Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• The Return of the Taliban - Their comeback has taken twenty years, but it is a classic example of a successful guerrilla war of attrition. - link

• Does the Great Retreat from Afghanistan Mark the End of the American Era? - It’s a dishonorable end that weakens U.S. standing in the world, perhaps irrevocably. - link

• The U.N.’s Terrifying Climate Report - Scientists predict hotter heat waves and worse flooding in the decades ahead, but the catastrophe is evident everywhere this summer. - link

• Trying—and Failing—to Save the Family of the Afghan Who Saved Me - Twelve years ago, Tahir Luddin helped us both escape after we were kidnapped by the Taliban. Now I am struggling to get his family out of Kabul. - link

• Mississippi’s Hospital System Is Rapidly Approaching Statewide Failure - Despite the efforts of Miss U.S.A. and the state’s top medical experts, COVID-19 cases are soaring. - link

From Vox

• Solar farms are often bad for biodiversity — but they don’t have to be -

  

  Yes, we can have clean energy and tortoises too.

  This story is part of Down to Earth, a Vox reporting initiative on the science, politics, and economics of the biodiversity crisis.

  Every several years — sometimes just once a decade — when the rains come in just the right amounts and at just the right times, rare flowers speckle the Mojave Desert in California. Some, like the Barstow woolly sunflower, emerge from plants no larger than a thumbnail. They spring forth from seeds that have persisted in the dry soil for years, waiting for just such a sporadic event.

  In these brief “super-blooms,” the desert floor looks “like a carpet of wildflowers unfurled across the landscape,” said Karen Tanner, a researcher at University of California, Santa Cruz. The quick flash of flora helps replenish the seeds for future generations.

  At other times, large sections of this deceptively fragile ecosystem look “like the moon,” Tanner said. Which, under the punishing sun, makes it seem like an ideal place to build large solar installations. Swaths of the desert, which spans four states, have already been converted to solar facilities, and more are on the way — in the Mojave and across the US. More than 4,600 square miles of land is projected to be covered by solar installations by 2030.

  A massive expansion of solar electricity is a crucial part of US plans to reach 80 percent renewable energy by the beginning of the next decade. This is essential to cutting carbon emissions and slowing catastrophic climate change — which poses a dire threat to plants and animals the world over, humans included.

  But the race to erect large-scale, maximally efficient solar operations could hurt local ecosystems if operators aren’t careful. Based on her research, Tanner suspects many of these solar projects as they are traditionally executed are causing more local harm than some realize. She has spent nearly a decade closely studying — often on hands and knees with a magnifying glass — experimental solar plots in the Mojave, all located within six miles of four large solar installations. Her most recent findings, published earlier this year, have noted that solar panels changed the immediate microhabitat and had a detrimental impact on rarer plants, such as the Barstow woolly sunflower.

  One thing is clear to her: “It’s just not enough to do one survey in one year and be like, ‘Oh yeah, there’s nothing here. Go ahead and install the infrastructure,’” she said.

  Solar doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game that prioritizes either clean energy or biodiversity, scientists told Vox. Many projects and studies are currently looking for ways that solar installations can better protect — and potentially even improve — local ecosystems, along with the bottom lines of operators and even nearby landholders like farmers. These solutions can be as simple as prioritizing native plants or picking a location that’s already been disturbed by humans.

  Karen Tanner/UC Santa Cruz

  The darker side of solar

  Solar installations, on the scale needed to supply power grids, are massive by necessity, transforming the lands where they’re located into a new kind of built environment. They can alter everything from sun exposure to moisture to surface temperatures. This can have unintended and unexpected impacts on local plants, animals, and even the area’s microbiome.

  Photovoltaic panels shade the land while blocking some areas from rainfall and dousing others with heavy runoff. This changes the growing conditions for plants, with implications for other connected species. The other prominent form of solar, concentrating solar — in which mirrors focus the sun’s rays — generates so much heat that it “can incinerate insects and burn the feathers of birds that fly through,” Jeffrey Lovich, a research ecologist with the US Geological Survey who studies the environmental impacts of these installations, wrote to Vox.

  In areas like the US Southwest, solar installations appear to contribute to bird mortality. Scientists aren’t entirely sure why this is, but one prevailing idea, known as the “lake-effect” hypothesis, is that migrating waterfowl making their way through the arid landscape mistake the installations for bodies of water and crash into them.

