Conservative: Not-So-Surprising Truth on Pulse Massacre
The recent acquittal of Noor Salman, wife of Pulse nightclub gunman Omar Mateen, has uncovered the fact that “quite a few members of our media elite” got the entire story of the 2016 massacre “completely wrong,” contends National Review’s David French. The New York Times, among others, stated flatly that Mateen “was driven by hatred of gays and lesbians” and that Republicans were somehow to blame. But the trial “cast doubt on everything we thought we knew about Mateen.” He wasn’t a closeted gay man and he didn’t know Pulse was a gay nightclub; his original target was a shopping mall, whose heavy security deterred him. But while “an apology is necessary,” French doesn’t expect one: In a culture war, “you’re never really wrong if you attack the right enemies.”
Foreign desk: Making Sense of the Syria Muddle
Don’t feel bad if you’re “confused about what America’s military mission in Syria is, or whether the US intends to see its ill-defined objectives achieved,” says Commentary’s Noah Rothman. “Even the president and his administration seem conflicted.” Indeed, “this administration is of two minds on Syria, and that internal conflict looks increasingly like multiple personality disorder.” For military planners, “the mission against ISIS has become a secondary concern.” They stress the need to “fill a vacuum in a shattered state and to prevent the various great powers and their proxies vying to rule the rubble from accidentally triggering a broader war.” But if President Trump “is unable to make the case to the public as to why America’s mission in Syria is vital, the nation will continue to be understandably skeptical of it.”
Numbers-cruncher: Trump’s Tweeting at the Wrong Target
President Trump has been making Amazon his “personal private-sector punching bag” on Twitter, says City Journal’s Steven Malanga, while portraying “the heavily subsidized, inefficient and generally unloved US Postal Service as Amazon’s victim.” Except that Washington “has long subsidized the USPS with special exemptions that save it billions of dollars as a monopoly.” Under-performing private businesses “have to cut costs or suffer the consequences.” But Congress keeps protecting the USPS and blocking cost-saving measures. Yes, Amazon loses $1.50 on every Amazon package it delivers. But if Trump really wants to address the problem, he should “push Congress into making reforms to the post office that might minimize its exploitation by a big business — if that is even what is happening.”
From the left: Yes, China Is a Trade Cheat
Fareed Zakaria at The Washington Post finds himself forced to confess that, “on one big, fundamental point, President Trump is right: China is a trade cheat.” Unlike most of the administration’s economic documents, the US Trade Representative’s report to Congress uses “measured prose and great detail” to lay out “the many ways that China has failed to enact promised economic reforms and backtracked on others, and uses formal and informal means to block foreign firms from competing in China’s market. Fact is, the Chinese quickly recognized that “the size of their market would ensure that every country would vie for access, and this would give them the ability to cheat without much fear of reprisal.” Trump’s “unconventional methods” may be worth a try, because “nothing else has worked.”
Law prof: Poland Has a Way Out of Its Holocaust Law
A solution may be emerging that will let Poland get rid of its new “memory law,” which “makes it a crime for anyone anywhere in the world to ascribe Holocaust atrocities” to the Polish state, reports Bloomberg’s Noah Feldman. Poland’s constitutional tribunal “could strike down the law as a violation of freedom of expression under the country’s constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.” This would help rehabilitate the “badly undercut” independence of Poland’s courts, while allowing Warsaw’s right-wing government “to save face” and escape “the global criticism it’s gotten as a result of the law.” But “the most honest and direct route would be to strike down the law for what it actually is: an attempt to repress public discourse about matters of history and morality.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann