I wrote an article today for Compact magazine (where I’m a “contributing editor,” although I admit I’m still not sure exactly what that means.) It’s on the absolutely farcical episode which just transpired, whereby the Congressional Progressive Caucus released a pointless letter that — to the untrained eye — appeared to advocate for some shocking pro-diplomacy shift in Joe Biden’s policy on Ukraine. The letter actually did nothing of the sort, but that didn’t stop a predictable meltdown from erupting, which led to the letter being melodramatically retracted within hours.
My initial reaction to the phony-baloney letter was that it was likely to be counter-productive, because it could be cited by the Progressives™ as a substitute for taking tangible legislative action, rather than pointless PR action. I should’ve anticipated the backfire would be even more extreme: that in retracting the letter, the Progressives™ have now formally renounced diplomacy, committed themselves to total war against Russia, and consolidated the bipartisan consensus in favor of those objectives.
As I note in the article, the upside of this outcome is that the Progressives™ (including Bernie Sanders, who also just weighed in) have been compelled to make explicit what had always been clear: that in a fit of ideological zeal, they’ve become avid supporters of abandoning diplomacy and inflicting total military defeat on Russia — notwithstanding the unbelievable risk this entails for everyone else in the world.
Here’s the Compact article, copy-and-pasted for subscribers’ convenience: