Still no certainty on Iran, if you can believe
The Iran conflict continues to move fast. At the start of my writing of this edition of the newsletter, the lead item on The Post's homepage was about the Iran-Israel truce; now, it's about the violation of the Iran-Israel truce.
George Will's headline is therefore judicious: 'But then what?' This is the evergreen question of foreign policy, and it's especially relevant now after the United States jumped into commitments far bigger than what it can know them to be. As George writes, 'It will be a major surprise if there is only a negligible surprise from Iran.'
Emily Harding, a former Iran director at the National Security Council, works through three of the more worrisome scenarios that might unfold: 1) The strikes didn't work, and Iran sprints toward a bomb; 2) Iran launches a broad missile counterstrike on U.S. bases in the region or even into Europe; or 3) Iran throttles the world's oil supply.
Granted, Harding thinks each of these is 'low-probability' — and that the strike was therefore the right call.
Plenty of observers have agreed on the right call part but have argued the execution was wrong, saying that it was unconstitutional for President Donald Trump to order the strike without congressional approval. But law professors Geoffrey Corn, Claire Finkelstein and Orde Kittrie write that Trump did have the authority to act unilaterally — just like the presidents before him who ordered the military to do something big to protect U.S. interests that was just small enough to not quite count as 'war.'
From American Federation of Government Employees leaders Sheria Smith and Brittany Coleman's essay on how this legal limbo created by Trump serves neither taxpayers who are wasting money nor education staff who are eager to serve the public.
So far, more than $21 million has been spent on these workers — to, as the authors write, 'silence us and strip people of the aid they rely on.' They suggest that the legal saga is not anywhere close to being done, either.
So here we are, stuck in this mess because — surprise, surprise — 'the 'move fast, break things' motto praised by tech billionaires and powerful corporations does not work in government,' Smith and Coleman write, 'and it does not save money.'
Chaser: While Americans are paying for no benefits from these federal workers, Spain is not paying and still receiving plenty of benefits from NATO. The Editorial Board has a problem with that.
Bonus chaser: And speaking of tech billionaires, another piece from the board provides an autopsy of Elon Musk's government ambitions.
As your evenhanded concierge to this Opinions section, I don't have favorite contributors, but if I did — actually, you know, I do have favorite contributors, and one of them is Tove Danovich, whose animal-focused dispatches always delight.
Her latest is on 'bird banding,' the tagging of birds that has been going on for over a century, and on all that we stand to lose if the preservation program gets defunded. First, though, she shares some lovely stories — and breathtaking photos — of owls.
It's a goodbye. It's a haiku. It's … The Bye-Ku.
Some of school crowd spurns
Education's finest perk:
Summer vacation
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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