noah Rothman, not least given what is likely to be a large and unwieldy field of candidates. To generate media attention and stand out, prominent Dems are “prepared to endorse a series of wildly imprudent policies” — including Medicare for all, a national minimum-wage hike to $15 and even a universal basic income in the case of likely contender Sen. Kamala Harris. These proposals, Rothman argues, “increase the tax burden on all” while depressing wages and growth. And the worst part? As 2016’s GOP primary and general-election results showed, wildly “unworkable and offensive policies” can take you all the way to the White House.
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann and Sohrab Ahmari