Archive: The Wall Street Journal

Dave Chappelle May Help Tame Wokeness There are other signs, too, that our revolution may be moving past its Terror and toward its Thermidor.

-- The Wall Street Journal:

Captain Kirk was in space. “I hope I never recover from this,” William Shatner said after the capsule set down in scrub near Van Horn, Texas. He’d seen the blueness, the thin ribbon of earth’s atmosphere, the delicacy and majesty. “I hope I can maintain what I feel now, I don’t want to lose it,” […]

Progressives Hold the Capital Captive Biden turns out to be far less moderate than advertised, and voters aren’t liking what they see.

-- The Wall Street Journal:

Washington Our capital is greatly diminished compared with its old crackling pre-pandemic, pre-George Floyd self. It is quieter, less bustling, drabber. A lot of government employees are still working at home, and you can feel it in the air, the sense that the federal government is coming out of everyone’s dining room. It was my […]

Will Biden’s Fall Be Worse Than His Summer? From the Afghan debacle to his economic overreach, the White House has ample reason for alarm.

-- The Wall Street Journal:

The White House should be feeling alarm. It hasn’t been a good summer for the president, and it isn’t looking to be a good fall. The manner and timing of the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a catastrophe that left Americans infuriated and ashamed. The president’s statements and interviews in the aftermath were highly unsuccessful. The […]

What Milley Got Right—and Wrong His preoccupation with his own image points to a larger problem, though his talk with Li was justified.

-- The Wall Street Journal:

Two days after the Jan. 6 Capitol assault, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, placed an urgent call “on a top secret, back-channel line,” to his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng. This is from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book, “Peril.” Gen. Milley believed Gen. Li and others in the […]

The Afghan Fiasco Will Stick to Biden It hit at his reputational core. He no longer comes across as empathetic, much less serious.

-- The Wall Street Journal:

August changed things; it wasn’t just a bad month. It left a lingering, still head-shaking sense of “This isn’t how we do things.” We don’t make up withdrawal dates that will have symbolism for photo-ops with the flinty, determined president looking flinty and determined on the 20th anniversary of 9/11; we don’t time epic strategic […]

What Might Have Been at Tora Bora A missed opportunity to get bin Laden set the stage for 20 years of frustrating, painful war in Afghanistan.

-- The Wall Street Journal:

“For all sad words of tongue or pen, / The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’” I keep thinking of what happened at Tora Bora. What a richly consequential screw-up it was, and how different the coming years might have been, the whole adventure might have been, if we’d gotten it right. From the […]

What Biden Can Still Save in Afghanistan His careless withdrawal stranded thousands of U.S. citizens and an untold number of local allies.

-- The Wall Street Journal:

The ends of things matter as much as the beginnings. This end was unworthy of an epic struggle. It was not a departure but an abandonment. We left carelessly, with incompetence that can hardly be imagined. Could there have been less planning and foresight? That’s what will follow Joe Biden now, his carelessness and, when […]

Covid Anxiety and Fear of the Base Americans need to be more tactful and understanding when it comes to measures like masks and vaccines.

-- The Wall Street Journal:

They’re all afraid of their base. That’s the central fact of American political life now, that leaders of all sorts aren’t leading their people but are terrified of getting crosswise with them. They’re afraid of their own fans. This is true of everyone from cable anchors and hosts who know exactly who’s watching and what […]