“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Charles M. Blow: H.I.V. S O S
That’s the way scientists describe a striking and incredibly encouraging new finding of a large clinical trial released on Thursday that found that H.I.V.-infected people who took antiretroviral drugs were 96 percent less likely to pass on the disease than those who didn’t.
This is an extraordinary finding, coming in the year of the 30th anniversary of the AIDS epidemic in America.
This now shines a harsh light on the cruelty-creep and passion-drift by federal and state governments whose lack of financing and fealty in the fight against AIDS has had the effect of either starving or restricting support, services and prevention efforts for people with H.I.V. and those at risk of contracting it.
Glen Greenwald: The Bin Laden Dividend
Numerous people have argued that one potential benefit from the death of Osama bin Laden is that it will enable the U.S. Government to diminish its war commitments in that part of the world and finally arrest the steady erosion of civil liberties perpetrated in the name of the War on Terror (as though any of that is the government’s goal). By contrast, I’ve argued from the start that the bin Laden killing is likely to change nothing of any significance, except that — if anything — the resulting nationalistic pride, the vicarious sensations of power and strength, the substantial political benefits for the President, and the renewed faith in military force would be more likely to intensify rather than arrest these trends. But that was definitely a minority opinion.
As but one example, this person (cheered on by Democratic Party commentators) — aside from falsely attributing to me numerous statements I never made, and thereafter refusing to post my response in the comment section — chided me for failing to realize that “Bin Laden’s death also makes things like closing the gulag at Guantanamo Bay seem likelier and more possible” and that it also “marks what could be the beginning of the end of many of the evils that Glenn Greenwald has consistently written about over the past decade, the opportunity to reassert the principles he determinedly wants to defend.” Andrew Sullivan argued that, in the wake of the bin Laden killing, “Obama will have the leverage to shift strategy drastically [in Afghanistan] in the coming year” and that the “average American” will conclude that “it is time to leave. With our heads high. And justice done.” Numerous commenters and others have similarly insisted that bin Laden’s death will spawn reversals in America’s War on Terror policies over the last decade.
If the mission to neutralize Osama bin Laden were a blockbuster movie, the screen would have almost certainly faded to black as soon as the accused terrorist’s death was announced. No doubt, the credits would roll to Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and then a big “The End” would appear.
Alas, real life is not one of Hollywood’s many Pentagon-sponsored flicks — and as hard as President Obama tried to portray last week’s events as proof “that America can do whatever we set our mind to,” the mission and its cloudy aftermath have raised troubling questions about the “whatever” part.
Eugen Robinson: The Death of the bin Laden Myth
Years from now, I believe, we will look back and say the elimination of Osama bin Laden changed everything. To borrow Churchill’s assessment of the Nazi defeat at El Alamein, “Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Attempted terrorist attacks in the name of fundamentalist Islam will surely continue. Most will be amateurish failures, such as the alleged plot disclosed Thursday in which two homegrown would-be jihadists-now in the custody of New York City police-ineffectually aspired to blow up a synagogue. Tragically, we are bound to see attacks by genuine terrorists as well. Some may succeed.
Still, it’s hard to overstate the significance of bin Laden’s killing. Operationally and psychologically, he defined the Age of Terror-not just for Americans and other targets of his depredations but also for the terrorists who followed his writ. With his last breath, an era died.
John Nichols: The Post-Wisconsin Game Plan
Mary Kay Henry had just spent a day talking with many of the thousands of Wisconsinites who had packed the State Capitol in Madison for the February protests against Republican Governor Scott Walker’s proposals to scrap collective bargaining rights and slash funding for public education and services. Now, as she waited in a legislative hearing room that had been turned into a makeshift studio for a Pennsylvania labor radio show, the new president of the 2.2 million-member Service Employees International Union was marveling at what she had seen. “It’s inspiring, so inspiring, but we have to pay attention to what’s happening here,” she said, in a calm, thoughtful voice. “We’ve got to take this national, and we’ve got to keep the spirit, the energy. We’ve got to do it right.”
Henry was not just speaking in the excitement of the moment. Even before the Wisconsin uprising and ensuing demonstrations in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Maine, SEIU had been drawing the outlines of a Fight for a Fair Economy campaign that would use the resources of the union to mobilize low-wage workers-be they union members or not-into a movement aimed at transforming a national debate that has been defined by conservative talking points and ginned-up Tea Party “populism.” After the frustrating experience of trying to get the Employee Free Choice Act through a supposedly friendly Congress in the first two years of President Obama’s administration, Henry and a growing number of labor leaders are coming to recognize that simply electing Democrats is not enough. A memo that circulated in January among members of the union’s executive board declared, “We can’t spark an organizing surge without changing the environment, so that workers see unions not as self-interested institutions but as vehicles through which they can collectively stand up for a more fair economy.”
Davis Swanson: Afghanistan: War Without End?
Obama promised no open-ended occupation – and to draw down forces from July. A 2.5% cut is hardly an encouraging start
Afghanistan was supposed to be the campaign promise that President Barack Obama actually kept. He said he would escalate that war, and sure enough he did. Is he now going back on promises he’s made as president, by proposing to withdraw 2.5% of US forces in July?
Here are the relevant promises:
“After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home … [O]ur troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended – because the nation that I’m most interested in building is our own.” – President Barack Obama, 1 December 2009
“I’m confident that the withdrawal will be significant. People will say this is a real process of transition; this is not just a token gesture.” – President Barack Obama, 15 April 2011
“In July of 2011, you’re going to see a whole lot of people moving out, bet on it.” – Vice President Joe Biden, quoted in Jonathan Alter’s The Promise
But let’s first review how we got here. When loyal Democrats heard candidate Obama say he would escalate the war as president, they mistakenly understood him to say he would end it. Progressive bloggers have planned a panel for next month to discuss their disappointment with this “broken promise” that was actually kept.
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