“Originally developed by Google before being partially scrapped for not being economically viable, Project Loon was a pre-Starlink attempt to bring mobile internet to rural areas by attaching antennas to weather balloons that could function as de facto cell phone towers floating more than 10 miles up in the air. The idea has only been tested on a large scale once—in Puerto Rico during the aftermath of the two devastating hurricanes that hit the island in 2017—but showed some promise. A 2018 test showed that a fleet of Loon balloons could maintain a connection over 620 miles, according to the Associated Press.
Again, Cuba is just 90 miles from the United States.
It’s not a slam dunk, of course. Signals could be jammed by the Cuban government, which already tries to block Radio Televisión Martí as much as possible. Many Cubans’ cell phones might not be able to connect due to differences in network protocols. And whatever connectivity is possible will be slow and spotty, at least by American standards.
But it may be worth making the attempt anyway, particularly since the technology already exists and could be deployed for minimal cost. There’s little to lose, and much that could be gained—not just in Cuba, but in other fights against tyrannical regimes.”
“A federal judge has sentenced a leaker to prison for helping keep Americans informed about abuses being perpetrated in their name.
Daniel Hale is a former Air Force intelligence analyst who revealed how America’s secret drone assassinations in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia were likely killing untold numbers of innocent people. On Tuesday he was sentenced to 45 months in prison after he previously pleaded guilty to passing along classified documents to a reporter that were subsequently published in 2015.”
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“The government insisted that its secret “kill list” of terrorists was carefully vetted, and the drone strikes were only deployed to kill those the government and military believed it was unfeasible to arrest.
The reality, Hale revealed, was the drone strikes regularly resulted in the death of innocents, and the government covered it up by automatically classifying anybody killed as “militants” even when they weren’t the targets of the strikes. This allowed the government to insist that civilian casualties were being kept to a minimum.”
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“The feds finally caught up with Hale in 2019 and arrested him, charging him with espionage. After the arrest, Hale pleaded guilty and essentially threw himself at the mercy of the court, acknowledging that he violated the law while refusing to apologize for it. In a lengthy handwritten letter to U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady, Hale described an incident where a drone strike he helped arrange failed to kill its target (an Afghan man allegedly involved in making car bombs) and instead killed his 5-year-old daughter. He wrote, “Now, whenever I encounter an individual who thinks that drone warfare is justified and reliably keeps America safe, I remember that time and ask myself how I could possibly believe that I am a good person, deserving of my life and the right to pursue happiness.””
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“The documentation matters. The Washington Post notes that Hale’s leaking of documentation showing how the government put people on secret terrorism watchlists helped civil rights lawyers fight for due process for their clients.
Hale is yet another case where the federal government has used espionage laws not to punish spies who reveal classified information to our country’s enemies, but to punish people who reveal the government’s unethical and illegal behavior to our country’s own citizens.”
“Keeping out refugees and other would-be migrants often harms current American citizens, too. I detailed some of the ways here. Perhaps the closest historical analogue to the current situation is the fall of Saigon, in 1975, after which the US accepted 130,000 Vietnamese refugees, in the immediate aftermath, and many more in succeeding years. Vietnamese immigrants have become valuable contributors to America’s economy and society, despite being from a poor society with many cultural differences relative to the US. There is every reason to expect that Afghan migrants can follow in their footsteps.
In addition to these general considerations, there are also some specific to the Afghan case. To begin with, in this instance the US government does deserve a share of the blame for the horrible situation Afghans find themselves in.
The exact scope of US responsibility for the present debacle is a matter of debate. But, at the very least, Donald Trump bears a hefty share of blame for signing a terrible agreement with the Taliban last year, including releasing 5000 Taliban prisoners, many of whom predictably rejoined the fight. Joe Biden deserves great blame, as well, including for doubling down on Trump’s awful policy despite the availability of less-bad alternatives, and for the terrible planning and management of the withdrawal. While the primary responsibility for Taliban oppression rests with the Taliban themselves, the US government contributed to the sorry state of affairs that led to the restoration of Taliban rule, and thereby has a greater-than-usual obligation to give refuge to its victims.
There are also more pragmatic reasons for aiding Afghan refugees. Many of those now fleeing helped US forces or worked with Americans and other Westerners to promote human rights in Afghanistan, particularly equality for women. If we do not give refuge to to our allies and supporters, we further damage our already diminished reputation for being reliable and trustworthy allies. The Afghan war is unlikely to be the last time we will need local help to combat terrorists and other adversaries. Such assistance is unlikely to be forthcoming if those who might provide it fear that the US will repay them by leaving them in the lurch.”
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“Some fear that accepting large numbers of Afghan refugees would risk a wave of crime or terrorism. Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute explains why such fears are overblown. Indeed, as he documents, Afghan migrants actually have lower rates of crime and terrorism than native-born Americans. And, obviously, those most eager to flee Taliban rule are unlikely to share its ideology.”
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“It will not be easy to come to grips with the disastrous outcome in Afghanistan, or to figure out all the lessons that might be drawn from it. But the US can start by doing right by those fleeing oppression.”
“one underappreciated mistake has been Washington’s long-running effort to suppress the cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan and, in turn, the production of heroin and other opioids. The campaign most likely had little effect on the amount of poppy grown. Instead it shifted cultivation to Taliban-controlled territories, bolstering the militia’s revenues.”
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“American efforts to suppress poppy cultivation, either through direct eradication or through incentives to grow other crops, failed to account for the basics of supply and demand. Suppression policies focus on shrinking supply, which means a fixed quantity of opium will become more expensive to produce. These policies involve a mix of threats to destroy poppy fields and the provision of resources (such as fertilizers) to encourage farmers to cultivate other crops. But if demand is not very sensitive to price increases, the quantity demanded will change little in response to the reduction in supply.”
“In 20 years of conflict, the U.S. has accomplished its initial security goals. The 2001-era Taliban was ousted, and since 9/11, no terrorist attack on U.S. soil has been carried out by an organization rooted in Afghanistan. Security concerns now lie elsewhere. “The Biden administration correctly assessed that the threat of terrorism from Afghanistan today is in fact smaller than from various parts of Africa and the Middle East,” as Vanda Felbab-Brown writes for the Brookings Institution. Al Qaeda’s capacities are limited. To say that Afghanistan hosts the same level of outward threat that it once did is patently false.
Internal threats do exist, largely in the form of a Taliban emboldened by the U.S. departure. Taliban fighters say they’ve gained control of 85 percent of Afghanistan—a claim the Afghan government has dismissed as propaganda. It’s impossible to correctly assess current territory holdings, but Taliban attacks and seizures have increased recently. As a result, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that the Afghan government could fall just six months after the Americans take their leave. Two former secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, both worry about the implications of a full withdrawal; Rice even suggested the U.S. may need to return, according to Axios.”
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“It’s extremely unlikely that a 21st year of conflict would be decisive after the first 20 haven’t been. We know the nature of the conflict and what continued warfare would involve—more dead soldiers, more dead civilians, and an increasingly futile commitment to nation building that will, in all likelihood, result in a less stable country.”
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“Leaving without a clear picture of what Afghanistan’s government will look like in just a few months is an unsatisfying conclusion to America’s longest war. That doesn’t mean the U.S. should put off its withdrawal, or that it should already be gearing up to send troops back. While there may be an effective American role to be had in facilitating future peace talks between Afghanistan’s warring parties, American participation in the conflict must end.
Politicians are wrong to treat the Afghanistan withdrawal as Biden’s fatal blow. It’s a sign of humility—recognizing where the U.S. has failed and where it cannot possibly succeed. It’s quite easy for presidents to start wars. It’s another thing entirely to end them.”
“Based on a preliminary assessment, U.S. officials believe the suicide vest used in the attack, which killed at least 169 Afghans in addition to the 13 Americans, carried about 25 pounds of explosives and was loaded with shrapnel”
“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.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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.””
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“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.
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.”
“On Tuesday, an unsealed Justice Department indictment exposed a shocking international kidnapping plot. According to federal prosecutors, Iranian intelligence official Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani and three other foreign intelligence assets conspired to kidnap Iranian American author and journalist Masih Alinejad from her home in Brooklyn.
Alinejad is a champion of women’s rights and an outspoken critic of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As host of Voice of America Persian’s show Tablet, she has reported extensively on the regime’s human rights abuses, particularly those carried out against women.”
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“Although the FBI caught on before the plot could be carried out, these events nonetheless set a terrifying precedent for dissidents, journalists, and human rights advocates at home and abroad. Iran’s abduction attempt is an assault not just on Alinejad but on the very tenets of freedom. No person on American soil should live in fear of retaliation for simply speaking out to defend human rights.”
““Ted Cruz is making it very hard on him,” Murphy said bluntly of the Texas Republican senator. “Ted Cruz is holding up every single State Department nominee right now, so the Republican strategy is to try to make it as hard as possible for President Biden to manage crises around the world.”
Cruz, who is widely considered a possible candidate in the next presidential cycle, has held up Biden’s nominees to key national-security positions. He says it’s an effort to encourage the administration to fully implement congressionally mandated sanctions for the controversial Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipeline known as Nord Stream II.”
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“Biden has declined to fully impose those sanctions — which could have crippled the pipeline — as the German government pushes for its completion. The president has said he wants to patch up U.S. alliances with European allies like Germany, which suffered under Trump.”