  Large solar facilities in particular can also fragment important wildlife habitat or migration corridors via fences and landscape alteration, and can restrict gene flow for animal as well as plant populations.

  Operators of these installations are generally keen to cut the costs of construction and maintenance, so most solar facilities replace the existing land cover with graded packed dirt, gravel, or mowed grass, further harming local biodiversity. “‘Blade-and-grade’ site prep that removes all vegetation clearly has a negative effect on biodiversity,” Lovich said. He expects mowed grass would “stress plant communities and the animals that use them.”

  

  Tim Rue/Corbis/Getty Images

  Many of the impacts remain unknown. It’s often difficult for researchers to gain access to solar facilities and the environmental data they collect — “even though the majority of facilities are situated on publicly owned lands,” Lovich and colleagues noted in a 2017 paper.

  But it’s possible to dial down the potential harms of big solar farms. The type of solar infrastructure — whether concentrated solar or photovoltaic, and whether panels are fixed or rotating, high, or low — affects the potential downsides of large-scale installations. So does the nature of the landscape itself.

  How solar can help native plants and crucial pollinators

  Some solar operators are reimagining their facilities as prime protected habitats for native plants, bringing back key local species and potentially improving lands that humans have already disturbed. “Solar can be a net benefit in terms of restoring a native habitat and improving ecosystem services, like storm water control and carbon storage and sequestration,” said Leroy Walston, a landscape ecologist with Argonne National Laboratory who studies the relationship between renewable energy and the environment.

  One in-vogue mitigation measure is pollinator-friendly foliage. At one experimental solar installation in Minnesota, pollinator- friendly plants helped boost energy yields a tad (by making the microclimate a touch cooler) and slightly reduced long- term maintenance costs (due to less-frequent mowing), according to a 2019 analysis from the Center for Business and the Environment at Yale University. The report also noted bigger wins: The plants helped reduce erosion, increasing groundwater stores and bolstering crop yields.

  Experts have brought up concerns that solar operators will use a few flowers to green the image, but not the substance, of their operations. To help prevent this, some 15 states now have pollinator-friendly solar scorecards that aim to measure the actual impact of solar projects on the crucial creatures that carry pollen from plant to plant.

  “They are voluntary, but they do help solar facilities to attain an objective certification that they’re pollinator-friendly, that’s been helpful to encourage some use of pollinator habitat at solar facilities,” said Heidi Hartmann, a colleague of Walston who works as a program manager for land resources and energy policy at Argonne. For example, the California renewable electricity provider MCE is now asking its facilities on arable land to use “reasonable efforts” to hit a certain score on these pollinator tallies.

  Walston calls for an even broader approach to solar — one that focuses not only on bees and butterflies, but on native habitat restoration overall. Native plants are keenly tuned to the local environment, thriving in specific climate conditions, improving soil retention, and often benefiting the widest range of other area species, in ways non- native, flashy pollinator species might not.

  Hartmann and Walston have modeled the impact of switching from maintained grass to native plantings. They found that in the US Midwest, native plants would bring in three times the number of pollinators. They’d also boost the carbon storage potential of the soil by 65 percent and would be more effective, once established, at keeping weeds at bay, which could reduce the need for harmful herbicide use.

  Scott Olson/Getty Images

“The equation is complex,” said Alyssa Edwards, vice president of environmental affairs at solar producer Lightsource BP, about the company’s impact on local habitats. Lightsource advertises itself as protecting ecosystems and boosting biodiversity. “Pollinator habitat, considerations of seed availability, vegetation height, insurance requirements, fire risk, and cost all come into play. Not to mention that pollinator habitat may not be the right choice for all sites, as other initiatives may be more valuable contributions to sustainability.” The company, a joint venture with the oil and gas giant BP, says it’s working on various solar projects that incorporate pollinator habitat, conservation of short-grass prairie land, and even animal grazing.

Wildlife corridors are another way solar installations could help support biodiversity. But for large sites to become a part of corridors, they may require substantial adjustments to fencing and other built infrastructure (and even then, they’d probably pose barriers to some larger species).

As more sites incorporate biodiversity as a benchmark, the devil is in the details. Tanner and others have found that solar panels can actually increase the number of plant species that grow beneath them, especially in harsh environments like the desert. However, some of these additional species are invasive or threaten to outcompete the smaller, rarer native ones that could tolerate such extreme desert conditions.

These kinds of wrinkles make it all the more important that scientists and operators actually measure their impact on ecosystems — that they’re “pausing for a moment and considering what sort of species we are considering that are making up the diversity,” Tanner said.

Build solar on lands that humans have already messed with, one expert says

Solar operators tend to look for new sites based on sun and climate conditions, but also proximity to the existing power grid — and a utility company in the market for their energy. Scientists told Vox that firms should also look for places that humans have disturbed, because the local ecosystem may have less to lose.

Lovich suggests siting more solar farms on “brown fields, roof tops, abandoned agricultural fields, dry lakes, and even airports — where wildlife are unwanted.” They’re also well-suited for canals and human-made reservoirs, where they’re sometimes called “floatovoltaics,” not least because they can slow water loss by evaporation. These less-conventional arrangements may have higher up-front costs, but the eventual environmental costs will be lower.

Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

Building on an ecologically sensitive site can also be costly. Take for example BrightSource Energy, which spent at least $56 million relocating threatened desert tortoises from its Ivanpah solar development site in the Mojave Desert. Although these efforts allowed the project to go through, scientists are still learning about the consequences. An early study found that the relocated tortoises needed more time and effort to settle into normal movement patterns, potentially exposing them to additional threats. But as Lovich pointed out, “since tortoises are long-lived, results for the long term are not yet available.”

Such experiences have not deterred other desert sun-seeking operations. “Solar farms are operating or planned in excellent tortoise habitat affecting hundreds to thousands of tortoises,” Lovich said. Simply moving the tortoises — pricey as it may be — is not a sure cure. “Translocation has a checkered history of success,” he said.

Lovich is currently studying the impact of the Gemini Solar Project in Nevada, which would cover 11 square miles of publicly owned tortoise habitat and is home to hundreds of these long-lived, vanishing animals. For this project, the plan is to capture the animals, place them in a holding center for up to two years during construction, and then release them into the facility grounds “to see how they fare,” Lovich said.

“All energy sources will come with a cost to some wildlife,” Lovich and his colleagues noted in a 2020 paper. “The best mitigation strategy is to avoid developing sensitive and pristine areas.”

Other landscapes would not only tolerate solar farms, but could benefit from them. For example, a pollinator-friendly solar installation could add yield for farmers whose soy, citrus, almonds, cotton, or alfalfa needs some pollination help. More than 500 solar facilities already exist within easy buzzing-distance — less than a mile — from these crops in California, Massachusetts, and North Carolina, respectively, according to a 2018 study by Walston, Hartmann, and their colleagues. Nationally, more than 1,350 square miles of cropland would benefit if existing solar installations added pollinator-friendly plants, they concluded.

As solar has moved into lands that could otherwise be farmed, it has caused some tension with local residents. But solar farms and actual farms don’t necessarily need to be in opposition. It’s possible to co- locate solar and crops into “agrivoltaic systems,” which can feature grazing grass, corn grown for biogas, and even lettuce and tomatoes that may flourish under solar panels. Other crops could even be grown under semi-transparent solar panels.

Solar can protect plants and animals while it helps the planet

Redesigning solar developments — and steering them to the places where they won’t cause harm — isn’t easy. Maximizing energy output means finding locations with the right combinations of sun, temperature, wind, and humidity (one study pegged the best spots as croplands, grasslands, and wetlands) and packing solar-harvesting devices as densely as possible. All of these often work at cross-purposes with supporting a diverse range of plant and animal species.

    <img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XqNT5X1WKRA9uFQLsXxfbM-

Additionally, permits for these facilities are typically done at a very local level. (President Barack Obama had instructed these sorts of projects on federal lands to have a mitigation strategy — an order that President Donald Trump struck down his second month in office.) So it’s a patchwork of different levels of regulations and approval processes, some of which are more in tune with thoughtful evaluation of sites and long-term impacts. There is “more education that can be done at local government levels,” Hartmann said.

Without more thorough before-and-after research, we may remain in the dark about how these large facilities are changing the landscapes they cover. If site evaluations are performed over a relatively brief period of time — such as a single season in the run-up to the construction of a solar farm — operators could easily miss key aspects of biodiversity, like the Barstow woolly sunflower, which waits for just the right pattern of rare desert rain to emerge.

“We’re just starting to scratch the surface and determine how different organisms are likely to respond” to solar, said Tanner, the UC Santa Cruz researcher. For now, it behooves us to mess with their environment as little as possible, she noted, and to preserve as much as we can. “Especially in a context of climate change, we don’t know what species are going to be able to pass through that aperture in the future.”

As the world barrels toward climate catastrophe, scaling up carbon-neutral energy production as quickly as possible couldn’t be more urgent. “We need all the help we can get, and we need to move quickly,” Tanner said. On a planetary scale, clean electricity can help safeguard all species, and could arguably be worth the trade-off if it harms a few local species in the process.

But maybe there doesn’t need to be a trade-off, Tanner suggested. “I’m not sure it’s an either-or question,” she said.

• How free college became a perk for American workers -

  

  As employees quit their jobs at record rates, companies like Target and Walmart are offering better benefits to retain them.

  In an ideal world, every college student in America could graduate without debt. The reality, as we know, is much different: Collectively, Americans owe nearly $1.6 trillion in student loans in 2020, an amount so large that it’s regarded almost as an abstraction. That’s part of the reason why Logan, a graduate of Arizona State, was dead set against taking on any debt for his bachelor’s degree. Instead of loans, he turned to his employer: Starbucks. “It was crucial that I graduate without debt, even if that meant living with my parents,” said Logan, who asked to withhold his name for privacy reasons. “I have friends who owe $30,000 at 23. That just didn’t seem worth it to me.”

  As college becomes an essential precursor for long-term employment, corporations are stepping in where the government has yet to take action. Decades ago, employers weren’t fixated on hiring college-educated workers. As technology began automating more jobs at the turn of the century, employers started seeking out — and prioritizing — college graduates. Many current job listings require applicants to have at least an associate’s degree, despite a majority of American adults lacking that level of education.

  Target and Walmart, two of America’s largest retail chains, recently announced free college initiatives for employees that will come into effect this fall. Eligible workers will be able to enroll in an online undergraduate program from a pre-selected list of schools and degrees at no cost.

  These education benefits are not solely altruistic; they’re part of a greater corporate effort to attract and retain workers, who have left their jobs at record rates this year. Many are leaving customer-facing roles that require them to manage unruly, aggressive customers while enforcing pandemic safety guidelines, and are migrating to industries that might offer better conditions, hours, and perks. To coax workers back, major employers have promised to increase wages and improve benefits, promising pay bonuses, retirement plans, and, in the case of companies like Target and Walmart, the opportunity to receive a free college or vocational degree.

  These higher education initiatives, while beneficial, are not entirely new. Starbucks began its partnership with Arizona State University in 2014, offering to fully cover employees’ tuition for online undergraduate courses. Walmart’s program is an update to its existing “$1 a day” college benefit first launched in 2018. At the time, employees could pursue a degree in business or supply chain management at one of three institutions: University of Florida, Brandman University, or Bellevue University.

  It’s also not uncommon for companies to provide tuition reimbursement or discount benefits to eligible workers. Many have a policy of reimbursing part- and full-time workers for tuition, usually up to $5,250 (the tax-free limit) every year. In recent years, though, some companies have taken it one step further. Disney, Discover, and Chipotle, to name a few, have partnered with Guild Education, a private company, to offer a number of pre-selected online degrees from both public and private institutions for employees at no cost.

  The popularity of these corporate benefits coincides with a greater legislative push for college affordability, as more Democrats and progressives rally for free college and student debt cancellation. A majority of Americans support measures to reform student debt and college costs, but until fairly recently, the federal government has done little to offset these growing problems.

  “The private sector is increasingly encroaching on the government’s space because the government is leaving so much space to begin with,” wrote Vox’s Emily Stewart in a recent article on corporate social responsibility. “Corporations are swooping in with solutions because the solutions coming from public officials and entities aren’t working or are nonexistent.” In this case, the solution is to offer working adults the chance to attend college for free, with a few caveats.

  According to Paul Freedman, the president of the learning marketplace at Guild Education, the company sought to invert the traditional tuition reimbursement model, which typically benefits older, senior-level employees with time and money to spare. Guild Education serves as a middleman between employers and learning institutions, in addition to providing services on its platform, like one-on-one coaching, for student-workers.

  “If you’re requiring employees to pay out of pocket costs upfront, that’s a very restrictive policy,” he told Vox. “We’re helping employers figure out which institutions best serve working adult learners, and with our platform, we try to eliminate any friction that comes with the college application process.”

  While the option is convenient, most employers select degrees from institutions that align with their own internal careers, which might not always serve the personal interests of all employees. In some cases, workers may have more limited options and have to pay out of pocket if they choose to pursue an in-person program (although they can apply for reimbursement). The online degrees offered are typically in fields vetted by the employer for specific internal career paths, generally related to business, science, or technology.

  “Education is a hard thing to judge the value of,” said Joshua Goodman, an associate professor of education and economics at Boston University. “Some of these employers are partnering with public institutions, which is a good thing since there might be more forms of accountability, but it’s still not a guarantee that what they’re going to produce is valuable for students and will help them in the labor market.”

  While the pandemic has made virtual learning — and by extension, online college programs — more popular than ever, prospective employers still don’t appear to value online degrees much, Goodman said. An online degree could be grounds for promotion within a specific company. The reality of the larger labor market, however, is much more complex.

  “Research has shown that employers are less likely to call you back, compared to a candidate who graduated from a brick-and-mortar institution,” Goodman told Vox. Still, these factors are dependent on the program, and whether students are receiving a degree that’s distinguished as online.

  It’s too early to tell how beneficial these corporate-sponsored programs might be. The initiatives are fairly new and managed by private companies, so there is limited data available for researchers to establish concrete conclusions. They do, however, appear to benefit low-income students and adult workers without existing undergraduate degrees, who don’t have the money or time to attend school while working full-time. For them, finishing college without debt could be life- changing.

  “Most students want to graduate debt-free, but the reality is, it’s pretty rare to get a full-ride scholarship if you’re not an outstanding student or athlete,” Logan, the former Starbucks employee, told Vox. In his two-and-a-half years at the company, he enrolled in online classes at Arizona State to get a degree in organizational leadership. Logan initially put down $5,000 to enroll, an amount that was later reimbursed through his paycheck every semester until he graduated.

  The program’s benefits kept Logan at Starbucks until he graduated, but when Logan began his job search, there were limited, low-paying opportunities to climb the corporate ladder, at least from his position as a shift supervisor. He was offered the role of assistant store manager when he announced his departure, but he didn’t think about staying, since the starting salary was so low. Ultimately, Logan stayed at Starbucks for the duration of his classes, but not for very long afterward.

  With turnover rates in food service and retail at an all-time high, employee retention is crucial. It saves money and time involved in hiring, onboarding, and training new workers. By extending an employee’s work-span at a company, these education programs end up helping employers as much as the workers who take advantage of them, from the positive publicity to the tax deductions that benefit companies’ bottom line. Research has backed this up: Employees who take advantage of education benefits are more productive and likelier to stay longer with their employers than those who don’t.

  In late July, Target said it will commit $50 million a year to education initiatives until 2025. Dan Price, an entrepreneur and CEO of an online credit card processing company, pointed out that, when calculating the cost per worker, Target isn’t actually breaking the bank: An online degree only costs about $147 per worker per year. Not every worker seeks out these benefits, or is even eligible for them. For every success story like Logan’s, there are many untold experiences from those who failed to qualify or are struggling to balance work and school, including those not enrolled in corporate-sponsored online programs.

  Target got glowing stories for offering workers ‘free tuition’
  
  Fine print: It’s spending $50M/year - $147 per worker. The free offer applies to Target-friendly degrees.
  
  Target last year
  Added $15B in revenue
  Gave CEO $56M raise
  *Paid median worker $24khttps://t.co/gRQ5nZepBb

  — Dan Price (@DanPriceSeattle) August 4, 2021

Kenneth Kane, a 22-year-old former Chipotle employee, put in a year’s worth of work at the company in the hopes of receiving the company’s tuition reimbursement benefit. To qualify, according to Chipotle’s current standards, workers have to be employed for at least four months and put in an average of 15 hours a week before they could apply, and work an additional six months before any reimbursement is cashed out. Kane told Vox he had submitted most of his paperwork, and was initially approved for the benefit. Later on, Kane learned that he didn’t qualify for the reimbursement because he hadn’t worked enough hours.

“I hadn’t worked enough hours in the last however-many weeks when they evaluated my work schedule,” Kane told Vox. “Although you have to work an average of 15 hours a week, which is pretty doable, I wasn’t informed that this average would be determined within a certain period of time.”

