Tag: afghanistan

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 327

Two weeks of con­tent dis­tilled into one. It’s like juice con­cen­trate!

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

This is vol­ume 327, and 327 is the largest num­ber such that it togeth­er with its dou­ble and triple con­tain every dig­it 1–9 once: 327 dou­bled is 654 and tripled it is 981. Odd but cool.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Teacher Who Nev­er Spoke (Mau­reeen Swinger, Plough): “The sum­mer my broth­er Duane turned twen­ty, a for­mi­da­ble young man stayed with us on a break from the Ivy League. He had nev­er, to anyone’s knowl­edge, lost an argu­ment. Sev­er­al weeks into his vis­it, my moth­er walked into the din­ing room where my broth­er and his friend were, in the­o­ry, eat­ing lunch. In real­i­ty, both men were sit­ting at the table with locked jaws. One didn’t have to say, ‘I need you to eat.’ The oth­er didn’t need to say, ‘Hell, no.’ They both knew exact­ly what was going on: the Ivy Lea­guer was los­ing an argu­ment to my broth­er, who had nev­er learned to speak.”
    • This is from a while ago (2017), but I must have missed it. Sim­ply astound­ing. I wept while read­ing it. Any­one tak­ing a class where Peter Singer’s phi­los­o­phy is high­ly regard­ed should read this ASAP.
  2. She was sold to a stranger so her fam­i­ly could eat as Afghanistan crum­bles (Anna Coren, Jessie Yeung and Abdul Basir Bina, CNN): “Mag­ul, a 10-year-old girl in neigh­bor­ing Ghor province, cries every day as she pre­pares to be sold to a 70-year-old man to set­tle her fam­i­ly’s debts. Her par­ents had bor­rowed 200,000 Afgha­nis ($2,200) from a neigh­bor in their vil­lage — but with­out a job or sav­ings, they have no way of return­ing the mon­ey.”
    • This is one of the most depress­ing things I have read in some time.
  3. What hap­pens when peo­ple in Texas can’t get abor­tions: ‘Dia­pers save a lot more babies than ultra­sounds’ (Casey Parks, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I always tell peo­ple, ‘Dia­pers save a lot more babies than ultra­sounds.’ ” Har­ing said. “I don’t want an ultra­sound machine. I want tons of dia­pers. Buy me $20,000, $40,000, $50,000 worth of dia­pers because if you have a woman who comes in with four kids — yeah, look­ing at the baby, she real­izes it’s a human being. But if you tell her, ‘I’m going to give you dia­pers for all four kids,’ believe me, the dia­pers for all four kids is going to save that baby a lot quick­er than a lit­tle pen­nant on the screen.”
    • It’s rare to read a sym­pa­thet­ic sto­ry about a pro-life cen­ter in a major Amer­i­can news­pa­per.
  4. Philip Yancey’s Mes­sage of Grace (Peter Wehn­er, The Atlantic): “Yancey told the par­ents in the audi­ence that, bib­li­cal­ly, God grieves as much as they do; that God loves their chil­dren as much as they do; and that God is deeply pained by the state of this bro­ken world. To his sur­prise, he found his faith affirmed rather than shat­tered. He wit­nessed in per­son some­thing the the­olo­gian Miroslav Volf wrote on the day after the New­town shoot­ings: ‘Those who observe suf­fer­ing are tempt­ed to reject God; those who expe­ri­ence it often can­not give up on God, their solace and their agony.’ ”
    • This is one of the most gospel-cen­tric arti­cles I have read in a major pub­li­ca­tion in quite some time.
  5. When All The Media Nar­ra­tives Col­lapse (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “If you look back at the last few years, the record of errors, small and large, about major sto­ries, is hard to deny. It’s as if the more Don­ald Trump accused the MSM of being ‘fake news’ the more assid­u­ous­ly they tried to prove him right.”
  6. His Rea­sons for Oppos­ing Trump Were Bib­li­cal. Now a Top Chris­t­ian Edi­tor Is Out. (Ben Smith, New York Times): “As the long­time edi­tor of World, a Chris­t­ian news orga­ni­za­tion that has a web­site, a biweek­ly mag­a­zine and a set of pod­casts, Mr. Olasky has deliv­ered a mix of hard news and watch­dog arti­cles about the evan­gel­i­cal realm under a jour­nal­is­tic phi­los­o­phy he calls ‘bib­li­cal objec­tiv­i­ty.’ It involves tak­ing strong stands where the Bible is clear, which has led World to oppose abor­tion rights and sup­port refugees, he says, and to fol­low reportable facts where the Bible doesn’t pro­vide clear guid­ance.”
  7. Some pan­dem­ic per­spec­tives:
    • The Covid pan­dem­ic is not tak­ing the very best of turns (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “While the fog of war is thick right now, the ear­ly data on Nu sug­gests that it may be a big deal. Even if it’s not, how­ev­er, it has been obvi­ous since we got the vac­cines that vac­cine escape is a con­cern. You can debate whether the prob­a­bil­i­ty of a vac­cine escap­ing vari­ant is 20% or 80%, but in any case we need effec­tive con­tin­gency plans in place. If we fail to respond effec­tive­ly to Nu, that will be a con­sid­er­ably greater insti­tu­tion­al fail­ure than any­thing that hap­pened at the out­set of the pan­dem­ic. We’ve had almost two years since the first COVID case and one year from the vac­cine approvals to pre­pare. So I ask: what is the plan for the vac­cine-escap­ing vari­ant?”
    • The Weird­ness of Gov­ern­ment Vari­a­tion in COVID-19 Respons­es (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “But imag­ine at the start of the pan­dem­ic, some­one had said to you ‘Every­one will face the exis­tence of the same dis­ease, and have access to the exact same tools to fight it. But in some EU coun­tries or US states, peo­ple won’t be allowed to leave their house and have to cov­er their faces in pub­lic. In oth­er places, gov­ern­ment will just leave peo­ple alone. Vast dif­fer­ences of this sort will exist across juris­dic­tions that are sim­i­lar on objec­tive met­rics of how bad the pan­dem­ic is at any par­tic­u­lar moment.’ I would’ve found this to be a very unlike­ly out­come! You could’ve con­vinced me EU states would do very lit­tle on COVID-19, or that they would do lock­downs every­where. I would not have believed that you could have two neigh­bor­ing coun­tries that have sim­i­lar num­bers, but one of them forces every­one to stay home, while the oth­er doesn’t. This is the kind of extreme vari­a­tion in pol­i­cy we don’t see in oth­er areas.”
    • The Vac­cine Moment, part one (Paul Kingsnorth, Sub­stack): “Covid is a rev­e­la­tion. It has lain bare splits in the social fab­ric that were always there but could be ignored in bet­ter times. It has revealed the com­pli­ance of the lega­cy media and the pow­er of Sil­i­con Val­ley to curate and con­trol the pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion. It has con­firmed the sly dis­hon­esty of polit­i­cal lead­ers, and their ulti­mate obei­sance to cor­po­rate pow­er. It has shown up ‘The Sci­ence’ for the com­pro­mised ide­ol­o­gy it is. Most of all, it has revealed the author­i­tar­i­an streak that lies beneath so many peo­ple, and which always emerges in fear­ful times.”
    • A tweet that made me laugh: “The WHO chose Omi­cron over Nu for the vari­ant of con­cern, prob­a­bly because it sounds too much like ‘new.’ But the next let­ter is not Omi­cron but Xi. Was that a lit­tle too on the nose?” (Jared Wal­czak, Twit­ter)

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have What Is It Like to Be a Man? (Phil Christ­man, The Hedge­hog Review): “I live out my mas­culin­i­ty most often as a per­verse avoid­ance of com­fort: the refusal of good clothes, mois­tur­iz­er, painkillers; hard phys­i­cal train­ing, pur­sued for its own sake and not because I enjoy it; a sense that there is a set amount of phys­i­cal pain or self-imposed dis­ci­pline that I owe the uni­verse.” Very well-written. Every­one will like­ly find parts they res­onate with and parts they reject. The author is a lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan and based on his CV seems to be a fair­ly devot­ed Epis­co­palian. First shared in vol­ume 178.

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 315

some extra­or­di­nar­i­ly inter­est­ing arti­cles this week — high­ly rec­om­mend­ed

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Today’s num­ber is 315, which is north­west when mea­sured on a com­pass.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Only­Fans and the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion (Samuel D. James, First Things): “If you look care­ful­ly, you can see how sobri­quets such as ‘sex work­er’ give away the game. The con­tem­po­rary lib­er­at­ed social order is an order of work­ers: naked bod­ies labor­ing round the clock, sac­ri­fic­ing dig­ni­ty and rep­u­ta­tion for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to nib­ble the crumbs that fall from Big Tech’s table. Our civilization’s efforts to com­mod­i­fy sex­u­al­i­ty can­not deliv­er what they promise. It is impos­si­ble to make sex a prod­uct or sub­scrip­tion; the clos­est thing is human traf­fick­ing, which, as it turns out, is a fea­ture and not a bug of the adult con­tent indus­try.” Straight fire.
  2. The World Is Cat­e­chiz­ing Us Whether We Real­ize It or Not (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “It is worth remem­ber­ing David Well’s famous def­i­n­i­tion: world­li­ness is what­ev­er makes right­eous­ness look strange and sin look nor­mal. Here’s the real­i­ty fac­ing every Chris­t­ian in the West: the mon­ey, pow­er, and pres­tige of the main­stream media, big time sports, big busi­ness, big tech, and almost all the insti­tu­tions of edu­ca­tion and enter­tain­ment are invest­ed in mak­ing sin look nor­mal.”
  3. Nike’s End of Men (Ethan Strauss, Sub­stack): “For all the talk of a racial reck­on­ing with­in major indus­tries, Nike’s main prob­lem is this: It’s a com­pa­ny built on mas­culin­i­ty, most specif­i­cal­ly Michael Jordan’s alpha dog brand of it. Now, due to its own ambi­tions, scan­dals, and intel­lec­tu­al trends, Nike finds mas­culin­i­ty prob­lem­at­ic enough to loud­ly reject.” This is WAY more inter­est­ing than I antic­i­pat­ed.
  4. Tet­lock and the Tal­iban (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “I have a PhD in polit­i­cal sci­ence with a focus on inter­na­tion­al rela­tions. Most peo­ple in my posi­tion would tell you that you should give my opin­ions on my top­ic of exper­tise more weight because of my cre­den­tials. I believe if any­thing, you should hold my degree against me, as get­ting a PhD is prob­a­bly the most inef­fi­cient way to under­stand a top­ic, and a per­son seek­ing that cre­den­tial has shown that they don’t under­stand that. I think I’ve been right on Afghanistan and oth­er Amer­i­can inter­ven­tions because of good intel­lec­tu­al habits, includ­ing a gen­uine con­cern with what is true. But that has lit­tle to do with any train­ing I got from polit­i­cal sci­ence.” This piece is quite good. I feel like I should add a dis­claimer like, “Warn­ing: aca­d­e­m­ic heresy ahead.”
  5. ‘When My Satire Becomes Pop­u­lar, I Must Ask, What Is the Prob­lem?’ (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “[Pop­u­lar satirists] can’t say, ‘I’m call­ing out pow­er.’ No, you are pow­er. Satirists must inter­ro­gate their own posi­tion­al­i­ty. I try to say, ‘How am I impli­cat­ed in this thing per­son­al­ly?’ Because satire nev­er used to be pop­u­lar.… So when my satire becomes pop­u­lar, I must ask, What is the prob­lem? Why are there so many peo­ple that are com­fort­able with my work?” A very per­cep­tive inter­view with Elnathan John. Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
