WEEKEND QUOTABLES

“We will not tolerate that. That is inhumane. That is not American,” Patrick Brutus, president of Haitian American Professional Network, told a Chicago crowd Sunday. -- Sun-Times

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

“The NBA should insist that all players and staff are vaccinated or remove them from the team." -- Rolling Stone

UN Secretary-General António Guterres

[Afghani] Women must be able to work, girls must be able to have all levels of education, and, at the same time, to cooperate with the international community fighting terrorism in an effective way. So, we need to engage. We don't know how things will develop, but we know that if we don't engage, they will probably go in the wrong direction. -- UN News

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley

"In the words of Robert Nesta Marley, who will get up and stand up?”

“If we can send people to the moon, and, as I’ve said over and over, solve male baldness,” she riffed, then other issues, too, can certainly be addressed. -- Speech to UN General Assembly

Chicago's new public schools CEO, Pedro Martinez

On the contentious relationship between Mayor Lightfoot and the CTU:

I am not naïve. I know there are some political divides that run very deep. But when it comes to, for example, the safety of our children, our children being in school in person, our schools being safe, there has to be common ground there. -- Sun-Times

 Texas Gov. Greg Abbott claims he will end rape

Chris Wallace to Gov. Abbott: "In 2019, which is the last year that we have numbers for, almost 15,000 cases of rape were reported in your state of Texas...Is it reasonable to say to somebody who is the victim of rape and might not understand that they are pregnant until six weeks, 'Well, don't worry about it because we're going to eliminate rape as a problem in the state of Texas?'" -- Fox News

Biden's strategic shift towards China brings us ever closer to war

V.P. Kamala Harris was sent to South China Sea last month to try and push Singapore and Vietnam into an anti-China front. But her offer was rejected by both. 

The new Cold War with China, begun under Trump and now escalating under Biden, once again pushes us closer to the nuclear abyss. How close are we? So close that according to a new book “Peril,” by the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was so consumed with fear that former President Donald Trump might launch “rogue” conventional or nuclear strikes against China, he acted twice to prevent it. 

Trump's defeat brought hope to many around the world that Biden and the Democrats would break from Trump's anti-China saber-rattling, trade-war policies and shift towards repairing the breach and lowering the temperature. These hopes have grown more desperate during the global pandemic as the growing cold war now includes vaccine wars. 

Instead, Biden has doubled down on Trump's policies and seems bent on provoking a military confrontation in the South China Sea. 

Here are a few of the repercussions...

North and South Korea are once again firing ballistic missiles hours apart from each other instead of negotiating towards unity as they were doing only a couple of months ago without U.S. involvement. This while South Korea and China were meeting to discuss de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula. You get the picture. 

Then there's this...

In what appears to those in the region to be a white united front against China the US, UK, and Australia are creating a trilateral security partnership which will include helping Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines. 

The initiative, called Aukus, was announced jointly by President Joe Biden and prime ministers Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison, following US briefings which described the agreement as binding the three English-speaking countries together.

Is anyone in these "English-speaking countries" feeling any safer from all this? Me neither. 

Remember, it was Biden who previously referred to Johnson as, "a physical and emotional clone'" of Trump. 

It's all occurring in the wake of Biden's strategic military shift away from the Middle East and towards Cold War. It follows his helter-skelter withdraw and re-positioning of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Biden's main cold-warrior strategist and regime-change specialist, Sec. Anthony Blinken is under the gun here at home, facing withering attacks from left and right over the "chaotic" Afghan retreat.

I'm still wondering though. Has there ever been a smooth withdrawal by an invading army after a major military defeat? Wish we could ask Napoleon or Gen. Creighton Abrams who was sending Nixon upbeat reports on the progress of the war in Vietnam right up 'til the very end. 

The lessons of war are hard to learn. Let's pull the reins in on the warmakers. 

QUOTABLES: Biden's Bible

Abdul Matin Azizi, a neighbor who saw the attack. Azizi, 20, said the explosion occurred as the family returned home Sunday afternoon around 4:30 p.m. Azizi said he ran next door to help and found a gruesome scene, the air thick with smoke. “The bodies were covered in blood and shrapnel, and some of the dead children were still inside the car,” he said. -- Washington Post

Biden's Bible

 “Those who have served through the ages have drawn inspiration from the Book of Isaiah. When the Lord says, ‘who shall I send, who shall go for us?’ The American military has been answering for a long time, ‘Here I am, Lord. Send me.’” -- Speech to the Nation

Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia Prof

The sad truth is that the American political class and mass media hold the people of poorer nations in contempt, even as they intervene relentlessly and recklessly in those countries. Of course, much of America’s elite hold America’s own poor in similar contempt. -- Market Watch

Dr. Anthony Fauci

"I believe that mandating vaccines for children to appear in school is a good idea."

