[dropcap]T[/dropcap]HE Obama line that “we don’t have a strategy yet” to handle the very difficult proposition of what to do with ISIS in Syria has, of course, become a punch line. That’s because, as Michael Cohen explains in the New York Daily News, most pundits (and many politicians) have no more than a cartoonish understanding of America’s role in the world. Cohen writes: “But the recognition that any U.S. strategy will be dependent on the contributions of others, will develop and evolve over time and, above all, cannot be constructed on the fly, should be welcomed. While U.S. engagement may help defeat ISIS, it almost certainly will not be decisive. Inevitably it is Iraqis who will shape the destiny of Iraq.”
For Labor Day, E.J. Dionne tells the Market Basket story of how the workers saved the CEO’s job. George Bailey would definitely understand. Via the Washington Post.
Author and columnist Anne Applebaum writes in the Washington Post that the danger of a war in Europe is not a hysterical idea.
A very strange story about the Daily Beast calls a conservative obsession, a convicted bomber and Taylor Swift.
Nervous Democrat senators are asking the White House to delay using executive action on immigration reform. And according to the New York Times, the president is listening.
It was their vacation. And every year, when they go to Cape May, the photographer takes pictures of his two daughters. It’s a way of measuring time and memory. This year, a man, a stranger, walks up to the girls while the father is trying to get another shot and says, “I would be remiss if I didn’t ask if you were OK.” The father is white. The daughters, ages 16 and 17, were adopted in China. They are, of course, a transracial family. Did that make it OK for the stranger to assume that a man, the father, was exploiting the children, his daughters? Via the Washington Post.
Man is arrested in St. Paul, Minn., where he is picking up his kids from school. The problem, he tells the cops, “is I’m black.” Via the Atlantic.
Delia Eprhon is worried that Uber is in danger of dropping her. It seems that every ride she has taken is now on her permanent record. Via the New York Times.
[Photo illustration by Sean MacEntee via Flickr/Creative Commons]