An American hero in Afghanistan

A US Marine helped save the Afghan national women's soccer team, only to die days later in the terror bombing at the Kabul airport.

Sep 06, 2021

It’s been another week of Afghanistan, Covid, and abortion politics thrown in for good measure. On the latter, you’re all familiar by now with Texas’ new anti-abortion law that basically bans all abortions, in violation of Roe. I wrote about it at length earlier this week here. More below.

Texas abortion rights

There was one bit of positive news out of Texas — two, actually. A Texas judge stayed implementation of the law as it concerns suing Planned Parenthood — but only Planned Parenthood — pending litigation. You can read more about that here.

Another piece of good news: TikTok activists effectively shut down the Stasi-esque Web site Texas Right to Life set up for Texans to snitch on their neighbors who get abortions. The TikTokers flooded it with fake reports, and the anti-abortion group had to shut it down. Also, surprisingly, GoDaddy refused to continue hosting the site either — which is a surprise, since the head of GoDaddy is a big Republican, and early Trump supporter.

The law is such an overreach that one hopes/assumes it will ultimately be struck down. Still, it’s amazing how on our side, we’re always worrying about whether what we’re planning goes too far — and I am sometimes the one offering that concern — while the GOP just picks the most extreme thing they can do, and they do it.

Afghanistan

On Afghanistan, there’s a wonderful, but bittersweet, story in the Wall Street Journal (you might be able to read it for free via this link) about the escape of the Afghan national women’s soccer team, and how they were helped by an American Marine who was killed during the recent terror bombing at the airport only four days later. (I also did a 3-minute TikTok video explaining the story that you can watch here.)

In other news, Fox News is still doing its best to stir up as much racial animus as possible against the Afghan refugees entering the US. Just a reminder that these people risked their lives, and the lives of their families, to help US troops, with the agreement that we would let them emigrate to the US in exchange for their help. Now, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson want us to go back on our deal because the Afghans are swarthy and Muslim. Not only is such a position immoral and unethical, it also puts our troops at risk in the future. What local population would ever help the US military in the future if they knew our promises were lies?

Some good news on the refugee front, in spite of Fox News’ race-baiting, the American people, even Republicans, support opening our doors and arms to the Afghan refugees, according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll:

We’ve long had an Afghan refugee community in DC, going back to the original Soviet occupation of the 1980s. And the people I’ve met over the years could not be better Americans.

Covid

On Covid, it looks like the first boosters will be for people who got the Pfizer vaccine, but that’s not official yet. Moderna has apparently applied for a booster that’s only half the dose of their original vaccine, so that discussion could be slowing down approval, while J&J just doesn’t have as much data backing it up as Pfizer and Moderna — far fewer people got J&J, so it’s going to take more time and analysis to determine what booster, if any, J&J folks get. One thing on the J&J front is that the US is presumably reviewing data from Europe, which seems to show that people who receive their first shot of AstraZeneca (which is similar to J&J, but requires two doses) and their second shot of Pfizer, may have a better immune response than two shots of either. That could mean that mixing the J&J vaccine with, say, Pfizer, could yield more benefit than taking a second J&J. But who knows? I know they have been doing booster trials on J&J, so hopefully we’ll get some clear answers soon.