"This is not something new. We have mandates in many places in schools, particularly public schools, that if in fact you want a child to come in -- we've done this for decades and decades requiring (vaccines for) polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis," he said. "So this would not be something new, requiring vaccinations for children to come to school." -- CNN

Seth Meyers

 “I mean, how does this shit keep getting dumber and dumber? First it was hydroxychloroquine, then it was bleach, powerful lights, now it’s horse dewormer? I’m honestly terrified to imagine what’s next. One day we’re gonna wake up and Brian Kilmeade’s gonna be telling people you can cure COVID by eating kibble and sleeping in a bed of kitty litter.” -- Late Night

QUOTABLES

Yes, ‘I Am Legend,’ the 2007 movie about zombie vampires, is now a part of the vaccine conversation. 

As of Wednesday, more than 166 million Americans have been fully vaccinated. The zombie count, however, remains at zero. -- Washington Post

Stephen Collison, CNN

At the same time, Biden was doing exactly what most Americans, exhausted by long years of foreign quagmires and confused as to why US troops were still in Afghanistan 20 years after 9/11, wanted. There was no national support for escalating the war. -- Biden's botched Afghan exit  

Taliban Spokesperson, Suhail Shaheen 

...told the BBC Sunday that the militants want a "peaceful" transition. -- CNBC

‘Saigon on Steroids’: The Desperate Rush to Flee Afghanistan,” by WSJ’s Yaroslav Trofimov, Dion Nissenbaum, and Margherita Stancati 

"The lucky few were already inside, crowded onto the last patch of government territory that hadn’t fallen to the Taliban. Outside, as thousands of civilians surged to break through the perimeter of Hamid Karzai International Airport, security forces fired gunshots into the air to force them back." -- Wall Street Journal

“Corporate America grows impatient on Biden’s China trade review,” by Gavin Bade

“Nearly eight months into his presidency, America’s largest corporations are voicing frustration that Biden has not rolled back any of former President Donald Trump’s major tariffs, particularly the duties on $350 billion worth of Chinese imports." -- Politico

NYT’s Elizabeth Harris

“Blackout,” by the right-wing media personality Candace Owens, has sold 480,000 copies across formats since it was published last fall by Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. “American Marxism,” by the best-selling author Mark R. Levin, which devotes a chapter to critical race theory, sold 400,000 books in just its first week on the market last month. -- New York Times

The imperial mind of David Brooks

"America, disillusioned with itself, is now withdrawing." -- David Brooks

Brooks is an unreconstructed imperialist, an anti-China cold warrior who still envisions America as the last and only great white hope to save our admittedly "flawed and error-prone" democracy from the advances of the dark and evil forces around the globe.

In his July 15th NYT opinion piece, The American Identity Crisis, Brooks objects to Biden's apparent retreat from Afghanistan where this country has fought its longest, seemingly eternal war at the cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. I say apparent because the U.S. will continue to back the regime with drones based in neighboring countries and will supply it with armaments and aircraft as well as maintaining contracted fighters in-country.

The withdrawal of all U.S. troops by Sept. 1st is actually more of a strategic repositioning targeting China than a withdrawal. As Biden himself put it in his July 8th speech:

We are developing a counterterrorism over-the-horizon capability that will allow us to keep our eyes firmly fixed on any direct threats to the United States in the region, and act quickly and decisively if needed.

And we also need to focus on shoring up America’s core strengths to meet the strategic competition with China and other nations that is really going to determine — determine our future. 

About 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zone since 2001. More than 71,000 of those killed have been civilians. If official accounts are to be accepted, the war has killed more people last month than in any other month since 2001, when the United States and NATO troops invaded the country.

But for Brooks, this cost in treasure and human life is apparently a small price to pay for his imagined military defeat of the Taliban and defense of the corrupt U.S. puppet regime in Kabul. 

He blames the withdrawal of the last remaining U.S. troops, begun by Trump and reportedly completed by Biden, on "the American left" who he claims has "lost confidence" in American manifest destiny and has forsaken the country's identity as the military enforcer of liberal-democratic values in resistant countries. 

He writes:

I guess what befuddles me most is the behavior of the American left. I get why Donald Trump and other American authoritarians would be ambivalent about America’s role in the world. They were always suspicious of the progressive package that America has helped to promote.

But every day I see progressives defending women’s rights, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and racial justice at home and yet championing a foreign policy that cedes power to the Taliban, Hamas and other reactionary forces abroad.

