US two-front fentanyl folly, war on gas stoves is real and other commentary

China desk: US Two-Front Fentanyl Folly

Former DEA Agent Derek Maltz “became suspicious of China’s role in the fentanyl crisis in 2012,” notes Jonathan Alpeyrie at Tablet. But despite “senior DEA officials trying to communicate the urgency of the issue to the Obama administration,” it was “only during Trump’s presidency in 2019 that China” made fentanyl “more difficult to produce and distribute,” likely thanks to Trump pressuring Beijing. Note that the European Union saw “only 6,400 overdose deaths in 2020 while the U.S., with a significantly smaller population, suffered more than 90,000.” That’s due to our “legal drug crisis”: Opioids “have been pushed onto the general public for over a century.” The two factors are “creating a permanent underclass of addicted citizens and a spiraling crisis of dependency and death.”

War beat: How Not To Negotiate with Russia

“There’s a bigger point,” argues Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba at Politico, “that the ‘peace at any cost’ camp ignores: We have already spent over eight years negotiating with Russia.” “The so-called peace talks known as the Minsk process was initiated in 2014”; “Ukraine agreed to freeze battle lines and engaged in years of fruitless negotiations.” “Needless to say, it didn’t work. While we were holding back, Russia was building up. The Minsk process ended when Russia unleashed a devastating total war of aggression on Ukraine at the end of February 2022.” Some hard lessons learned: “It’s a mistake to freeze the war and postpone the solution of territorial problems ‘for the future,’ ” “Russia doesn’t negotiate in good faith,” and “partners should force Russia, not Ukraine, into concessions.”

Libertarian: War on Gas Stoves Is Real

Progressives are blasting conservatives’ freak-out over a supposedly imaginary war on gas stoves, but “climate warriors are indeed trying to ban” them, insists Steven Greenhut at Reason. The Consumer Product Safety Commission says it’ll evaluate indoor gas cooking, and bans “always start with a study” — which produces “predictable results.” CPSC chief Richard Trumka Jr. still warns “products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” New York, Los Angeles and other cities have already banned gas hookups for new buildings, so “it’s no surprise federal bureaucrats are getting into the action.” Meanwhile, greens are using a single dubious study to “scare people about the dangers of gas cooking.” So: “Don’t let anyone gaslight you into thinking this crusade is imaginary.”

Neocon: Klain’s Cheap ‘Hostage-Taking’ Slur

Outgoing White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and other Democrats, grumbles Commentary’s Noah Rothman, claim “that the congressional Republicans using their leverage to secure a deal on federal spending are ‘hostage takers’.” Yet in negotiations to raise the debt limit, House Republicans’ “seeking offsets to wild spending sprees isn’t purely ideological — it’s arguably practical.” Indeed, “it seems that it is only ever Republicans who are accused of wielding like a weapon the leverage conferred to them by voters.” Rhetoric about “hostage-taking” persuades no one, and “cheapening the discourse and poisoning the political well is no small price to pay just to indulge your ego.”

Defense watch: Update US Arms Depot in Israel

“A relatively unknown U.S. arms depot in Israel has become a stockpile of democracy in recent months, as the Biden administration has transferred its artillery shells to Ukraine,” observe Michael Makovsky & Blaise Misztal in The Wall Street Journal. Great: That helps Ukraine and offers a chance “to replenish the depot with updated weapons and transform it into a valuable hub for the U.S., Israel and other regional allies.” Set up in 1984, the War Reserve Stockpile Ammunition-Israel “hasn’t been upgraded since before the Obama administration,” so it holds “only shells and other ‘dumb’ — or unguided — munitions” of little use to modern militaries: not just Israel’s, but also ours.

Compiled by The Post Editorial Board