President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the end of the war in Afghanistan in the State Dining Room at the White House on August 31, 2021.(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
America’s longest war came to an end on Monday as the last troops left Afghanistan, 20 years after we started fighting there. How much have the disasters around the Afghan pullout hurt Joe Biden and his agenda? How much will it hurt the Democrats in the midterms next November? John Nichols comments.
Also: The story of a Black writer who moved to Paris in the 1950s and discovered French racism—aimed at Algerians. Adam Shatz explains the story of William Gardner Smith—he was literary editor of The Nation, and has now written the introduction to a novel called The Stone Face, by Smith, originally published in 1963 and out now in a new edition.
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Start Making SenseTwitterStart Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.
Jon WienerTwitterJon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.