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Anthony Pea, 15, sits after receiving a dose of the Pfizer vaccine at a clinic organized by the Travis County Mobile Vaccine Collaborative at Rodriguez Elementary School on July 28, 2021.

Lindsey Contreras feels backed in a corner.

The first day of school is just a couple of weeks away. The mother of two, whose older child attends school in Allen, has been watching COVID-19 cases surge again in Texas, spurred by the emergence of the much more contagious delta variant.

"I am absolutely scared to death," she said.

Her older son is 11 years old, too young by just a few months to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Now that Gov. Greg Abbott has prohibited schools from requiring masks and online classes will not be offered, she said she's running out of ways to protect her child.

"I feel like a trapped animal that cant do anything to protect her babies," Contreras said. "I would really prefer for [the school district] to offer virtual learning again."

Lakeisha Patterson shares Contreras' concerns. She teaches third grade in the Deer Park School District. Her students and her own two children are all too young to be vaccinated. Teaching was scary last year, but she's even more worried now.

"The precautions we put in place at the beginning of last year, things that were to help, to help reassure parents that were doing everything we possibly can to keep our kids safe were not seeing that this year," she said.

Parents who are concerned by the lack of mask mandates are left with few options this school year. While Texas provided funds for remote learning during the start of the pandemic, a bill that would have funded it for this year died in the Texas Legislature after the House Democrats broke quorum. Another bill that did pass made it impossible for the TEA to use the same emergency powers to fund remote learning this year, according to an agency spokesperson.

Although some school districts, including Austin and Pflugerville ISDs, have announced online options, several others canceled their virtual learning plans for the upcoming school year.

Contreras and Patterson are joined by physicians, health experts, teachers and advocates in pleading with the governor to allow school districts to require masks, one of the most consistent viable tools against the spread of the coronavirus, and for parents to have their kids wear them even if there isn't a mandate.

This fall's hoped-for, easier return to school, with lowered spread of COVID-19 and more of the population vaccinated, has disappeared with the emergence of the more-contagious delta variant of the virus, which experts say is fueling the surge and likely spreading rampantly among the unvaccinated.

Many of those unvaccinated are Texas schoolchildren. According to state data, less than a quarter of Texans aged 12 to 15 are fully vaccinated, and no vaccine has yet been approved for students younger than 12, an age group in more than half of the school system's grade levels.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that the delta variant is one of the most contagious viruses comparable in that respect to chickenpox and measles and anywhere from four to nine times more infectious than previous COVID-19 strains. The CDC still believes it is "rare" for vaccinated people to test positive at this point, but have observed cases of it breaking through.

"Let's face it; if we don't take action, the more infectious COVID-19 delta variant will spread among students when they gather together in schools," a Wednesday statement from the Texas Medical Association read. "We urge use of every tool in our toolkit to protect children and their families from COVID-19. Those tools include vaccinating everyone who is eligible and getting all students to wear a mask to prevent spread of disease to others, especially those who cannot get the shot's defense from the virus."

This week the CDC released new guidance that all students and staff in schools should wear masks. The American Academy of Pediatrics similarly says everyone over 2 years old should wear one. But Abbott is standing firm on his ban of allowing schools to require masking.

"The time for government mandating of masks is over," said Renae Eze, Abbott's press secretary, in a statement to The Texas Tribune on Tuesday in response to the CDC announcement. "Now is the time for personal responsibility. Every Texan has the right to choose whether they will wear a mask, or have their children wear masks."

Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Montana, South Carolina and Tennessee have also prevented local governments and school districts from requiring masks, according to AARP.

Children are much less likely than adults to get very ill or die from COVID-19, according to several experts and studies. However, complications of the disease have killed some children. And experts warn that children can spread the virus to other members of the family.

Dr. Jim Versalovic, pathologist-in-chief and interim pediatrician-in-chief at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, said that children still can face serious consequences from the virus and parents should focus on preventive measures above all else.

"Weve certainly seen a real and relatively rapid increase in the number of cases of COVID-19 in children and adolescents, especially in this month of July," Versalovic said. "More than 80% of our new cases are due to the delta variants, so the rapid spread of the delta variant is not only driving the increase in cases and adults but is now also clearly responsible for the recent increase in cases among children and adolescents."

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Texas Children's has diagnosed over 15,000 children with COVID-19, and 10% of them needed to be hospitalized, he said.

Hospitalizations of children with COVID-19 rapidly accelerated in June and July, and their numbers are now matching peak levels reached last winter, Versalovic said. When classes start, he said, the hospital is concerned that the rate will increase even more.

"We are definitely concerned about insufficient masking in schools and the lack of masking mandates," he said. "We do know that parents can help us by continuing to talk with their children and to prepare them for the school year by emphasizing the importance of masking, distancing, sanitizing and the various safety behaviors we learned in 2020."

The two main tools to combat the virus are the same as then, he said: masks and vaccines. He encourages parents to have their children wear masks in the classroom regardless of whether they're inoculated against the virus and to vaccinate children 12 or older.

Versalovic also urged parents to get children tested at the very onset of symptoms like fever or congestion.

"I just want to highlight the importance of prevention and timely diagnosis," he said. "We know that the delta variant is clearly challenging all of us."

E. Linda Villarreal, a Rio Grande Valley physician and president of the Texas Medical Association, said it's important for children's overall health for them to be allowed back to school, to socialize and be educated. But the problem is sending them without all the protections that are scientifically proven, she said, especially masks and vaccinations.

She said the vaccine will help protect eligible children from more serious symptoms, even if there is a rare case of breakthrough from the delta variant.

"Vaccines defend what matters; they protect our children," she said.

In a recent National Bureau of Economic Research study, researchers reported that Texas school reopenings last year even with masking mandates and before the emergence of the delta variant "gradually but substantially accelerated" the spread of COVID-19 in their communities. Researchers said a likely 43,000 additional COVID-19 cases and 800 additional fatalities occurred within the first two months because of reopenings.

Clay Robison, spokesperson for the Texas State Teachers Association, said school districts and educators need options to protect their students and staff.

"We believe the governor must rescind the order that he issued last spring, prohibiting school districts from issuing masked mandates while we have this resurgence of COVID," Robison said. "School districts need some flexibility to do the best that they can to keep the classrooms safe as the kids return to school."

The organization on Tuesday released a statement urging Abbott to allow individual school districts to require mask use in their facilities if local officials believe masks will help protect the health of their communities.

Robison said not allowing schools to mandate masks, as they did earlier in the pandemic, is a political decision, not one based on public health.

"[Abbott is] pandering to this political base. He's running for reelection," he said. "But he needs to exercise his official responsibilities to take care of and do his best to protect the health and safety of the Texas citizens, including schoolchildren and the educators of Texas."

The inability to require masks puts everyone at risk: students, faculty and even their family members, some of whom may be immunocompromised, he said.

The number of teachers who tested positive for COVID-19 peaked during the week ending Jan. 10 this year at 5,825, according to state data. In the same week, 10,487 students tested positive. Many teachers across the country chose to pursue early retirement or quit their jobs due to the spread of the coronavirus in their communities.

Patterson, the Deer Park teacher, said the prospect of teaching 20 unvaccinated students who may also be maskless causes her anxiety. Although vaccinated herself, she is worried about still contracting it and potentially giving it to her family, including her children too young to be vaccinated.

"I understand wanting to be back, face to face. I want the same thing, but I want to do it safely," she said. "I want the governor to untie the hands of our local districts so that they can make the best choices for everyone involved, so that they can support the needs of their individual communities."

COVID-19-related hospitalizations and the percentage of COVID-19 tests coming back positive statistics that health and state officials, including Abbott, have used to describe how prevalent the virus is in Texas have both increased to levels not seen since the spring. Several counties have begun recommending that vaccinated residents mask up once more.

By the time school starts, the situation is expected to be even more dire. Trend forecasters at the University of Texas at Austins COVID-19 Modeling Consortium said Wednesday that without intervention of masking and social distancing, the state could face facility-straining COVID-19 hospitalization rates matching those seen during the height of the pandemic in January.

CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday that in recent weeks, an "extraordinary amount of viral transmission" and rare instances of transmission through vaccinated people have been observed. The country is still "in a pandemic of the unvaccinated," she said, and said it's important to continue vaccination efforts.

According to standardized test results released by the Texas Education Agency, the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to undo years of improvement for Texas students in meeting grade requirements for reading and math, with students who did most of their schooling remotely suffering significant declines compared to those who attended in person. Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath said Texas's decision to return to in-person learning last year was critical in preventing further learning loss.

Joanna Fernandez, whose kids attended school in San Antonio, is calling for more options, especially for students who have underlying health conditions and who have special needs, including her own 9-year-old son. But she said that until the situation improves, she's going to home-school him.

In that regard she said she's lucky she can afford to stay home without working a job, and she used to be a special education teacher, so she has the training. Not every family is that privileged, she said. Because online classes are largely not being offered, she said parents are being presented with an impossible choice.

"With Abbott not allowing mask [mandates], youre putting people that are immunocompromised and immunosuppressed at risk," she said.

If nothing changes, Lindsey Contreras said, she, too, will have to home-school her son a decision that feels almost impossible since she and her husband both work full time. She can't afford to lose her income and is concerned about having to juggle her sons education, which she said she isn't trained to provide, with her other responsibilities.

"I dont know what else to do," she said. "I have no other choice."

Disclosure: AARP, Every Texan, Texas Medical Association, Texas State Teachers Association and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribunes journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans and engages with them about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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With School Openings Near, Parents And Teachers Say State Leaders Have Stripped Them Of Weapons Against COVID-19 - Houston Public Media

COVID-19 is associated with persistent cognitive deficits, including the acceleration of Alzheimer's disease symptoms, researchers have found.

In addition to the respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms that accompany COVID-19, many people with the virus experience short- and long-term neuropsychiatric symptoms, including loss of smell and taste, and cognitive and attention deficits, known as "brain fog."

Initial findings from Greece and Argentina by an international, multidisciplinary consortium suggest that older adults frequently suffer cognitive impairment, including persistent lack of smell, after recovery from SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The consortium includes scientific leaders, including the Alzheimer's Association and representatives from nearly 40 countries -- with technical guidance from WHO -- to evaluate the long-term consequences of COVID-19 on the central nervous system.

The findings were presented at The Alzheimer's Association International Conference 2021, held between July 26-30 in Denver, US.

Other key findings by the consortium suggest that biological markers of brain injury, neuroinflammation and Alzheimer's correlate strongly with the presence of neurological symptoms in COVID-19 patients.

Individuals experiencing cognitive decline post-COVID-19 infection were more likely to have low blood oxygen following brief physical exertion as well as poor overall physical condition, the researchers said.

"These new data point to disturbing trends showing COVID-19 infections leading to lasting cognitive impairment and even Alzheimer's symptoms," said Heather M Snyder, Alzheimer's Association vice president of medical and scientific relations.

Gabriel de Erausquin of the University of Texas Health Science Center along with colleagues from the Alzheimer's Association-led global SARS-CoV-2 consortium, studied cognition and olfactory senses in a cohort of nearly 300 older adults from Argentina who had COVID-19.

Read the rest here:
COVID-19 linked with long-term cognitive impairment, researchers say - National Herald

The Taliban escalated its nationwide offensive in Afghanistan on Sunday, renewing assaults on three major cities and rocketing a major airport in the south amid warnings that the conflict was rapidly worsening.

As Afghan government forces struggled with a resurgent Taliban after the withdrawal of US-led foreign forces, hundreds of commandos were deployed to the economically important western city of Herat, while authorities in the southern city of Lashkar Gah called for more troops to rein in the assaults amid fierce fighting.

In Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand once the focus of UK military efforts eyewitnesses described street fighting, bodies lying in the open and Afghan government and US airstrikes raining down on Taliban positions.

According to reports from the city, Afghan forces remained in control of the city centre late on Sunday.

The current focus of the Talibans efforts appears to be a number of key provincial capitals, not least in the countrys south, with the ambition that the fall of Kandahar or Lashkar Gah would rapidly topple the five surrounding provinces.

The capture of any major urban centre would also take their current offensive to another level and fuel concerns that the army is incapable of resisting the Talibans advances.

The spokesperson for the Afghan armed forces, Gen Ajmal Omar Shinwari, told a press conference on Sunday that three provinces in southern and western Afghanistan faced critical security situations.

Aid agencies are also fearful that the fall of a major city would worsen an emerging humanitarian crisis that has already forced large numbers to flee their homes.

The aircraft are bombing the city every minute. Every inch of the city has been bombed, Badshah Khan, a resident of Lashkar Gah, told Agence France-Presse by phone.

You can see dead bodies on the streets. There are bodies of people in the main square.

The Taliban also struck the sprawling Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan with at least three rockets overnight, the insurgent groups spokesman said on Sunday, adding that the aim was to thwart airstrikes conducted by Afghan government forces.

Kandahar airport was targeted by us because the enemy were using it as a centre to conduct airstrikes against us, said Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson. Afghan government officials said the rocket attacks forced authorities to suspend all flights and the runway was partially damaged.

Airport chief Massoud Pashtun said two rockets had hit the runway and repairs were under way, with planes likely to resume service later on Sunday.

The facility is vital to maintaining the logistics and air support needed to keep the Taliban from overrunning the city, while also providing aerial cover for large tracts of southern Afghanistan.

Officials said the Taliban saw Kandahar as a major strategic focus for their efforts amid the suggestion that the Taliban would like to use it as a temporary capital in the south.

In the countrys west, Afghan officials acknowledged that the Taliban had gained control of strategic buildings around Herat city, forcing civilians to remain in their homes.

On Sunday, the ministry of defence said that hundreds of commandos had been sent to Herat to help beat back the insurgent assault.

These forces will increase offensive operations and suppress the Taliban in Herat, the ministry tweeted.

Lashkar Gah, however, appears the most vulnerable.

Heavy clashes between the Taliban and government forces were continuing inside the city on Sunday, with militant fighters described as being only a few hundred metres from the governors office on Saturday amid Afghan and US airstrikes on Taliban positions.

