August 29, 2026

Good morning! Today is Saturday, August 29th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Five years after the Kabul withdrawal, Curt Mills argues Joe Biden's decision to end America's longest war stands as the bravest presidential act of his lifetime, contrasting Biden's honesty with what he calls a more messianic Pentagon now waging war in Iran. Nikos Mohammadi examines J.D. Vance's invocation of Huey Long at an Ohio steel plant, asking whether the Louisiana Kingfish's substantive populism can actually be revived on the right or will remain merely a matter of style. and now for the details. We begin this morning with a reflection on the fifth anniversary of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. On August 29th, 2021, a U.S. drone strike in Kabul killed ten people, including seven children, in what CENTCOM commander Frank McKenzie later publicly acknowledged was a tragic mistake. That admission came amid the chaos of an exit from a two-decade war. In a piece for The American Conservative, Curt Mills argues that, five years on, the decision to leave Afghanistan deserves recognition as the bravest and best act of any president in his lifetime. As Mills writes, Joe Biden got the strategy right, and had been right for over a decade, going back to his time as vice president when he privately considered resigning over President Obama's Afghanistan troop surge. Mills contrasts the Biden Pentagon's conduct with what he describes as a more spiritually dishonest and messianic posture under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper, following the American decision earlier this year to enter a new war with Iran. Mills concedes Biden's record was marred elsewhere, particularly on Gaza, on inflation, and on the excesses of the Covid era. But on the core question of ending America's longest war, Mills offers a straightforward verdict: Biden got it done. He also notes that Donald Trump, who negotiated the original Taliban deal, was rolled by his generals on Afghanistan in his first term, and points to the ongoing Iran war as evidence that presidential convictions do not always survive contact with the Pentagon. Vice President J.D. Vance drew attention last week when, speaking at a steel plant in his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, he invoked the memory of Louisiana's Depression-era populist governor and senator Huey Long. Vance quoted Long's famous slogan, "Every Man a King," and tied it to the Trump administration's law-and-order and border agenda. The reference set off alarms among neoconservative commentators, libertarians at Reason magazine, and mainstream liberals, who variously accused Vance of flirting with authoritarianism or socialism. Writing for The American Conservative, Nikos Mohammadi walks through Long's actual record: a state governor who built roads and bridges, expanded LSU, provided free textbooks, ran adult literacy programs, opened low-income hospitals, and eliminated the poll tax, all in a Louisiana previously dominated by Standard Oil and New Orleans oligarchs. Long's Share Our Wealth program, Mohammadi notes, likely pushed Franklin Roosevelt toward the more radical Second New Deal. Long also opposed American imperialism abroad. Mohammadi speaks with former TAC senior editor Rod Dreher, a Louisiana native, who recalls his working-class father defending Long as the reason rural families had good roads and schoolbooks. Dreher argues that the only contemporary politician who could plausibly claim Long as an inspiration is Vance himself, though he cautions against leaning too heavily on a figure whose complex legacy requires so much explanation. Mohammadi's piece raises a sharper question as well: whether Long's substantive populism can be revived on the right, or whether it will remain, for now, a matter of style. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.