For employees attending college in-person, these requirements can be challenging to meet, especially since students’ schedules are subject to extended breaks. “It really isn’t ideal for a regular college student, especially if you’re from out of town,” Kane added. “You have to plan to start work before the semester you qualify for and stay for a certain period after the semester ends.” Plus, when the turnover rate is high, fewer people end up qualifying for the benefits. “It’s food service,” he said. “It’s not a fun place to work, especially when you’re a student.”

The reality of retail and food service work is still bleak. When an employee is hired, they are, first and foremost, expected to work. College benefits are only benefits, after all — something that’s expected to concern workers after hours, not while they’re on shift. Some employees are on the brink of quitting, but stay on the job to reap the college benefits. On public forums like Reddit, student-employees have complained about the struggle to balance work and in-person school, when managers are scheduling them for shifts they haven’t requested, adding in extra hours, or acting exasperated when they request time off for exams and breaks. In one anonymous post on the Walmart subreddit, a part-time employee claimed that they felt pressured by their manager to switch into full-time due to staffing shortages, despite attending college.

It’s uncertain whether the promise of a free college degree will keep workers at a low-paying, labor-intensive job for very long. It boils down to an individual’s circumstance. The concept of debt-free college is theoretically more available to working Americans than ever, but the terms and conditions — of who can access higher education and what type of degree a student can earn — can too often be decided by private corporations.

• Why Biden was so set on withdrawing from Afghanistan -

  

  Even in 2009, he didn’t believe the military had a strategy for victory.

  To understand President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan against the advice of the US military establishment, you need to go back to a debate that played out more than a decade ago, during the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency.

  In 2009, the new Obama administration debated whether to “surge” troop levels in Afghanistan after nearly eight years of war had failed to quell the insurgency from the overthrown Taliban forces. Top generals asked early that year for 17,000 more US troops and then, having gotten those, asked for an additional 40,000 to try to weaken the Taliban and strengthen the Afghan government.

  Then-Vice President Biden was consistently one of the biggest skeptics of the military’s recommendations. Throughout months of debate, he repeatedly raised the inconvenient point that the generals’ preferred strategy seemed extremely unlikely to lead to actual victory. “We have not thought through our strategic goals!” he shouted during the Obama administration’s first meeting on the war in Afghanistan.

  Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

  All this was documented at the time in Bob Woodward’s deeply reported 2010 book Obama’s Wars. Biden did not actually support withdrawal at the time — he pushed for a more limited mission focused on counterterrorism, accompanied by a smaller troop surge than the military wanted.

  But his dark view of the long-term picture was clearly vindicated in the decade since. Now that Biden is president and has actually withdrawn from the war — leading to a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan — it’s worth revisiting that past debate, as outlined in Woodward’s book, to understand why his mind was so firmly made up.

  What Biden argued in 2009

  The US initially invaded Afghanistan in 2001 because its Taliban regime had sheltered Osama bin Laden’s terrorist group al-Qaeda; the military deposed the Taliban and sent bin Laden fleeing from the country by the end of that year.

  After that, Americans became distracted by a separate war of choice in Iraq, while a Taliban insurgency brewed in Afghanistan and terrorist groups relocated to Pakistan and other countries.

  So a grueling, months-long debate unfolded during Obama’s first year in office over what, exactly, the US’s goals should then be in Afghanistan, and whether many more troops were needed to accomplish them. Woodward chronicles this debate in Obama’s Wars in exhaustive detail. Military leaders wanted tens of thousands more troops to implement an expansive counterinsurgency mission in an effort to stabilize the country, as had just been done in Iraq.

  Biden didn’t buy it. At every step, he tried to argue for less — for a more limited mission than the military was asking for. During meetings, this often made him the skunk at the garden party as he made a few noteworthy arguments:

  Building a functioning nation-state in Afghanistan was impossible. Woodward writes that during one October meeting, Biden asked the generals, “If the government’s a criminal syndicate a year from now, how will troops make a difference?” He followed up with, “If a year from now there is no demonstrable progress in governance, what do we do?” He didn’t receive a convincing answer to either question.

  Later on, he wrote memos to Obama arguing for “no full counterinsurgency” and “no nation-building.” He thought the military’s goals of strengthening Afghanistan’s military and police force were doomed. And he said the following at a meeting with National Security Council leaders, per Woodward:

  Historically, [Biden] said, it’s been very difficult—impossible—for foreign interventions to prevail in Afghanistan. With tens of thousands of troops on the ground already, if we can’t do it with this number and we don’t have a reliable partner in the Afghanistan government, then it seems irresponsible to inject additional troops on top of that. We’re just prolonging failure at that point, he said.

