4 | http://www.nationalreview.com MARCH 23 , 2020

ROMANGENN

The Week

nCoronavirus, the Sanders campaign—these epidemics are

never as bad as they seem.

nWhile the coronavirus was spreading from Wuhan, China,

through East Asia to the Middle East and Western Europe,

World Health Organization officials lauded the Chinese govern-

ment’s “extraordinary” efforts to contain the epidemic. Now it’s

approaching pandemic level. American officials got off to an

inauspicious start in addressing the crisis, with testing inex-

plicably limited for weeks until the FDA took emergency mea-

sures. Meanwhile, the White House tried too hard to talk up

Wall Street by emphasizing our “airtight” defense against the

virus. Investors sent the market plunging anyway. The sell-off

receded slightly after the Federal Reserve announced interest-

rate cuts—a welcome move—yet uncertainty persists as the

number of cases in the U.S. grows. Besides the early testing

stumble, the administration has undertaken the correct measures

to contain the virus. To hear the Democrats tell it, though, Trump

has already created a humanitarian debacle. They’ve hit him for

alleged cuts to the Centers for Disease Control, but Congress has

in fact increased funding to the agency during the Trump years,

and New York Timescolumnists have absurdly dubbed the dis-

ease “the Trump virus.” We suspect the coronavirus outbreak

here won’t prove as bad as alarmists fear, but our political culture

is every bit as juvenile and unserious as it seems.

nWe signed a deeply flawed deal with the Taliban. The agree-

ment commits us to eliminating our military presence in

Afghanistan. First, the U.S. will reduce its troops by 5,000 over

the next several months, and then it will remove the remaining

8,600 next year. In exchange, the Taliban will supposedly not

allow al-Qaeda or any other groups to use Afghan soil to threaten

the United States, and will enter into cease-fire negotiations with

the Afghan government. It’s hard to take the Taliban’s commit-

ment on al-Qaeda seriously. It already denies that it collaborates

with terror groups, including al-Qaeda, even though this is bla-

tantly false. It’s not encouraging that the Taliban wasn’t willing

to negotiate with the Afghan government before getting the U.S.

commitment to a withdrawal, or to implement a cease-fire dur-

ing the talks. The Afghan government has balked at a lopsided

prisoner swap in the deal, which commits to releasing up to

5,000 Taliban prisoners at the outset of the intra-Afghan negoti-

ations. Already the deal has shown signs of breaking down. If

that’s going to happen, it’s better that we know it before we’ve

increased the Taliban’s leverage with troop withdrawals.

nJoe Biden had to retract a story he has repeatedly told about

being arrested in South Africa in the 1970s while trying to see

Nelson Mandela. Now he says he was momentarily “detained”

at the airport for refusing to go through a whites-only door.

Biden has been on notice about this kind of tall tale for a very

long time: Stealing words, and biographical details, from a

British Labour leader sank his 1988 presidential bid. Fabulism

is an ingrained habit for him, as is an indulgent eye-roll about

it for the press.

n“When Fidel Castro came to office, you know what he did?”

said Bernie Sanders. “He had a massive literacy program. Is that

a bad thing?” First, you have to love the phrase “came to

office”—as though Castro had won an election. Second, Sanders

is perpetuating a myth about Cuban Communism and the

improvement of the people. When Castro “took office,” Cuba

was one of the most advanced nations in Latin America, includ-

ing one of the most literate. The literacy rate was close to 80 per-

cent. But such facts aside, we repeat what Armando Valladares,

the great dissident and onetime political prisoner (22 years),

says. In paraphrase, he says, “Suppose that all the propaganda

about Castro’s Cuba were true. Must there be a one-party dicta-

torship for a people to have literacy, health care, and the rest?

Aren’t these things present in free countries? Don’t they exist

without gulags and dungeons?” They do indeed. And Bernie

Sanders is a com-symp—a literal com-symp, or sympathizer

with Communism—who is a disgrace to the free country he was

damn lucky to have been born in.

nSanders announced he would not attend the annual conference

of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Sanders, who

says he wants to be the first Jewish president (and who has never

attended the AIPAC conference), said the group provides a plat-

form “for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic

Palestinian rights.” If only the Israeli regime were as gentle and

enlightened as the Castros’ Cuba.

See page 12.

week - FINAL_QXP-1127940387.qxp 3/4/2020 2:58 PM Page 4

UPLOADED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws