[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]
It's starting to look like the Obama administration is moving toward a decision to get American troops out of Afghanistan at an even faster pace than the drawdowns announced in November. I hope so. At this point, we no longer have any valid interest in maintaining tens of thousands of soldiers in the country.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that the administration is considering speeding up its withdrawal timetable. Two days later, Afghan president Hamid Karzai demanded that American troops pull out of the country's villages by 2013, confining themselves to major bases. We should listen to him, only sooner.
While the original foray into Afghanistan was justified (after 9/11), and President Obama's attempt to put things back on track after the Bush administration's incompetent handling of the war in Afghanistan (with its diversion to Iraq) was understandable, two years after the implementation of the president's new strategy, it's time to reassess why we are in Afghanistan, what we can hope to accomplish, and what our next move should be.
The original goal in attacking Afghanistan in 2002 was to topple the Taliban government, which had allowed Al Qaeda to base its terrorist operations out of the country. The 2010 Obama plan was aimed at nation building, providing an infrastructure for a civil government and an Afghan police force and army that could defend the country from the menace and religious extremism of the Taliban (thus, allowing the United States to exit Afghanistan).
In 2012, after ten years in Afghanistan (longer than the Soviets in the 1970s), it seems to me we've done all we can do there, and it's time to bring most of our troops home. None of the reasons proffered for a continued major presence make sense anymore.
Fighting terrorism. Thanks to the Obama administration's escalation of attacks on Al Qaeda, including drone attacks in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the terrorist organization has been left leaderless, weakened and dispersed, top intelligence leaders testified to Congress in February. And the killing of Osama bin Laden was carried out not by the might of conventional army divisions, but through the specialized work of intelligence professionals and small, elite military groups (like SEAL Team Six).
Simply put, we don't need tens of thousands of American troops in Afghanistan to fight Al Qaeda and other terrorists. It's not the way the world operates in 2012. The real dangers are elsewhere. And we can address the dangers that remain there more efficiently, with only a handful of soldiers in Afghanistan.
Nation building. Possibly the most compelling argument to stay is to protect the Afghan people from the extremism of the Taliban. But report after report from Afghanistan, including two New York Times Magazine pieces roughly 20 months apart (June 2010 and February 2012), tell similar stories of the challenges facing U.S. troops in trying to build Afghan institutions to offer an alternative to the Taliban. The Taliban know they can outwait us. They know that eventually American troops will have to pull out. They have areas in which they can retreat, knowing American soldiers cannot chase after them. And they have the resolve to forge ahead. The biggest problem is that the Afghan people know this, too. They are afraid to support the Afghan government, knowing full well that the Taliban can seek retribution.
But the inability to nation build (assuming that the Afghan army and police cannot fight off the Taliban once we leave, something we won't know until we're gone) is not just about the Taliban threat. It may be time that we recognize that a majority of the Afghan people may not want to live in a Western-style free democracy.
Even if we could, somehow, remove the Taliban as a dangerous force, Afghan culture is not always in sync with Western values, especially equality for women. The country's record on rights for women, and not just acts by the Taliban, but by the government and families acting on their own and for their tribes, is abysmal. Imprisoning women for being raped, honor killings, attacks on girls for attending schools, and acid attacks are emblematic of the problem.
A culture that so freely mistreats half its population may not be ready for democracy. We can't impose our way of life on people that don't want it. And I think it's time we stop sacrificing the lives of our soldiers to try and do it. Unfortunately, there are many places in the world where governments and groups persecute portions of their populations (based on gender, sexual orientation, religion, race, tribe, etc.). We can protest, use diplomacy, employ sanctions and otherwise try to fight these abuses. But we can't send the military to all these places to try and protect those being persecuted. So the reprehensible way Afghanistan treats its women can't be the primary justification for keeping American soldiers in the country.
Protecting an ally. For what kind of government in Afghanistan are American soldiers risking (and, too often, giving) their lives? Not one that is worth their sacrifices (and that of their families). Karzai's government is corrupt, with accusations that he fixed his 2009 re-election questioning its legitimacy. And it is not as if he has been a loyal ally to the United States, as he has openly courted Iran as an ally (and taken money from the country) and surrounded himself with anti-American advisers.
At this point, it's hard to argue that the Karzai regime is one worth fighting for.
In the end, over the last two years, we as a country did everything we were capable of to give the Afghan people the chance to choose a path of democracy and equality. Whether we waited too long, or the country's ancient tribal culture and misogynic traditions were too deep and ingrained to overcome, we seemed to have reached the limit of how far we could move Afghan society away from its less free traditions. The bottom line is that staying longer is not going to make a difference.
Our goals when we invaded Afghanistan, and when President Obama reinvigorated efforts in Afghanistan in 2010, are no longer served by the continuing presence of a large number of troops in the country.
Over the last ten years, we toppled the Taliban. We built up the Afghan army and police force. We built up the country's infrastructure. We accomplished a lot (although we wasted opportunities while in Iraq, but we can't turn back the clock).
What happens next is up to the Afghan people, not us. The country's president has asked us to leave. If he doesn't want us there, we shouldn't be there. In fact, we should beat Karzai's timetable and get most of our troops out of Afghanistan as soon as is safe and practical.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
GOP Construction of a Fictional "Obama" Has Taken a Turn to the Absurd
[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]
Bill Maher, in relaying his last "New Rule" on the Jan. 27 episode of "Real Time," returned to an argument about the GOP presidential race that he has advanced regularly:
"You know, Republicans have created this completely fictional president. His name is Barack X. And he's an Islamo-socialist revolutionary who is coming for your guns, raising your taxes, slashing the military, apologizing to other countries, and taking his cues from Europe, or worse yet, Saul Alinsky! And this is how politics has changed. You used to have to run against an actual candidate. But, now, you just recreate him inside the bubble and run against your new fictional candidate."
(You can watch the clip of the whole "New Rule" here or read the transcript here.)
Maher isn't really exaggerating. Contrary to the fictional stories told by Republicans, the president has cut taxes (taxes are lower under Obama than they were under Ronald Reagan, and the tax burden on Americans is the lowest it's been since 1950), raised the military budget, been more aggressive in fighting Islamist militants than his predecessor (bin Laden and numerous dead Taliban and al-Qaida leaders would attest to this fact if they could, as well as all those hit by increased drone attacks, not to mention--although they're not Islamists--Qadafi and all the Somali pirates who have met their demise on the business end of American military hardware), and has not proposed or supported any anti-gun legislation (instead, signing a bill that included a Republican amendment allowing guns in national parks).
Andrew Sullivan did a great job in January of laying out the Obama created by the GOP and then showing how the facts spoil the Republican fiction.
And, to be clear, we're not just talking about fringe right-wing attention-seekers making stuff up about Obama. The GOP presidential frontrunner (is he still?), Mitt Romney, accused Obama of "putting free enterprise on trial" and delusionally claimed:
"President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes. In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others."
Apparently, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy makes you an opponent of free enterprise, and continuing the bailout of the banks makes you a proponent of wealth redistribution.
(And if Rick Santorum is now the front-runner, which I don't buy, well, he makes Romney look clear-eyed regarding the president. According to Santorum, Obama wants Iran to have nuclear weapons, has "overt hostility to faith," has failed to fight "militant socialism," defunded abstinence-only programs because he wants "people to be in poverty," etc.)
But even as commentators start to note the GOP effort to create a fictional Barack Obama, it looks like Republicans have decided to double down on the stupid. That is, they have strayed from plausible lies (lies that, to the uninformed, could feel true) to absurd ones.
For example, on Tuesday, Sean Hannity made the ridiculous comment that Osama bin Laden's death "wouldn't have happened if he [Obama] had his way."
Really think about what he said for a second. When SEAL Team Six went into Pakistan to take out bin Laden, who gave the order? Here's a hint: He has an oval-shaped office in the White House. If Obama didn't want bin Laden killed, bin Laden would still be alive.
(Oh, and you'll notice the president didn't ask for Pakistan's permission to breach its borders, nor did he offer any apologies for doing so.)