Fighting is going on inside the city and we have asked for special forces to be deployed, Ataullah Afghan, the head of Helmand provincial council, told AFP.

The city is in the worst condition. I do not know what will happen, said Halim Karimi, a resident of the city of 200,000 residents.

Neither the Taliban will have mercy on us, nor will the government stop bombing.

The Taliban has been advancing in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of US and Nato troops from the country, and in recent weeks the fundamentalist Islamist group said it had captured more than half of all Afghanistans territory, including border crossings with Iran and Pakistan.

As fighting raged, President Ashraf Ghani again slammed the Taliban for failing to marshal its negotiating power to reach a peace deal.

We want peace but they want us to surrender, Ghani said at a cabinet meeting.

The government has repeatedly dismissed the militants steady gains over the summer as lacking strategic value but has largely failed to reverse their momentum on the battlefield.

The Taliban has seized Afghan cities in the past but have managed to retain them only briefly.

The increasingly dire situation in Afghanistan has raised fears of a new Taliban takeover, with Boris Johnson admitting in the House of Commons last month that he was apprehensive about the future of Afghanistan.

If you ask me whether I feel happy about the current situation in Afghanistan, of course I dont. Im apprehensive, Johnson told parliaments liaison committee.

Thousands have been killed in the conflict, including more than 50,000 Afghan civilians and more than 2,000 US and 400 British troops.

See the article here:
Resurgent Taliban escalates nationwide offensive in ...

KABUL, Afghanistan Haji Sakhi decided to flee Afghanistan the night he saw two Taliban members drag a young woman from her home and lash her on the sidewalk. Terrified for his three daughters, he crammed his family into a car the next morning and barreled down winding dirt roads into Pakistan.

That was more than 20 years ago. They returned to Kabul, the capital, nearly a decade later after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime. But now, with the Taliban sweeping across parts of the country as American forces withdraw, Mr. Sakhi, 68, fears a return of the violence he witnessed that night. This time, he says, his family is not waiting so long to leave.

Im not scared of leaving belongings behind, Im not scared of starting everything from scratch, said Mr. Sakhi, who recently applied for Turkish visas for himself, his wife, their three daughters and one son. What Im scared of is the Taliban.

Across Afghanistan, a mass exodus is unfolding as the Taliban press on in their brutal military campaign, which has captured more than half the countrys 400-odd districts, according to some assessments. And with that, fears of a harsh return to extremist rule or a bloody civil war between ethnically aligned militias have taken hold.

So far this year around 330,000 Afghans have been displaced, more than half of them fleeing their homes since the United States began its withdrawal in May, according to the United Nations.

Many have flooded into makeshift tent camps or crowded into relatives homes in cities, the last islands of government control in many provinces. Thousands more are trying to secure passports and visas to leave the country altogether. Others have crammed into smugglers pickup trucks in a desperate bid to slip illegally over the border.

In recent weeks, the number of Afghans crossing the border illegally shot up around 30 to 40 percent compared to the period before international troops began withdrawing in May, according to the International Organization for Migration. At least 30,000 people are now fleeing every week.

The sudden flight is an early sign of a looming refugee crisis, aid agencies warn, and has raised alarms in neighboring countries and Europe that the violence that has escalated since the start of the withdrawal is already spilling across the countrys borders.

Afghanistan is on the brink of another humanitarian crisis, Babar Baloch, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said earlier this month. A failure to reach a peace agreement in Afghanistan and stem the current violence will lead to further displacement.

The sudden exodus harks back to earlier periods of heightened unrest: Millions poured out of Afghanistan in the years after the Soviets invaded in 1979. A decade later, more fled as the Soviets withdrew and the country fell into civil war. The exodus continued when the Taliban came to power in 1996.

Afghans currently account for one of the worlds largest populations of refugees and asylum seekers around 3 million people and represent the second highest number of asylum claims in Europe, after Syria.

Now the country is at the precipice of another bloody chapter, but the new outpouring of Afghans comes as attitudes toward migrants have hardened around the world.

After forging a repatriation deal in 2016 to stem migration from war-afflicted countries, Europe has deported tens of thousands of Afghan migrants. Hundreds of thousands more are being forced back by Turkey as well as by neighboring Pakistan and Iran, which together host around 90 percent of displaced Afghans worldwide and have deported a record number of Afghans in recent years.

Coronavirus restrictions have also made legal and illegal migration more difficult, as countries closed their borders and scaled back refugee programs, pushing thousands of migrants to travel to Europe along more dangerous routes.

In the United States, the growing backlog for the Special Immigration Visa program available to Afghans who face threats because of their work with the U.S. government has left roughly 20,000 eligible Afghans and their families trapped in bureaucratic limbo in Afghanistan. The Biden administration has come under heavy pressure to protect Afghan allies as the United States withdraws troops and air support amid a Taliban insurgency.

Still, as the fighting between Taliban, government and militia forces intensifies and civilian casualties reach record highs, many Afghans remain determined to leave.

One recent morning in Kabul, people gathered outside the passport office. Within hours, a line snaked around three city blocks and past a mural of migrants with an ominous warning: Dont jeopardize you and your familys lives. Migration is not the solution.

Few people were deterred.

I need to get a passport and get the hell out of this country, said Abdullah, 41, who like many in Afghanistan goes by only one name.

Abdullah, who drives a taxi between Kabul and Ghazni, a trading hub in the southeast, remembers speeding toward the capital when fighting erupted recently, picking up a group of Afghan troops who demanded a ride along the way. Two days later, his boss called to say that Taliban fighters had asked about a taxi driver seen evacuating security forces and had recited Abdullahs license plate.

Terrified, Abdullah says he will find any way to leave.

Trying to leave legally is costly, and if we go illegally it is dangerous, he said. But right now the country is even more dangerous.

Farther west, a surge of Afghans have flocked to Zaranj, a hub for illegal migration in Nimruz Province, where smugglers pickup trucks snake south down the borderlands to Iran each day.

In March, around 200 cars left for the Iranian border each day from Zaranj a 300 percent increase from 2019, according to David Mansfield, a migration researcher and consultant with the British Overseas Development Institute. By early July, 450 cars were heading to the border each day.

Those who can afford it pay thousands of dollars to travel to Turkey and then Europe. But many more strike pay-as-you-go deals with smugglers, planning to work illegally in Iran until they can afford the next leg of the journey.

We dont have any money or means of getting a visa, said Mohammad Adib, who is considering migrating illegally to Iran.

Mr. Adib fled his home in Qala-e-Naw, in the countrys northwest, in early July after the Taliban laid siege to the city one night. As dawn broke, he says the paw-paw-paw of gunfire was replaced with wails from neighbors. Electricity lines littered the ground. Doors of houses were broken down. The road was stained with blood.

We cannot find another way out, he said.

In Tajikistan, officials recently announced that the country was prepared to host around 100,000 Afghan refugees, after the country received around 1,600 Afghans this month.

Other neighboring countries have expressed less willingness to host an outpouring of Afghans, instead beefing up their border security and warning that their economies cannot handle a new influx of refugees. Leaders in Central Europe have called to increase their border security as well, fearing the current exodus could swell into a crisis similar to that in 2015 when nearly a million, mostly Syrian migrants entered Europe.

But in Afghanistan, about half of the countrys population is already in need of humanitarian assistance this year twice as many people as last year and six times as many as four years ago, according to the United Nations.

Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi, 40, borrowed $1,000 to bring 36 relatives to Kabul after the Taliban attacked his village in Malistan district. Today his three-room apartment, situated on the edge of the city, feels more like a crowded shelter than a home.

The men sleep in one large living room, women stay in the other and the children cram into the apartments one small bedroom alongside bags of clothes and cleaning supplies. Mr. Mohammadi borrows more money from neighbors to buy enough bread and chicken which have nearly doubled in price as food prices surge to feed everyone.

Now, sinking further into debt with no relief in sight, he is at a loss for what to do.

These families are sick, they are traumatized, they have lost everything, he said, standing near his kitchens one countertop out of earshot from his family. Unless the situation improves, I dont know what we will do.

Asad Timory contributed reporting from Herat; Zabihullah Ghazi from Laghman; Fahim Abed and Jim Huylebroek from Kabul.

Read this article:
As Fears Grip Afghanistan, Hundreds of Thousands Flee - The New York Times

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Our warsin Afghanistan and Iraq have hung overthe US and the world for nearly two decades takinghundreds of thousands of lives, costing taxpayer money and leaving Americawar-weary.

Now, Biden's full withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan and decision to end combat missions in Iraq marks an end to the post-9/11 era and represents a renewed focus on combatting threats from China.

We're mapping out Biden's skepticism toward our engagement in the Middle East and remembering the human lifeour wars have cost Afghan, Iraqi andAmerican lives and those touched by the far-flung effects of our "forever wars."

USA TODAY White House correspondentCourtney Subramanian, along with foreignpolicy reporter Deirdre Shesgreen and Pentagon correspondent Tom Vanden Brook explain what to keep in mindas US troops leave these two countries: What have these wars costs us? What happens if the Taliban regains control in Afghanistan?

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below.This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Claire Thornton:

Hey, there. I'm Claire Thornton, and this is Five Things. It's Sunday, August 1st. These Sunday episodes are special. We're bringing you more from in-depth stories you may have already heard.

Claire Thornton:

America's longest war is about to come to an end. Earlier this year, President Biden said all U.S. troops will withdraw from Afghanistan by September. We've been deployed to Afghanistan for nearly 20 years. The Biden administration also announced we're going to stop combat missions in Iraq by the end of this year. Shifting focus away from Afghanistan and Iraq is shaping up to be a signature aspect of the Biden administration's foreign policy. We've been through a lot as a country because of our involvement in these wars for the past two decades.

Claire Thornton:

Over 7,000 U.S. service members have been killed in post 9/11 war operations. Far more civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, hundreds of thousands, have died during that time because of military actions. Ending these wars is a long time coming. Still, similar threats remain in parts of Afghanistan and Iraq all these years later. Here to discuss is Courtney Subramanian USA Today White House Correspondent and our Pentagon reporter Tom Vanden Brook and foreign policy reporter Deirdre Shesgreen. Thank you all so much for being here.

Tom Vanden Brrook:

Good to be here.

Courtney Subramanian:

Happy to be here.

Claire Thornton:

Here's a quote from Biden I like from this April. He said, "I'm now the fourth United States president to preside over American troop presence in Afghanistan. Two Republicans, two Democrats. I will not pass this responsibility onto a fifth president." Courtney, could you walk us through Biden's initial support for these wars and how his support has waned over the past years?

Courtney Subramanian:

Yeah. Well, I'll start with Afghanistan. Biden has never hid the fact that he thought we should pull out of Afghanistan. He's long argued the U.S. mission should squarely be focused on dismantling Al-Qaeda and getting Osama bin Laden two objectives he said when he announced the full withdrawal that he said the U.S. had achieved. As vice president, he was one of the most vocal critics of further escalation in Afghanistan. He opposed Obama's decision to surge troops there in 2009.

Courtney Subramanian:

I think at one point he was referred to as Obama's in-house pessimist on Afghanistan. Other presidents have agreed with his thinking, but have never been able to fully pull out. Trump also talked about bringing an end to America's endless wars. He struck a deal with the Taliban to pull all U.S. troops. In February 2020, he struck that deal, and that's a deal the Biden administration has said they're honoring. Trump had set a May 1st, 2021 deadline, which Biden missed.

Courtney Subramanian:

But that decision by the Trump administration sort of gave Biden some political cover and ease some of that political pressure that other presidents faced with the decision to withdraw. But the public is with him on this. Polls show a strong majority of Americans support withdrawing troops. But I think the decision obviously has some implications that we've seen some Republicans and some of his critics call out politically, if the Taliban do topple the Afghan government, that sort of leaves the fate of Afghan women and children in peril.

Courtney Subramanian:

He understands that. He understands that this decision comes with obvious risks, but it's something that for a long time he has truly believed it was time to leave. The environment that we're in now, both at home and abroad, has given him the right conditions to finally make this decision. He has a long history with Iraq. As a Senator and later as a vice president, he developed relationships with the country's political leaders. He studied their tribal politics and rivalries.

Courtney Subramanian:

When he was vice president, he was assigned the Iraq portfolio and his son Bo was serving there at the time with the Delaware National Guard. So that gave him sort of the vantage point of military families that not every politician has. By the time he visited there in November 2011, he had been there seven times as vice president, and I think it was like his 16th across his career, but he hasn't always opposed intervention there.

Courtney Subramanian:

He did vote to authorize military force there in 2002 he was critical of the Bush administration, but he did support the decision to invade. I think it's important to remember that his announcement this week is less of a dramatic shift and more of a reflection of what's actually happening on the ground there, and that's that U.S. forces are no longer fighting on behalf of Iraqi forces. They'll continue to play a supporting role, and that's what Biden said they'll do.

Courtney Subramanian:

He hasn't said whether he'll draw down the 2,500 troops that will remain there, but reassign them to help with training and advising and intelligence sharing. It's important to remember with Iraq, I think he is probably haunted by the Obama administration's withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, only they had to send troops back in 2014 in response to ISIS. I think part of that decision probably reflects that era of foreign policy and the consequences of that decision.

Claire Thornton:

You said that in Afghanistan, women and children are going to be at more risk once we pull troops from that country. The Taliban is the strongest it's been since 2001. For listeners, the Taliban is a political and Islamist movement in Afghanistan, and they're also a military organization. They've been causing conflict within the country, and the Taliban government also harbored Al-Qaeda militants involved in planning the 9/11 attacks.

Claire Thornton:

Tom, how worried are you that the Taliban could regain control in Afghanistan after this year? From everything I've learned, it seems really procure.

Tom Vanden Brrook:

Yeah, Claire. I think it's a given that they're going to have some great measure of power in Afghanistan once... Well, they're working on some sort of peace deal and power sharing agreement, but they're going to take as much influence and power as they can, and they probably will be able to. They've already regained control of more than half of the districts in Afghanistan. They've overrun key strategic border crossings with Pakistan.

Tom Vanden Brrook:

It's a given that they're going to have some measure, perhaps the majority of the power in the Afghan government in the coming months. Is that a concern? It would certainly be a concern if you're an educated person in Afghanistan. Women, children before they were toppled in 2001, they had a very repressive regime that didn't allow women and girls to go to school. I think the thought now is there... Well, the hope, I think, is that they're going to be a little less repressive than they had been, but there's no guarantee of that.

Tom Vanden Brrook:

I mean, they will have the high hand when it comes to ruling the country in a very short time. It looks like the Afghan security forces are folding. They don't fight. I've talked to senior defense officials who say whatever resistance they put up is usually by their elite forces, their special forces, which are a smaller number. But the rest of the 300,000 plus Afghan soldiers that we've spent billions training are not putting up a fight. It looks fairly grim right there right now.

Claire Thornton:

In terms of how far we've come there in Afghanistan, or how far we haven't come, what's been the result of our engagement there? How far have we come since that war started? What sacrifices have we made?

Tom Vanden Brrook:

Well, lots of sacrifices obviously, and the sacrifices are certainly great on the U.S. side, but much more so for Afghan civilians. Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of died. Certainly at least hundreds of thousands have been maimed or affected in some way. Civilian casualties are way up again. Now this year. The Taliban is not a particularly kind force. They don't pay attention to Geneva Rules of Convention when it comes to warfare. We're now conducting airstrikes again in support of the Afghan forces that are besieged.

Tom Vanden Brrook:

But when you do that, you end up killing a lot of people who are civilians and bystanders. There's been a lot of sacrifice. There have been gains though. I mean, their life expectancy is up considerably since in the 20 years that we've been there. Literacy rate is up. Women and children have benefited greatly. It's not as though it's been a total failure on our part to help the Afghan people.

Tom Vanden Brrook:

But at this point, we've decided that the military mission no longer furthers U.S. national security interests to the extent that we need to have a large force there on the ground. After you've spent literally tens of billions of dollars training and equipping the Afghan forces, Biden feels it's time for them to give it a shot. As Courtney pointed out, this was a deal that was negotiated by former President Trump. We'll see what happens, but all signs right now are not very good.

Claire Thornton:

Anyone else want to weigh in?

Deirdre Shesgreen:

I would just say that all the gains that Tom mentioned are at risk if the Taliban do gain control of the country again. There is a question also of whether there will be a resurgence. I mean, that's the big criticism of both Trump's original deal with the Taliban and Biden's following through on it. If the Taliban allows Al-Qaeda to regain strength, then will the U.S. have to go back in?

Deirdre Shesgreen:

Biden has said that the U.S. will continue to provide over the horizon support for the Afghan security forces, which essentially means helping Afghan security forces from U.S. bases outside the country, but there's a real question about whether that's logistically feasible and how U.S. would really be able to do that.

Claire Thornton:

Yeah. Where would those bases be outside Afghanistan?

Tom Vanden Brrook:

Well, they used Al Udeid and Qatar to fly missions with B-1 bombers, and they're doing airstrikes right now presumably from Al Udeid, but also from carriers in the Arabian Gulf. We can still perform some missions that way, but you don't have the intelligence on the ground to tell you who you're hitting precisely, or you're banking on the Afghan security forces to tell you you're hitting the right people in the right targets. And that's a very dicey proposition. And often what ends up happening is you end up killing civilians. It's a bad solution to an even worse problem.

Claire Thornton:

Our invasion of Iraq had no connection to the 9/11 attacks. Deirdre, what sacrifices have Iraqis made since we invaded there in 2003?

Deirdre Shesgreen:

The U.S. war in Iraq has been devastating in terms of the death toll and the chaos and the instability. Researchers at Brown University who specialize in trying to tally the costs of war say that it's very difficult to know for sure how many Iraqis were killed, but they say that between 180,000 and 200,000 civilians have died in direct war-related violence as a result of the U.S. invasion. And then several times more have died from indirect causes, for example, damage to the food system, the healthcare system, clean drinking, water illness, mountain malnutrition.

Deirdre Shesgreen:

All these tangential, but severe consequences of the war. The U.S. occupation also led to instability in Iraq that included a rise in corruption and a very weak government that exists still today. I will pause and say, of course, no one would argue that Saddam Hussein, the deposed and now dead former leader of Iraq, was a good person. He led a very repressive regime. I just want to make that clear, but the U.S. occupation of Iraq had really far-reaching consequences.

Deirdre Shesgreen:

And we also know that it eventually led to the rise of sectarian politics and the rise of the Islamic State, which controlled large parts of Iraq starting in 2014 and remains a problem today, much less of a problem, but still a concern for Iraq and for the U.S. and other countries.