  6. Hos­pi­tals and Insur­ers Didn’t Want You to See These Prices. Here’s Why. (Sarah Kliff & Josh Katz, New York Times): “This year, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment ordered hos­pi­tals to begin pub­lish­ing a prized secret: a com­plete list of the prices they nego­ti­ate with pri­vate insur­ers.… data from the hos­pi­tals that have com­plied hints at why the pow­er­ful indus­tries want­ed this infor­ma­tion to remain hid­den.” This is reveal­ing and irri­tat­ing.
  7. About Afghanistan:
    • We Must Learn From Our Defeat (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “We must learn the lessons of our fail­ure with great urgency. Amer­i­can pri­ma­cy has insu­lat­ed Amer­i­ca from the pains of our defeat. This will not be true for much longer. As I type these words my nation hur­tles towards a dark and uncer­tain future. The chal­lenge posed by an ambi­tious and revi­sion­ist Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Chi­na dwarfs any prob­lem a move­ment of illit­er­ate pop­py farm­ers could cre­ate. We have wast­ed the prof­its of our imperi­um away; in this more fee­ble state we now con­front the chal­lenge of a cen­tu­ry. We must not face it armed with the dys­func­tion of our past two decades. We must relearn how to be seri­ous.”
    • US spe­cial oper­a­tions vets car­ry out dar­ing mis­sion to save Afghan allies (James Gor­don Meek, ABC News): “The Afghan oper­a­tors, assets, inter­preters and their fam­i­lies were known as ‘pas­sen­gers’ and they were being guid­ed remote­ly by ‘shep­herds,’ who are, in most cas­es their loy­al for­mer U.S. spe­cial oper­a­tions forces and CIA com­rades and com­man­ders, accord­ing to chat room com­mu­ni­ca­tions viewed by ABC News.… Look­ing back at an effort that saved at least, by their count, 630 Afghan lives, Red­man expressed deep frus­tra­tion ‘that our own gov­ern­ment did­n’t do this. We did what we should do, as Amer­i­cans.’ ” Amaz­ing.
    • Three major net­works devot­ed a full five min­utes to Afghanistan in 2020 (Jim Lobe, Respon­si­ble State­craft): “If the U.S. gov­ern­ment was caught up short by the dra­mat­ic denoue­ment of its 20-year war in Afghanistan, view­ers of the three major net­works must have been tak­en entire­ly by sur­prise. Out of a com­bined 14,000-plus min­utes of the nation­al evening news broad­cast on CBS, ABC, and NBC last year, a grand total of five min­utes were devot­ed to Afghanistan…”
    • Let’s Not Pre­tend That the Way We With­drew From Afghanistan Was the Prob­lem (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “I will not pre­tend that I know how we should have left Afghanistan. But nei­ther do a lot of peo­ple dom­i­nat­ing the air­waves right now. And the con­fi­dent pro­nounce­ments to the con­trary over the past two weeks leave me wor­ried that Amer­i­ca has learned lit­tle. We are still hold­ing not just to the illu­sion of our con­trol, but to the illu­sion of our knowl­edge.”
    • The eco­nom­ics of Tal­iban finance (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “An exam­ple of Islamist gov­er­nance can be found on the stretch of road from Kab­ul to the Mile 78 bor­der cross­ing in south-west Farah province that bor­ders Iran. The road has more than 25 gov­ern­ment check­points and a fee is charged at mul­ti­ple points on the jour­ney. By con­trast, the Tal­iban who police the same road have far few­er check­points and give a receipt, so only a sin­gle pay­ment is nec­es­sary.” Very inter­est­ing, sum­ma­riz­ing a pay­walled piece.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Ian McE­wan ‘dubi­ous’ about schools study­ing his books, after he helped son with essay and got a C+ (Han­nah Fur­ness, The Tele­graph): this is a real arti­cle. First shared in vol­ume 151.

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 314

Afghanistan links at the bot­tom.

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

314 is rough­ly Ï€ times 100, and that makes me hap­py.

Afghanistan links are at the bot­tom and are well worth read­ing, but oth­er stuff is up top in case you’re over­whelmed already.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. A Guide to Find­ing Faith (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…the world in 2021, no less than the world in 1521 or 321, presents con­sid­er­able evi­dence of an orig­i­nat­ing intel­li­gence pre­sid­ing over a law-bound world well made for our minds to under­stand, and at the same time a panoply of spir­i­tu­al forces that seem to inter­vene unpre­dictably in our exis­tence.” This is a won­der­ful thing to have print­ed in the New York Times.
  2. The Real Col­lege Scan­dal (Agnes Callard, The Point Mag­a­zine): “If I had to mea­sure the worth of my class­es in my stu­dents’ sub­se­quent civic virtue or life sat­is­fac­tion, I couldn’t afford to lose touch with most of them after grad­u­a­tion. I am some­times sad­dened when I lose touch with them, but it nev­er caus­es me to won­der whether their edu­ca­tion was worth­while.” Enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  3. Ope­nAI Codex Live Demo (Ope­nAI, YouTube): thir­ty astound­ing min­utes. This tech­nol­o­gy is going to change SO MUCH. I’m hon­est­ly blown away. Sign up for beta access at https://openai.com/join
  4. Unmar­ried Sex Is Worse Than You Think (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra & Collin Hansen, Gospel Coali­tion): “Amer­i­cans talk a lot about sex. Any­one would think they’re hav­ing a lot of it.… Instead, the oppo­site has hap­pened. Young peo­ple are hav­ing less sex—and are less happy—than the mar­ried, church­go­ing gen­er­a­tion before them.”
  5. Does Cana­da have a reli­gion prob­lem? (Ray Pen­nings, Sub­stack): “In part­ner­ship with the Angus-Reid Insti­tute, Car­dus has been mea­sur­ing Cana­di­an spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. We asked about sev­en prac­tices — belief in God’s exis­tence, prayer, read­ing a scrip­ture, par­tic­i­pat­ing in wor­ship, believ­ing in an after­life, hav­ing reli­gious expe­ri­ences, teach­ing your kids about faith. We termed the 16 per­cent who do at least six of these ‘reli­gious­ly com­mit­ted’ and the 19 per­cent who do zero or one ‘non-believ­ers.’ That leaves the 64 per cent of Cana­di­ans in the mid­dle — nei­ther devout­ly reli­gious, nor reli­gious­ly indif­fer­ent. They’re a big chunk of the 86 per cent of Cana­di­ans who pray at least month­ly.  But many reli­gious Cana­di­ans, of var­i­ous faiths, don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly feel it’s safe to be pub­lic about their beliefs.” The author is the co-founder of Car­dus, a Cana­di­an think tank. Rec­om­mend­ed by a friend of the min­istry.
  6. Who Tells Them Things They Don’t Want to Hear? (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “…I don’t think and have nev­er sug­gest­ed that crowd­fund­ed media can replace the basic news­gath­er­ing func­tion of news­pa­pers and that the NYT in par­tic­u­lar still serves a vital func­tion in its fun­da­men­tal repor­to­r­i­al duties. This is, in fact, pre­cise­ly why I am so dis­turbed by the paper’s takeover by a fringe ide­ol­o­gy embraced by a tiny sliv­er of the Amer­i­can pub­lic and by behind-the-scenes high school bull­shit.”
    • These two lines at the end grabbed me, “It’s only integri­ty when it hurts, guys. Some­thing you write is only brave when it piss­es off all your friends and col­leagues.
  7. Con­cern­ing Afghanistan, the work­ing out of which has made me more ashamed of my coun­try than I can put into words.
    • What We Got Wrong in Afghanistan (Mike Jason, The Atlantic): “We didn’t send the right peo­ple, pre­pare them well, or reward them after­ward. We rotat­ed strangers on tours of up to a year and expect­ed them to build rela­tion­ships, then replaced them. We were over­ly opti­mistic and large­ly made things up as we went along. We didn’t like over­sight or tough ques­tions from Wash­ing­ton, and no one real­ly both­ered to hold us account­able any­way.… We didn’t fight a 20-year war in Afghanistan; we fought 20 inco­her­ent wars, one year at a time, with­out a sense of direc­tion.” The author is an Army vet who served in Afghanistan. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. Bru­tal.
    • I Was Deeply Involved in War in Afghanistan for More Than a Decade. Here’s What We Must Learn (James Stavridis, Time): “The on-the-ground lead­ers in Afghanistan, most­ly Army and Marine Corps, were over­whelm­ing­ly brave, thought­ful, and com­pe­tent. But as we learned over the long years, we sim­ply rotat­ed them too fre­quent­ly. If we had fought World War II by lim­it­ing Gen­er­al Eisen­how­er or Admi­ral Nimitz to one year tours of duty, the out­come would have been dif­fer­ent, to say the least. We made the same mis­take in Viet­nam, where every­one was on a one year tour, and the out­come was a dis­as­ter. This was reflect­ed up-and-down the chain of com­mand, and the lack of con­ti­nu­ity and sense of ‘I’ve just got to make it to my depar­ture date’ hin­dered strate­gic coheren­cy bad­ly.” The author is a for­mer com­man­der of NATO. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