By now, the story of the bin Laden mission is well known. Success was not assured. The president weighed all of the information at his disposal, which had been accumulated from years of bin Laden surveillance since his inauguration, and he took a calculated risk to approve the mission. According to Vice President Biden, when the president's senior advisers made their final recommendations, nobody (with the exception of CIA Director Leon Panetta) gave an unqualified yes. Most waffled. Biden offered a solid no. But the president opted to go forward.
If the mission had failed, Hannity would have surely placed the blame on Obama for making a reckless decision. But it worked. And now he's saying the president didn't want it to happen?
To throw a little more absurd syrup on top of the bat-s%#t-crazy sundae, remember that Obama didn't just succeed in getting bin Laden; he made it a priority, unlike his predecessor, who said, "I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you."
In short, Hannity says the president who prioritized finding bin Laden and made the difficult and risky decision to take out the al-Qaida leader (something the previous president couldn't be bothered with) didn't really want to kill him.
This is the level of absurdity to which the right has sunk in creating a fake Barack Obama.
Maybe this is all a good sign. Maybe, despite gains in the 2010 midterms (when the Republicans successfully created a fake health care law: Death panels! Care for illegal immigrants! They're taking your Medicare!), the GOP doesn't think it can beat the real Obama in November. Or maybe Republicans are worried by the numerous instances of buyer's remorse since November 2010, with successful candidate and statute recalls in Wisconsin, Ohio and Maine, as well as recent polls showing the GOP in trouble in Ohio and Obama doing relatively well in the battleground states.
Whatever the reason, the American people may be easily fooled at times, but nobody outside of the right-wing echo chamber will believe that Barack Obama didn't want to kill bin Laden. (That's even less believable than the idea that the guy who opted to fight in Vietnam and was awarded three purple hearts was a coward, while the guy who pulled strings to get into the National Guard to avoid going to Vietnam was a courageous leader, right?)
The Republican construction of a fake Barack Obama has gone off the rails. I hope the GOP keeps it up, as it only helps Obama's chances in November.
Bill Maher, in relaying his last "New Rule" on the Jan. 27 episode of "Real Time," returned to an argument about the GOP presidential race that he has advanced regularly:
"You know, Republicans have created this completely fictional president. His name is Barack X. And he's an Islamo-socialist revolutionary who is coming for your guns, raising your taxes, slashing the military, apologizing to other countries, and taking his cues from Europe, or worse yet, Saul Alinsky! And this is how politics has changed. You used to have to run against an actual candidate. But, now, you just recreate him inside the bubble and run against your new fictional candidate."
(You can watch the clip of the whole "New Rule" here or read the transcript here.)
Maher isn't really exaggerating. Contrary to the fictional stories told by Republicans, the president has cut taxes (taxes are lower under Obama than they were under Ronald Reagan, and the tax burden on Americans is the lowest it's been since 1950), raised the military budget, been more aggressive in fighting Islamist militants than his predecessor (bin Laden and numerous dead Taliban and al-Qaida leaders would attest to this fact if they could, as well as all those hit by increased drone attacks, not to mention--although they're not Islamists--Qadafi and all the Somali pirates who have met their demise on the business end of American military hardware), and has not proposed or supported any anti-gun legislation (instead, signing a bill that included a Republican amendment allowing guns in national parks).
Andrew Sullivan did a great job in January of laying out the Obama created by the GOP and then showing how the facts spoil the Republican fiction.
And, to be clear, we're not just talking about fringe right-wing attention-seekers making stuff up about Obama. The GOP presidential frontrunner (is he still?), Mitt Romney, accused Obama of "putting free enterprise on trial" and delusionally claimed:
"President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes. In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others."
Apparently, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy makes you an opponent of free enterprise, and continuing the bailout of the banks makes you a proponent of wealth redistribution.
(And if Rick Santorum is now the front-runner, which I don't buy, well, he makes Romney look clear-eyed regarding the president. According to Santorum, Obama wants Iran to have nuclear weapons, has "overt hostility to faith," has failed to fight "militant socialism," defunded abstinence-only programs because he wants "people to be in poverty," etc.)
But even as commentators start to note the GOP effort to create a fictional Barack Obama, it looks like Republicans have decided to double down on the stupid. That is, they have strayed from plausible lies (lies that, to the uninformed, could feel true) to absurd ones.
