This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

First, a warning.  This blog will be longer than most I post.

Second, I have been struck latelyabout how impotent I feel to grasp and  understand, not to mention influence, current events.

Consider the issues.  The Afghanistan war and withdrawal.  The Covid 19 virus.  Hurricane Ida.  Climate change generally.  The increasing polarity of American politics.

You name it.  Beyond me.

So it was this morning that I read two columns on Afghanistan – one by Karl Rove that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, and one by E. J. Dionne that appeared in the Washington Post.

Rove and Dionne wouldn’t recognize each other.

Here are their divergent assessments of the country’s longest war and especially President Joe Biden’s role in it.

Opinion: It was time to end the long wars. Now, Biden must make a new era work.

Opinion by

E.J. Dionne Jr.

It will go down in history as one of the most unabashedly antiwar speeches ever given by an American president.

We are accustomed to martial rhetoric from commanders in chief, soaring words and calls for sacrifice on behalf of causes larger than any of us.

President Biden broke with all that on Tuesday in explaining and justifying his decision to pull U.S. troops from Afghanistan. One simple sentence summarized his gut instinct and his historical judgment: “We’ve been a nation too long at war.”

Biden did something else that was unusual in presidential speeches: He took on the arguments of his critics, one by one, and asked the country to see why he was right and they were wrong.

He was especially forceful in rejecting the most alluring claim of respected voices in the foreign policy and military establishments — architects, it should be said, of many of the policies that led us to this point. Maintaining a small American force, they insisted, could have held off a Taliban victory and prevented a rout of the United States’ Afghan allies.

Biden described this option several times as the “low grade,” “low risk” approach, and asserted that this halfway house of a policy misdescribed the alternatives he faced.

It was not withdraw or go small. It was withdraw or go big. “That was the choice — the real choice — between leaving or escalating,” he said. “I was not going to extend this forever war.”

The history of the war suggests that Biden is right, even if we will never know for certain. Once it reversed the withdrawal set in motion by former president Donald Trump, the United States would most likely at some point have faced another choice, between a surge of U.S. troops or an ignominious battlefield defeat.

But there was more to Biden’s decision, and here is where his revulsion over two decades of war — bolstered by his many conversations with military veterans, and his role as the father of a son who fought in Iraq — came into play.

“When I hear that we could’ve, should’ve continued the so-called low-grade effort in Afghanistan, at low risk to our service members, at low cost,” Biden said, “I don’t think enough people understand how much we have asked of the 1 percent of this country who put that uniform on, who are willing to put their lives on the line in defense of our nation.”

He spoke arrestingly of “18 veterans, on average, who die by suicide every single day in America,” and concluded: “There’s nothing low-grade or low-risk or low-cost about any war.” Rarely has a president described the burdens of warfare so starkly.

Washington being Washington, its talk has already moved to politics and the impact of the chaotic withdrawal on voters’ judgments about Biden.

There will be arguments over whether we should celebrate (as Biden devoutly hopes we do) the extraordinary heroism in the airlifting of more than 120,000 people, including almost all remaining Americans; or whether we should criticize Biden for leaving perhaps 200 Americans behind, along with the tens of thousands of our Afghan allies to whom we owe much.

Republicans — whether they supported or opposed Trump’s decisions that immensely strengthened the Taliban — suddenly spoke with one voice. They contended that whatever happened in the past, all the problems and failures now rested on Biden’s shoulders.

This claim overlooks the mistakes of two decades and is especially hypocritical coming from Trump’s die-hard defenders and those who were silent when Trump set this outcome in motion.

But the very pugnaciousness of Biden’s speech showed that he is ready to own the consequences of his choice. His bet — and every important choice by a president is a wager of one kind or another — is larger than Afghanistan.

At bottom, Biden is arguing that responding to the attacks of 9/11 with large military deployments, occupations and “nation building” was a mistake. Such wars, he said both directly and indirectly, sap the country’s energies and the attention of policymakers while placing intolerable burdens on our armed forces.

In the short term, Biden’s detractors will have plenty of fodder, given an endgame badly suited for the unexpectedly swift collapse of the Afghan government and its forces.

Over the longer run, however, Biden is right that policies driven by the passions, calculations — and, yes, misjudgments — of two decades ago could not be sustained. The nation needed to set a new course.