    • Nation­al Humil­i­a­tions (Mark Too­ley, Prov­i­dence): “And Amer­i­ca like all great nations will endure and hope­ful­ly learn from its humil­i­a­tions, whether 1941 or 1950 or 1975 or 2001 or today. All nations ulti­mate­ly decide their own des­tinies medi­at­ed by divine judg­ment and mer­cy. Maybe Afghanistan’s col­lapse is a divine judg­ment on it and us. But there is mer­cy always avail­able, accom­pa­nied by wis­dom.”
      • The sur­vey of his­to­ry at the begin­ning is what caught my atten­tion. Some of those dis­as­ters are bare­ly on my his­tor­i­cal radar.
    • Afghan Trav­es­ty (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “God knows how to hum­ble great mil­i­tary pow­ers. He has done it numer­ous times, and that is what you are see­ing right now. What are we to make of that great patri­ot­ic vaunt, ‘these col­ors don’t run’? The reply is that they will run any and every time God deter­mines that they will.” The­o­log­i­cal­ly brac­ing.
    • Dis­as­ter in Afghanistan Will Fol­low Us Home (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “But didn’t we have to leave Afghanistan some­time? So goes a coun­ter­ar­gu­ment. Yes, though we’ve been in Korea for 71 years, at far high­er cost, and the world is bet­ter off for it.”
    • Did Amer­i­ca just lose Afghanistan because of What­sApp? (Pre­ston Byrne, per­son­al blog): “The Unit­ed States thought it was fight­ing an army. I sus­pect the rea­son we lost is because we were fight­ing a meme.”
    • The above dove­tails nice­ly with a Tan­ner Greer essay: Fight­ing Like Tal­iban (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “War in Afghanistan often seemed like a game of pick­up bas­ket­ball, a con­test among friends, a tour­na­ment where you nev­er knew which team you’d be on when the next game got under way. Shirts today, skins tomor­row. On Tues­day, you might be part of a fear­some Tal­iban reg­i­ment, run­ning into a mine­field. And on Wednes­day you might be man­ning a check­point for some gang of the North­ern Alliance.”
    • Dis­hon­or in Afghanistan (Jon­ah Gold­berg, The Dis­patch): “You can believe that get­ting out of Afghanistan is the right policy––again, I have friends whom I respect who believe that––while also under­stand­ing that this was a ter­ri­ble way to get out of Afghanistan. We can all agree that it’s time to leave a par­ty; that doesn’t auto­mat­i­cal­ly mean you should jump out the near­est win­dow to make your exit.”
    • The Fall of Impe­r­i­al Amer­i­ca (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “As a friend of mine put it this morn­ing, how many meet­ings to plan an order­ly evac­u­a­tion of Afghanistan did our mil­i­tary brass miss so they could attend diver­si­ty train­ing? Again, we are an unse­ri­ous coun­try, and the world knows it. A friend of mine whose son is head­ed to West Point told me that in the boy’s pack­et of infor­ma­tion that just came in there is a rain­bow-flag diver­si­ty stick­er. Amer­i­ca might not know how to win actu­al wars, but it sure is going to equip its troops to win the cul­ture war against tra­di­tion­al moral­i­ty and old-fash­ioned Amer­i­can val­ues.” Feisty.
    • What We Can Learn From Europe’s Refugee Crises (John Gus­tavs­son, The Dis­patch): “As a Euro­pean with expe­ri­ence of work­ing with eco­nom­ic and migra­tion pol­i­cy, and who wit­nessed what hap­pened in my home coun­try of Swe­den, I have seen what works—and espe­cial­ly what doesn’t.”
      • Full of real talk. I am in favor of reset­tling vir­tu­al­ly any­one who can get out (or who we can get out) of Afghanistan and putting them onto a path to cit­i­zen­ship (like­wise for Hong Kong). I am also in favor of being thought­ful in the ways described in this arti­cle.
    • Today’s Tal­iban uses sophis­ti­cat­ed social media prac­tices that rarely vio­late the rules (Craig Tim­berg and Cris­tiano Lima, Wash­ing­ton Post): “…U.S. con­ser­v­a­tives have been demand­ing to know why for­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has been banned from Twit­ter while var­i­ous Tal­iban fig­ures have not. The answer, ana­lysts said, may sim­ply be that Trump’s posts for years chal­lenged plat­form rules against hate speech and incit­ing vio­lence. Today’s Tal­iban, by and large, does not.”
      • This illus­trates a weak­ness in the West. We pun­ish pro­ce­dur­al vio­la­tions more than we pun­ish actu­al vice, in part because so many of our elites don’t have a moral com­pass that they view as true and bind­ing. It’s OK if the Tal­iban uses social media to achieve actu­al evil as long as they don’t make us think about what they’re doing. Kind of like it’s okay for Chi­na to bru­tal­ize their own pop­u­la­tion as long as they don’t tweet about it and lie about doing it. Tech com­pa­nies will boy­cott Geor­gia but not Chi­na; they will dis­man­tle Par­ler but not Tik­Tok.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have If I Were 22 Again (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “There have been about 18,340 days since I turned 22, and I think I have read my Bible on more of those days than I have eat­en. I have cer­tain­ly read my Bible on more of those days that I have watched tele­vi­sion or videos.… Read your Bible every day of your life. If you have time for break­fast, nev­er say that you don’t have time for God’s word.” This whole thing is real­ly good. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 151.

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.