For example, on Tuesday, Sean Hannity made the ridiculous comment that Osama bin Laden's death "wouldn't have happened if he [Obama] had his way."
Really think about what he said for a second. When SEAL Team Six went into Pakistan to take out bin Laden, who gave the order? Here's a hint: He has an oval-shaped office in the White House. If Obama didn't want bin Laden killed, bin Laden would still be alive.
(Oh, and you'll notice the president didn't ask for Pakistan's permission to breach its borders, nor did he offer any apologies for doing so.)
By now, the story of the bin Laden mission is well known. Success was not assured. The president weighed all of the information at his disposal, which had been accumulated from years of bin Laden surveillance since his inauguration, and he took a calculated risk to approve the mission. According to Vice President Biden, when the president's senior advisers made their final recommendations, nobody (with the exception of CIA Director Leon Panetta) gave an unqualified yes. Most waffled. Biden offered a solid no. But the president opted to go forward.
If the mission had failed, Hannity would have surely placed the blame on Obama for making a reckless decision. But it worked. And now he's saying the president didn't want it to happen?
To throw a little more absurd syrup on top of the bat-s%#t-crazy sundae, remember that Obama didn't just succeed in getting bin Laden; he made it a priority, unlike his predecessor, who said, "I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you."
In short, Hannity says the president who prioritized finding bin Laden and made the difficult and risky decision to take out the al-Qaida leader (something the previous president couldn't be bothered with) didn't really want to kill him.
This is the level of absurdity to which the right has sunk in creating a fake Barack Obama.
Maybe this is all a good sign. Maybe, despite gains in the 2010 midterms (when the Republicans successfully created a fake health care law: Death panels! Care for illegal immigrants! They're taking your Medicare!), the GOP doesn't think it can beat the real Obama in November. Or maybe Republicans are worried by the numerous instances of buyer's remorse since November 2010, with successful candidate and statute recalls in Wisconsin, Ohio and Maine, as well as recent polls showing the GOP in trouble in Ohio and Obama doing relatively well in the battleground states.
Whatever the reason, the American people may be easily fooled at times, but nobody outside of the right-wing echo chamber will believe that Barack Obama didn't want to kill bin Laden. (That's even less believable than the idea that the guy who opted to fight in Vietnam and was awarded three purple hearts was a coward, while the guy who pulled strings to get into the National Guard to avoid going to Vietnam was a courageous leader, right?)
The Republican construction of a fake Barack Obama has gone off the rails. I hope the GOP keeps it up, as it only helps Obama's chances in November.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Ignoring the Publicity Seekers: A New Year's Resolution We Should All Make
[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]
While you sometimes have to convince skeptics that politics matter, it's even harder to get people to see that the decisions the media make when it comes to pop culture are important. But they are. We live in a time in which celebrity is not only something that often comes without being earned by any achievement, but fame is inescapable in our culture and the focus of so much attention on television and online.
I think we're paying a price for our obsession with faux celebrity. So even though I know it's a losing battle, my 2012 New Year's resolution is meant to take a shot at fighting back.
My 2012 New Year's resolution is to ignore people who receive news coverage despite the fact that, by any reasonable approach, they shouldn't matter as public figures.
Of course, when the subject of famous for being famous comes up, the first people to spring to mind are the members of a certain family whose late patriarch was an attorney for O.J. Simpson, mainly three of the daughters who seem to be famous for marrying professional athletes and shopping. This family (I won't name them and violate my resolution before 2012 even begins, but you know who I'm talking about) is the low hanging fruit of the faux celebrity phenomenon and the symbol of an entire class of reality show "celebrities" who are famous even though they have literally done nothing to warrant attention other than being on television. (This very online publication saw fit to feature on its front page the pregnancy of a woman whose claim to fame is having an affair with a professional golfer.)
It all reminds me of an exchange between Jason Alexander's George and a television executive played by Bob Balaban in the Seinfeld episode "The Pitch," in which the executive asks George why people would watch a show about nothing, and George responds, "Because it's on TV." The 20 years of television history since the episode ran seem to support the idea that George was right.