Claire Thornton:

Anyone else want to weigh in? Maybe we could talk about how with ISIS's rise, millions of people were displaced from Syria.

Tom Vanden Brrook:

Sure. I'll talk about that a little bit. I was actually in Baghdad in 2011 when they wrapped up the combat mission for the last time. And the thought was that we'd spent, as we had in Afghanistan, a lot of money to support security forces there, and that they would be capable of handling internal security, but that turned out to be a bad miscalculation. And it wasn't long before ISIS, which basically had been Al-Qaeda in Iraq before that, resurged across that region.

Tom Vanden Brrook:

And then we had to put together a coalition quickly in order to keep Baghdad from falling, because ISIS rolled through Ramadi and other provincial capitals in Iraq very quickly and threatened Baghdad. We put together a coalition that started airstrikes in 2014 after a sect of Iraqis in Northern Iraq, the Yazidis, were threatened with genocide by ISIS. That's what spurred us to go back in there. Spent a lot of money on that again and a lot of civilians were killed again in airstrikes.

Tom Vanden Brrook:

These things have definite costs, both for us and for the people on the ground, when the wrong decisions are made.

Claire Thornton:

Yeah. Biden's shift away from Afghanistan and Iraq. It's going to become a pillar of his foreign policy. Experts say he is definitely going to focus on China instead going forward. How do you think he might do that, shift our military focus toward China?

Tom Vanden Brrook:

I'll take a quick whack at it and let you guys go forward too. Well, you've already seen it. I mean, we've already started to strike targets more frequently in Africa and militant groups like Al-Shabaab. That's what they talk about when they're talking about the shift away from Afghanistan and Iraq, that the threat from extremists has metastasized, as they would say, and shown up in other countries around the globe. You see them in Africa. There are some in Southeast Asia as well.

Tom Vanden Brrook:

The reason for leaving Afghanistan primarily is that the threat is still there to an extent, but not as much as it is elsewhere. And then you see the idea that we would also shift focus to China because China is continuing to exercise its muscles around the globe actually. You've got them in Africa, in Djibouti. You have them throughout Asia. The idea that they want to turn the South China Sea a key shipping area for the entire world into their sphere of influence. We continue to sail ships through there and run into provocations with the Chinese Navy.

Tom Vanden Brrook:

That's where the principal effort and concern for the Pentagon is, is the rise of China's military and confronting them around the globe.

Deirdre Shesgreen:

I'll just wheel in to say that there's two forces driving Biden's desire to get out of these so-called endless wars. One is domestic politics. The American public is tired of this, and they feel like the costs have been exorbitant in terms of U.S. taxpayer dollars and U.S. lives, and they want investment at home. Then the second thing is what you've mentioned in terms of this desire to pivot to China. That is not just a military question.

Deirdre Shesgreen:

In fact, I would say that, of course, while there is concern of a military confrontation with China, the dominant concern among Biden's foreign policy advisors is that China poses more of an economic threat and a political threat with its anti-democratic sort of authoritarian moves in Hong Kong, for example, and its desire to sort of spread its authoritarian form of government. Biden argues that there's this sort of looming conflict between democracy and authoritarianism and that China is driving it.

Deirdre Shesgreen:

It's a much more complex discussion than just a military debate or a matter of redeploying American forces to a new theater, because that's not actually what's happening. It's a matter of confronting China economically, politically, and also preparing for different kinds of warfare like cyber. We've seen both China and Russia mount these cyber attacks that are devastating and could become or already have become this new front. It's a very different conversation I think.

Courtney Subramanian:

Just to kind of build on what Deirdre saying, actually Biden made his first visit to the ODNI, spoke to the intelligence community, and during his remarks said something to the effect of the next shooting war that we'll be involved in will be a result of cyber warfare.

Claire Thornton:

Wow!

Courtney Subramanian:

Because he really does believe that that is one of the biggest threats facing the country aside from the military focus, but also like an economic focus. I think it really reflects a worldview that his national security advisor Jake Sullivan has really pushed, and that is national security and foreign policy should play a proactive role in the domestic economic policy debate. Because his thought is that the two should be linked because foreign policy should focus on what it will take to enhance U.S. competitiveness, both at home and abroad.

Courtney Subramanian:

We've seen that throughout Biden's agenda. It really reflects that when he met with foreign leaders in Europe in his first trip, urging them to take a tough line on China. He's launched a government wide initiative, this buy American initiative, which is like federal procurement to support American manufacturing. This focus on China, he's really trying to thread the needle throughout his entire agenda, and I think this is a reflection of that.

Claire Thornton:

Thank you. Any closing thoughts from you all?

Courtney Subramanian:

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With Biden's withdrawal of US forces in Afghanistan, America's longest war is ending: 5 Things podcast - USA TODAY