  The Afghan Taliban posed little threat to the US homeland. Biden wrote a six-page memo to Obama in which he questioned intelligence reports portraying the Taliban as a new al-Qaeda recruiting foreign fighters that posed a transnational terrorist threat. “Biden indicated that, based on the way he read the intelligence reports, the phenomenon was grossly exaggerated,” Woodward writes. “The vice president did not see evidence that the Pashtun Taliban projected a global jihadist ideology, let alone designs on the American homeland.”

At a meeting discussing the US strategy in Afghanistan, Biden asked, “Is there any evidence the Afghan Taliban advocates attacks outside of Afghanistan and on the U.S., or if it took over more of Afghanistan it would have more of an outward focus?” An intelligence official responded that there was no evidence.

The fall of Afghanistan’s government wouldn’t be so bad. Woodward describes a phone conversation between the president and vice president near the end of the review, during which Biden said “it would not be that bad if the Karzai government fell.” The book does not elaborate on what exactly Biden meant by this, but Obama disagreed, arguing that “the downside was too great.”

But Biden didn’t argue for full withdrawal back then

Biden diagnosed the problems well, and he was likely the high-level official most skeptical of the Afghanistan war in the Obama administration. But though his logic arguably pointed toward a withdrawal of troops in the near future, he didn’t argue for that — it simply seemed too unpalatable. Officials were not ready to stomach the Taliban retaking the country.

Instead, Biden proposed a smaller surge of 20,000 troops rather than 40,000, with a mission of “counterterrorism” as opposed to counterinsurgency. (Think targeting terrorists rather than nation-building.) The military fired back that that would be insufficient. Obama ended up agreeing to send 30,000 troops and satisfy most of the military’s demands, in part because he did not want to “break with” then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Woodward writes.

Shah Marai/AFP via Getty Images

After a few years with the heavily expanded troop presence that, as Biden predicted, did not result in Afghanistan becoming a functioning government or in security forces capable of defeating the Taliban, Obama began a troop drawdown in his second term. Since then, US policy has essentially been to kick the can down the road.

In 2015, then-Vox staffer Max Fisher wrote, “The war is already lost, and has been for years,” adding that the only remaining mission was “to temporarily stave off Afghanistan’s inevitable collapse, a few months at a time.”

Former President Donald Trump continued that can-kicking until 2020, when he reached a deal with the Taliban to end the war. It then fell on Biden to decide whether to stick with that arrangement. He did so — rejecting advice from his generals — and a Taliban takeover has now occurred. But his decision was no doubt grounded in the fact that he’s had these debates before.

From The Hindu: Sports

• A winning Snake boat waits out the pandemic - Thomas Daniel’s affection for his family boat, a Nehru Trophy winner, inspires a 1000 pages scrap book that records, in photographs and news, the life and times of Kerala’s boat races since 1975

• Neeraj Chopra catches fever, leaves welcome function midway at home village - Mr. Chopra has been on a busy schedule since his return to the country last Monday after winning India’s first Olympic medal in athletics

• First batch of Indian athletes leaves for Tokyo Paralympics amid warm send-off - The 8-member group was accorded a send-off at the Indira Gandhi International Airport by officials of Sports Ministry, Sports Authority of India and Paralympic Committee of India.

• First major test for long jumper Shaili - Neeraj’s breakthrough gold likely to inspire those at u-20 Worlds

• Mark Wood a major doubt for third Test against India - Wood, who landed awkwardly on his right shoulder while fielding on day four of the second Test at Lord’s, bowled through the pain on the final day

From The Hindu: National News

• ‘Palaharam’ packs for Onam turn hot sellers - Add that crunch and a dash of sweetness to your Onam with these ethnic snacks

• Manipuri Language Day to be observed in Imphal - Language activists taken aback by the conditions imposed for the first time

• Cabinet nod for ₹ 11,040 crore National Mission on edible oils-oil palm - The Cabinet on Wednesday approved the National Mission on Edible Oils – Oil Palm (NMEO-OP) with a financial outlay of ₹ 11,040 crore to promote the d

• Kerala will complete digital resurvey in four years: Revenue Minister - Cabinet approves ₹807.98-crore project for extending resurvey to 1,550 villages

• Four separatist leaders held for ‘selling’ Pakistani MBBS seats, using money to fund terrorism - The probe into the case suggested that the money collected from the parents of the aspiring or potential students was used, at least partly, to support and fund terrorism and separatism, the spokesperson said.

From BBC: Europe

• Afghan crisis: Chaos as Europeans scramble to evacuate Kabul - Several countries rush to fly people out, as the Dutch government is criticised for reacting slowly.

• Lithuania says Belarus officers illegally pushed migrants over border - Video shows 12 Belarusian officers in riot gear as migrants scramble towards Lithuanian territory.

• I don’t believe Taliban pledge on women’s rights, Priti Patel says - The bulk of Afghans resettled in the UK will be persecuted minorities, the home secretary says.

• Teenage pilot Zara Rutherford begins solo round-world record bid - Zara Rutherford completes the first leg of her journey from Belgium to England.

• France wildfire: Thousands evacuated as blaze rages near Riviera - Firefighters clear campsites in the Var region as some 5,000 hectares are destroyed by fire.

From Ars Technica

• Not-a-Linux distro review: SerenityOS is a Unix-y love letter to the ‘90s - Although it’s nowhere near ready for prime time, there’s a lot to love here. - link

• Pandemic of unvaccinated continues to rage as states set new COVID records - Seven states have hit new peaks for COVID hospitalizations. - link

• German chemists identified over 7,700 different chemical formulas in beers - Team combined two mass spectrometry techniques to analyze samples in 10 minutes. - link

• Updated app from Apple brings iCloud Passwords to Windows - It’s certainly not on par with 1Password, but it’s a welcome addition anyway. - link

• iPhone keyboard for blind to shut down as maker cites Apple “abuse” of developers - Apple falsely claimed that FlickType broke “full access” rule, developer says. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• I saw a homeless man with a sign that read “$1 for a dirty joke” -

  Seemed like a good investment to me so I gladly handed over a dollar.

  Homeless man: “Look there, you can see a Rooster right? How many legs does it have?”

  Me: “Two?”

  Homeless man: “Correct, now how many wings does this Rooster have?”

  Me: “Two?”

  Homeless man: “Right, now how many eyes this Rooster have?”

  Me: “Two?”

  Homeless man: “Correct again! Now look over there, you see a Cat right?

  Me: “Yes, I see a cat”

  Homeless man: “how many hairs on that cat’s whiskers?”

  Me: “I don’t know?”

  Homeless man: “Bro, why you know so much about cock and know nothing about pussy?”

  submitted by /u/NamesAre4TombStones
  [link] [comments]

• Russian Prime Minister Medvedev comes to President Putin and nervously tells him to abolish time zones. -

  “Why”? Putin asks

  " I fly to another city, call home and everyone is asleep. I woke you up at 4AM in the morning, but I thought it was only evening. - I call Angela Merkel to congratulate her on her birthday and she tells me she had it yesterday. - I wish the Chinese President a happy New Year, and he says it will be tomorrow."

  “Indeed” Putin replies “but that’s only minor stuff, remember when that Polish plane crashed with the president? I called them to express my condolences, but the plane hadn’t taken off yet!!”

  submitted by /u/logikb
  [link] [comments]

• An innocent joke to cheer you up… -

  Lulu, a little girl asks her mum, “Mum, can I take Daisy (a dog) for a walk around the block?”

  Mum replies “No, because she is in heat.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Lulu.

  “Go and ask your father. I think he’s in the garage.”

  Lulu goes out to the garage and says, “Dad, can I take Daisy for a walk around the block? I asked Mum, but she said the dog was on the heat, and to come ask you.”

  He took a rag, soaked it in petrol, and scrubbed the dog’s backside with it to disguise the scent.

  “Ok, you can go now, but keep her on the leash and only go one time around the block.”

  Lulu left and returned a few minutes later with no dog on the leash… Surprised, Dad asked, “Where’s Daisy?”

  Lulu said, “She ran out of petrol about halfway round the block, so another dog is pushing her home!”

  submitted by /u/marblechocolate
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• I have a fear of overly intricate buildings. -

  I have a complex complex complex.

  submitted by /u/Complainingg-
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• Never accept tea offered by the Russian President -

  You don´t know what Vladimir Putin.

  submitted by /u/logikb
  [link] [comments]