But I'm not just talking about the famous-for-being-famous set. Sometimes people used to matter but don't anymore. Or at least shouldn't. This week a former SNL performer, who hasn't had an acting gig of note since she left the show nearly 20 years ago, was in the news because she said the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the U.S. government and is going to institute Sharia law. (Again, I'm not naming her.) If my next-door-neighbor said the same thing, no newspaper, website, television network or even community newsletter would cover it. Why? Because it's the rantings of a bats*$t-crazy lunatic. But because she was on a successful comedy show 20 years ago it's news? No.
Put another way, if this former actress announced she was switching from an iPhone to an Android phone, would the press cover it? No. Why? Because she doesn't matter. (Right or wrong, if Angelina Jolie swapped phones, there would be articles analyzing the underlying meaning. It's clear the former SNL performer only gets coverage for saying crazy crap.) So if she doesn't matter when she talks about mundane things, we shouldn't care about her isnane conspiracy theories, either.
Besides, it's pretty clear the actress gets this. When she says nutso things, the press covers it. When she doesn't (as happened for close to 20 years), she lives in obscurity. Clearly she's doing it to get publicity. Why give it to her?
So who cares if the press covers pseudo stars and washed up performers? I do, because the same mentality has seeped into politics.
This week a sitting member of Congress who is seeking the Republican nomination for the presidency made the obviously false, seriously insane charge, "The president can put abortion pills for girls 8 years of age, 11 years of age, on the bubblegum aisle." You may think, "Well, it's Michele Bachmann. Everyone knows she says ridiculous, false things all the time." But why does she? I don't believe she actually thinks the president wants to make morning-after pills available to minors in the candy section of stores. Even she has to know that's not true.
But she also knows that she will get attention when she says crazy, false, incendiary things. It's not like she can impress people with her intelligence, knowledge, depth of thought, competence or insightful proposals. Controversial is all she has, especially now that her campaign is deader than Kris Humphries' marriage (I can name him because he has an actual skill and reason to be covered, at least by the sports press). And it's a lesson learned from those who can only find celebrity through acting crazy.
Not that Bachmann is the only no-chance candidate making use of this tactic. Rick Santorum has made the obviously false statements that universities are liberal "indoctrination centers" and the president is a proponent of Marxism. Rick Perry decided to release a gay-bashing television commercial and was happy to relay an obviously false patient anecdote about the new health care law. The lesson is clear: Controversial statements get press, no matter how false, hateful or insane they are.
Clearly, the media has to (and should) publicize when a public official says something that is false and crazy. The public needs information with which to make civic and electoral decisions, and knowing that a politician has no problem lying to make a point and/or has off-the-wall beliefs is absolutely relevant.
But if a reality television star used to have a lousy hairstyle, well, I'm quite sure we can survive as a democracy without knowing this nugget of information.
So I resolve in 2012 not to contribute to the publicity of people that don't matter. If any of the far more powerful members of the media decide to follow suit, I think that would be a really good thing for our democracy.
And it's in the hands of all Americans not to allow themselves to be sucked into the nonsense, whether it's reality television celebrities, long-past-it performers or even politicians prone to attention-getting false and outrageous statements. The press may have to cover the controversy-baiting politicians, but Americans don't have to take them seriously.
It's not like the Michele Bachmanns, Ricky Perrys and Rick Santorums of the world need more encouragement to belch out outlandish lies and hateful charges to get publicity.
While you sometimes have to convince skeptics that politics matter, it's even harder to get people to see that the decisions the media make when it comes to pop culture are important. But they are. We live in a time in which celebrity is not only something that often comes without being earned by any achievement, but fame is inescapable in our culture and the focus of so much attention on television and online.
I think we're paying a price for our obsession with faux celebrity. So even though I know it's a losing battle, my 2012 New Year's resolution is meant to take a shot at fighting back.
My 2012 New Year's resolution is to ignore people who receive news coverage despite the fact that, by any reasonable approach, they shouldn't matter as public figures.
Of course, when the subject of famous for being famous comes up, the first people to spring to mind are the members of a certain family whose late patriarch was an attorney for O.J. Simpson, mainly three of the daughters who seem to be famous for marrying professional athletes and shopping. This family (I won't name them and violate my resolution before 2012 even begins, but you know who I'm talking about) is the low hanging fruit of the faux celebrity phenomenon and the symbol of an entire class of reality show "celebrities" who are famous even though they have literally done nothing to warrant attention other than being on television. (This very online publication saw fit to feature on its front page the pregnancy of a woman whose claim to fame is having an affair with a professional golfer.)
It all reminds me of an exchange between Jason Alexander's George and a television executive played by Bob Balaban in the Seinfeld episode "The Pitch," in which the executive asks George why people would watch a show about nothing, and George responds, "Because it's on TV." The 20 years of television history since the episode ran seem to support the idea that George was right.
But I'm not just talking about the famous-for-being-famous set. Sometimes people used to matter but don't anymore. Or at least shouldn't. This week a former SNL performer, who hasn't had an acting gig of note since she left the show nearly 20 years ago, was in the news because she said the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the U.S. government and is going to institute Sharia law. (Again, I'm not naming her.) If my next-door-neighbor said the same thing, no newspaper, website, television network or even community newsletter would cover it. Why? Because it's the rantings of a bats*$t-crazy lunatic. But because she was on a successful comedy show 20 years ago it's news? No.
Put another way, if this former actress announced she was switching from an iPhone to an Android phone, would the press cover it? No. Why? Because she doesn't matter. (Right or wrong, if Angelina Jolie swapped phones, there would be articles analyzing the underlying meaning. It's clear the former SNL performer only gets coverage for saying crazy crap.) So if she doesn't matter when she talks about mundane things, we shouldn't care about her isnane conspiracy theories, either.
Besides, it's pretty clear the actress gets this. When she says nutso things, the press covers it. When she doesn't (as happened for close to 20 years), she lives in obscurity. Clearly she's doing it to get publicity. Why give it to her?
So who cares if the press covers pseudo stars and washed up performers? I do, because the same mentality has seeped into politics.
This week a sitting member of Congress who is seeking the Republican nomination for the presidency made the obviously false, seriously insane charge, "The president can put abortion pills for girls 8 years of age, 11 years of age, on the bubblegum aisle." You may think, "Well, it's Michele Bachmann. Everyone knows she says ridiculous, false things all the time." But why does she? I don't believe she actually thinks the president wants to make morning-after pills available to minors in the candy section of stores. Even she has to know that's not true.
But she also knows that she will get attention when she says crazy, false, incendiary things. It's not like she can impress people with her intelligence, knowledge, depth of thought, competence or insightful proposals. Controversial is all she has, especially now that her campaign is deader than Kris Humphries' marriage (I can name him because he has an actual skill and reason to be covered, at least by the sports press). And it's a lesson learned from those who can only find celebrity through acting crazy.
Not that Bachmann is the only no-chance candidate making use of this tactic. Rick Santorum has made the obviously false statements that universities are liberal "indoctrination centers" and the president is a proponent of Marxism. Rick Perry decided to release a gay-bashing television commercial and was happy to relay an obviously false patient anecdote about the new health care law. The lesson is clear: Controversial statements get press, no matter how false, hateful or insane they are.
Clearly, the media has to (and should) publicize when a public official says something that is false and crazy. The public needs information with which to make civic and electoral decisions, and knowing that a politician has no problem lying to make a point and/or has off-the-wall beliefs is absolutely relevant.
But if a reality television star used to have a lousy hairstyle, well, I'm quite sure we can survive as a democracy without knowing this nugget of information.
So I resolve in 2012 not to contribute to the publicity of people that don't matter. If any of the far more powerful members of the media decide to follow suit, I think that would be a really good thing for our democracy.
And it's in the hands of all Americans not to allow themselves to be sucked into the nonsense, whether it's reality television celebrities, long-past-it performers or even politicians prone to attention-getting false and outrageous statements. The press may have to cover the controversy-baiting politicians, but Americans don't have to take them seriously.
It's not like the Michele Bachmanns, Ricky Perrys and Rick Santorums of the world need more encouragement to belch out outlandish lies and hateful charges to get publicity.
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