In many ways, what is happening is highly reminiscent of the anti-Communist battles of the late 1940s and early 1950s. In those days, the United States faced a dangerous external challenge from Soviet Communism. Isolationist Republicans had little interest in meeting that challenge: It would cost money and implied foreign commitments. They opposed the Marshall Plan, NATO, everything that really mattered. Instead, they used the foreign threat to justify launching a purge against an enemy within: domestic ideological opponents.
The United States is today in danger of repeating that sorry history. Pro-Trumpers want to use Chinese misconduct—real and imagined—as a weapon in a culture war here at home. They are not interested in weighing the evidence. They want payback for the political and cultural injuries inflicted on them by the scientists. They want Fauci to have time in the barrel.
What the rest of us should want is the truth.
While the Biden administration should defend U.S. scientists against partisan defamation, it has no reason to protect China against the truth, whatever that may be. In April, Biden’s director of national intelligence testified to the Senate that the intelligence community remained open to the two possibilities that the virus “emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals or it was a laboratory accident.” CIA Director William Burns concurred, adding that “the Chinese leadership has not been fully forthcoming or fully transparent.” The only thing that is certain is that these leaders are starting to disbelieve the Chinese story that the virus originated in the Wuhan markets where live animals are sold.
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