His task now is to minimize the human and strategic damage of a disorderly end to a long era of war — and to make good on his promise of a new era in which American power will be used more prudently, more effectively and with fewer illusions.

**********

Biden’s Ugly Defense of His Afghan Failure

His lie-loaded speech caps off a debacle that could sink his party in 2022 and 2024.

By Karl Rove

Joseph R. Biden Jr. ’s surrender in Afghanistan and the chaotic, inept and shameful way he effected the capitulation have left an indelible stain on his presidency. The distortions he used Tuesday to justify his actions compounded his historical blunder.

The president offered a false choice, saying he could either “follow the agreement of the previous administration . . . for people to get out or send in thousands of more troops and escalate the war.” Set aside the fact that Mr. Biden has reversed many of his predecessor’s policies. The president’s statement ignored the reality that American airpower and support assistance kept the Taliban in check in recent years with minimal risk to U.S. military personnel.

Mr. Biden bragged he had “ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan—the longest war in American history.” The war hasn’t ended, just the U.S. role, and even that probably only temporarily. Islamic jihadists are still waging the wider War on Terror. They’re celebrating our humiliation and making plans.

Mr. Biden also declared the only “vital national interest” the U.S. had was “to make sure Afghanistan can never be used again to launch an attack on our homeland.” That was, he claimed Tuesday, achieved when Osama bin Laden was killed in May 2011 leaving al Qaeda “decimated.”

Mr. Biden neglected to mention that he opposed the strike that killed bin Laden. He also left out the finding by the Defense Department that a reconstituted al Qaeda is working closely with the Taliban. With America’s exit, Afghanistan can once again become a sanctuary from which terrorists launch attacks against the West.

Mr. Biden also claimed Tuesday that “we were ready” when the “assumption that the Afghan government would be able to hold on beyond military drawdown turned out not to be accurate.” Pretending that what we’ve witnessed resulted from careful preparation may have been his most absurd statement. Plenty of reports have demonstrated how much the Biden administration was caught off guard, including believing it had the “luxury of time”—18 months or so—before the Afghan government might collapse.

Then there was Mr. Biden’s neat little rhetorical trick, identifying “ISIS-K terrorists” as “sworn enemies of the Taliban” while not identifying the Taliban as “sworn enemies of America,” which they are. Neither group may like each other but last week’s bombings should have reminded the president that doesn’t much matter when they have set their sights on us.

Mr. Biden also sketched “the threats of 2021 and tomorrow” that he worries about, namely Islamic terrorists in Syria, Iraq, the Arabian peninsula and “across Africa and Asia.” But there’s little sign he knows what to do or will commit the necessary resources. The president has explicitly said he’ll withdraw from Iraq this year. And, of course, a terrorist attack from al-Shabaab won’t make an assault from al Qaeda any more welcome.

Adding yet another classless touch, Mr. Biden blamed American citizens trapped in Afghanistan for ignoring “multiple warnings and offers to help them leave.” At least he’s rhetorically consistent, always claiming the buck stops with him as he blames everybody but himself for what’s gone wrong. This is petty and defensive.

The president finished his Tuesday address by promising a future that’s “safer” and “more secure.” We’ll see, but given his record over the past few weeks, Mr. Biden is probably among the least credible people on the planet to offer such assurances.

Even in our highly polarized atmosphere, where partisans stubbornly cling to their team colors, Mr. Biden’s approval ratings have plummeted. Since Aug. 1, his numbers in the RealClearPolitics average have dropped from 51.3% approve to 45.8% approve, and in the FiveThirtyEight.com average, from 51.5% approve to 46.7% approve.

These losses aren’t only because of Afghanistan. The president’s ratings are dropping on his handling of Covid, the economy, immigration and crime, too. I bet they get worse in the months ahead, despite attempted P.R. resets.

Mr. Biden’s shaky and listless performance has demolished the idea that he’ll be a credible contender in 2024. Also wrecked is any sense that Vice President Kamala Harris is an acceptable heir. The president’s failures and shortcomings are hers as well, while she’s failed to produce success in virtually every responsibility she has been given to handle.

But who could emerge to replace them? Both the White House and the aging apparatchiks of the Democratic Congressional leadership will discourage new faces from making their ambitions known. And Mr. Biden’s actions and Tuesday’s speech diminished what little good will he has among swing voters, which will also hurt Democrats if Republicans make 2022 about checks-and-balances. It ain’t a pretty picture.