Honoring all victims: A win-win for US Defense and broader discourse among real professionals
From the left: Real Progs Honor All Victims
Those tearing down posters of Hamas’ Israeli hostages “are denying the basic humanity of these victims,” argues Sarah Abramsky at The Nation. “Genuine progressive protesters” employ “empathy not to narrow the horizons of who is considered a human,” but “to expand those horizons.” You may “have a right to be” furious at Israel’s bombing in Gaza, “but common humanity dictates that if you mourn a dead Palestinian, you should also mourn a dead Israeli.” And “if you mourn the lives upended in Gaza, you should also mourn the lives upended in the kibbutzim of southern Israel by a terror attack that involved the murder of infants and children, families being burned alive, the gunning down of hundreds of young concert goers, and other unspeakable atrocities.”
Ukraine beat: A Win-Win for US Defense
“Some lawmakers challenging U.S. aid to Ukraine seem to misconstrue its nature,” explains Mark Temnycky at The Hill. Most of the $100 billion sent so far “has not been in cash, and its value is often overestimated. It has ranged from financial and humanitarian materials to medical aid and defense equipment.” And it’s “been heavily vetted” by the Defense Department; “top Pentagon and Treasury Department officials have found no evidence that suggests” it “has been misused.” Nor “did it come from cuts elsewhere.” And $26 billion has gone “to replenish U.S. defense stockpiles,” as equipment “sent to Ukraine is largely cast-offs from older American stockpiles,” some of it “considered obsolete by the U.S. military.” So this “has actually helped America rebuild its stockpiles and enhance its domestic defense production capacity. In other words, assisting Ukraine is a win-win proposition.”
Border watch: No Bailout for Biden’s Failures
New Homeland Security numbers on illegal border crossings prove President Biden’s policies have been an “irredeemable failure,” roar the Washington Examiner’s editors. Last year saw 2.48 million crossings, vs. 450,000 in President Donald Trump’s last year. It’s “no coincidence”: Biden told people to come. Now “the failure of his policies” has become “manifest” as Democratic mayors and governors say they can’t cope, and Biden’s asking Congress for “money to bail out the crisis he created.” Yet “nothing in his plan” would slow illegal immigration; he’d only “throw gasoline onto the raging inferno.” “Whatever else happens,” Republicans’ “top priority” should be to “block Biden’s border crisis bailout.” Don’t give him “1 cent more” to make matters worse.
Conservative: Hamas’ Hidden Victory
ISIS’s “commitment to butchery, savagery and fanatical violence,” notes The New York Times’ Ross Douthat, “quickly earned it the enmity of the entire civilized world.” This month, “The atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against innocent Israelis, the snuff films, mutilations and delight in simple cruelty, inspired immediate analogies to the Islamic State’s depredations.” Yet many Hamas “sympathizers just” went “to their usual corners, some making excuses and downplaying the violence, others committing fully to the glory of [Hamas’] cause.” Hamas terrorists have expanded their “popular support across the Muslim world,” “brought powerful figures like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan rushing to their defense” and even “inspired a surge of antisemitism in Western cities.”
Libertarian: Dems’ Fake Inequality Fight
“While Democrats profess their devotion to social justice and fight against income inequality, they often push for policies that favor the rich,” snarks Reason’s Veronique de Rugy. E.g., in “demanding repeal of the SALT cap, they are on the front lines of a battle to restore tax breaks for the rich.” Whether it’s tax credits to “buy expensive electric cars” or subsidies to “well-connected companies to build green infrastructure or semiconductors they would have produced anyway,” these Democratic big-government policies “hurt middle-class and poorer Americans.” Hiking corporate income taxes isn’t a tax on the rich because it “is shouldered by primarily middle-class workers in the form of lower wages.” Dems will push to extend their tax cuts for the rich “while continuing to blame former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts for raising the deficit.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
