From an article in this morning’s New York Times, “As U.S. Leaves Allies in Syria, Kurdish Commander Struggles with Fallout.”

Mr. Trump’s decision to pull United States troops out of the way of a Turkish advance and to begin withdrawing them from Syria deprived Mr. Kobani of his strongest backer and left him scrambling to reach new accommodations with the region’s other powers. This has put him in touch with a surprising number of powerful people for a man who heads a relatively unknown militia in an obscure corner of Syria.

Since the violence started, he has met with senior aides to President al-Assad of Syria, whom the United States considers a war criminal; spoken with top brass from the Russian military, which backs Mr. al-Assad; and had phone calls with prominent Americans like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who opposes Mr. Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria. On Saturday he talked to Mr. Pence, and he spoke with Mr. Trump last week.

“The issues are very complicated,” Mr. Kobani said. “I meet with everyone, and I will make any decision that is in our people’s interest.”

In other words, by Hillary Clinton’s standards, Mazlum Kobani is now an “apologist for Assad” who’s being “groomed” as a Russian asset. Borrowing Clinton’s conspiracy-theoretic assumptions, why is that a strike against Tulsi Gabbard but not against Mazlum Kobani? If those are such terrible things, why should we be supporting the Kurds at all?

Granted, given HRC’s latest venture into geostrategy, it’s doubtful anyone can refer with a straight face to her “standards,” but I think you know what I mean.

From an article in the Sunday New York Times magazine about James Comey’s private crusade to “end” the Trump presidency:

Rod J. Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general whose 2017 memo about Mr. Comey was cited to rationalize the firing of the F.B.I. director that May, has been particularly cutting. At a speech last spring, Mr. Rosenstein taunted the former director for “selling books and earning speaking fees while speculating about the strength of my character and the fate of my immortal soul.”

“I kid you not,” Mr. Rosenstein said. “And that is disappointing. Speculating about souls is not a job for police and prosecutors.”

I guess I’m disappointed that Rod Rosenstein seems never to have heard of mens rea, forensic psychology, or Cicero.  The FBI famously has a Behavioral Analysis Unit. What is it that Rod Rosenstein thinks they do there?

Continuing the courtly-love theme: the following comments on Andreas Capellanus’s definition of love were written for my mediæval philosophy course page, but I thought others might be interested also:

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