Brooks is actually more MAGA than Trump. He longs for the days when the threat and use of unrivaled U.S. military power were enough to impose regime change on resistant peoples and countries. But as the past half-century of failed U.S. military adventures, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan have shown, those days are numbered. 

Footnote: As I'm writing this, Reuters is reporting that Taliban officials and Afghan politicians met in Qatar on Saturday amid calls for peace by both sides following continued fighting in the region. 

I'm still hoping against hope that a bloody civil war can be averted once all foreign troops leave the country and that the Afghani people will finally be able to determine their own destiny. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

CNN anchor, Jim Acosta calls "BS" on Fox

"That tale from the border didn't just border on BS, this was USDA Grade-A bullsh*t. -- Raw Story

Rick Ayers -- Capitalism is killing us

The big US and European pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, and Moderna, hold patents on the counter-COVID vaccines and the accompanying formulas they’ve developed, keeping the processes of production under wraps. -- Medium

Sec. of State Anthony Blinken on Afghan pullout

 Just because our troops are coming home doesn't mean we're leaving. We're not. -- 60 Minutes

 Eric Goldstein on Israeli apartheid

To bring real change, we need to call the situation what it is: an oppressive and discriminatory system that shows no signs of going away, and that meets the legal definition of apartheid. -- Human Rights Watch

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves

On the penultimate day of the Confederate Heritage Month Gov. Reeves made a bold declaration: “There is not systemic racism in America.” -- Mississippi Free Press

Ali Velshi 

Arizona recently chose to out-source its rights and responsibilities to recount ballots to a private company run by a CEO who has been spreading the “Big Lie” that the election was stolen. -- MSNBC

Rebecca Solnit

Ideas put forth in the Green New Deal in 2019, seen as radical at the time, are now the kind of stuff President Biden routinely proposes in his infrastructure and jobs plans. -- Guardian

Biden's Cold War mentality detracts from his progressive initiatives

We’re in a competition with China and other countries to win the 21st Century. -- Pres. Biden's address to Congress last night 

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. -- Pres. Eisenhower, 1953

That last quote is from Eisenhower's Chance For Peace speech in 1953.  It took the former 4-Star General to warn us against the country's exploding post-war military budget. But as the Cold War deepened during his administration, political pressures for increased military spending mounted. By the time he left office in 1961, he felt it necessary to warn of the military-industrial complex in his farewell address.

I was reminded of Ike's warning last night, listening to Pres. Biden couch all of his ambitious (but not adequate) $6-trillion post-pandemic infrastructure rebuilding and jobs programs in jingoist, America First,  anti-China, Cold War rhetoric. 

Biden called on Congress to invest in infrastructure, education, child care, civil rights, and science calling them programs that will allow the U.S. to win a competition with China. Like Trump, Biden is committed to a distinctly anti-China global strategy rooted in fears of American decline.

Yes, those investments are exactly what we need. But not for the sake of winning some mythical and dangerous global race to the top. Remember, that was Arne Duncan's rationale for pushing testing madness and school privatization when he was Obama's ed secretary. My 4-year-old granddaughter doesn't need to be prepared in pre-school to compete with 4-year-olds in China or Switzerland for global hegemony, thank you. 

It's this kind of thinking that has led to the global vaccine wars when international cooperation in the fight against the pandemic could have saved millions of lives and prevented the current catastrophe in India. 

It has also led Biden to push for a bloated Pentagon budget that's even larger than Trump's. The rationale behind the push has to do with illusory U.S. imperial ambitions to impose its will on other countries and engage in regime change when it can. These ambitions leave me even more skeptical about his planned withdrawal of the remaining troops in Afghanistan. Are they really being brought home or simply being redeployed for continuing conflict in the region? Does a redeployment mean a new buildup of American military power to confront China and Iran?

Yes, according to a report in today's NYT:

The Pentagon is looking to place troops near Afghanistan to track and attack militant groups if they threaten the United States. Possibilities in the region include Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, but those countries are under the sway of Russia to one degree or another, Attack planes aboard aircraft carriers and long-range bombers flying from land bases along the Persian Gulf and even in the United States could strike insurgent fighters spotted by armed surveillance drones. 

Or is the China yellow-peril ("they're closing in on us") fearmongering simply being used as a way to appeal to resistant Trump Party members in a vain attempt to build "bipartisan" support for his new initiatives? If it is, it's a pipe dream. 

Biden recounted:

I also told President Xi that we will maintain a strong military presence in the Indo—Pacific just as we do with NATO in Europe – not to start conflict – but to prevent conflict." 

He failed to explain how putting U.S. warships in the South China Sea would prevent conflict rather than inevitably provoke a new one.  

China and other countries are closing in fast," warned Biden. "We have to develop and dominate the products and technologies of the future: advanced batteries, biotechnology, computer chips, and clean energy."

 Other countries "closing in" on us? What a myopic, paranoid, us-against-them view of the world.

Winning the 21st Century? What the hell does that even mean? Is the 21st Century a game? How do you know if you've won or lost? Who won the 20th?

Biden's guns-and-butter strategy is bound to bump heads with his progressive initiatives. That's too bad. They're worthwhile initiatives. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Weaponized gossip. It's designed to undermine the credibility and marginalize the person who is the target. It often has no basis in reality. I know - it happened to me as an elected official. It's got a name. It's a tactic. Recognize it when you see it, and push back.

— Rep. Ann Williams (@RepAnnWilliams) April 18, 2021

Benjamin Crump, civil rights attorney

“The outcome that we pray for and Derek Chauvin is for him to be held criminally liable for killing George Floyd, because we believe that could be a precedent,” Crump told ABC’s This Week on Sunday. “Finally making America live up to its promise of liberty and justice for all. That means all of us - Black people, Hispanic people, Native people - all of us.” -- Guardian

Dr. David Williams

Dr. David Williams, Harvard public health professor 

“There are racial disparities in health in the United States. Over 200 Black people die prematurely every single day." -- 60 Minutes

John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua 

"China and the United States are committed to cooperating with each other and with other countries to tackle the climate crisis." -- China-U.S. Joint Statement Addressing the Climate Crisis

Eliot Cohen, Dean of SAIS at Johns Hopkins

In important aspects of foreign and national-security policy, the Biden administration is really the Trump administration but with civilized manners. -- The Atlantic

I'm holding my applause

Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga call for a "united front against China"

.
Democrats, including the party's left-wing, are wildly cheering Biden's announcement of a planned troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by September 11th. And who can blame them? Most Americans have long grown weary of this country's "eternal war on terrorism" which has dragged on now for two decades at great cost in human lives and taxpayer dollars. It was a war that Biden supported from the start.

Called a "smart war" (as opposed to the "dumb war" in Iraq) by President Obama, the Afghan war has been backed and underwritten by the leaders of both parties and cheered on in the press. All the while meeting little resistance from a once-powerful and militant, now-dormant anti-war movement. 

But now, the great majority of Americans from right to left, support an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops. A poll from the right-leaning Concerned Veterans for America showed that 67% of veterans support a complete withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. 

So why am I, a long-time anti-war activist, withholding my applause for now? Two reasons: First, I'll wait until all the remaining 2,500 troops (plus thousands of U.S.-hired military contractors) are out of Afghanistan and the last missile is fired on Afghanis from a U.S. drone. You see, I've heard these withdrawal announcements before including the one made most recently by our previous president to withdraw all troops by May 1st. By delaying the withdrawal by 4 months, Biden is violating the agreement Trump made with the Afghanis. Second, I'm concerned that the announced withdrawal is really a repositioning of U.S. troops so they can be used to ramp up an even more dangerous U.S. war threat against China. 

I know that any criticism of Biden's foreign policy is difficult, if not impossible for Democrats to make right now. Just like it was when Obama was elected after the Bush years. After 4 years of Trump and with Biden's pandemic relief money flowing to cities, states, and schools, Biden deserves the ratings he's getting. 

But I'm still leery of the intentions of his new team of cold warriors now heading the State and Defense Departments just as I was of regime-changer Hillary Clinton and neocon, John McCain during the Obama years. 

It's unimaginable to me that in the midst of this global pandemic, Congress would approve a bloated ($715B) Pentagon budget with barely a note of dissent from regular democrats. This represents a leap well beyond Trump's giant gift to the warmakers. 

The day after... I started writing this post the day before yesterday's White House meeting between Biden and JapanesePrime Minister Yoshihide Suga. It was there that Biden confirmed my worst fears when he gave the clearest expression yet of his out-of-whack strategic foreign policy objective, echoing Sec. Anthony Blinken's call at last month's Alaska summit for a "united front against China."

The new strategic plan is a failed one that can only pull this country deeper into a new cold war and closer to a hot one as well. 

And if you thought the Afghan war was a dumb one...

Klobuchar was the worst of the six.

"And then when it comes to Iraq, right now, I would leave our troops there, despite the mess that has been created by Donald Trump." -- Amy Klobuchar at Des Moines debate.

Of the six candidates on stage in Des Moines Tuesday night, Amy Klobuchar was by far, the worst.

She outflanked the others on the right on nearly every issue, from war to the economy, to the environment. She doesn't support a wealth tax or Medicare for all, tuition-free K-16 public ed, and if elected, won't repeal Trump’s tax break for the rich.

She wants to keep troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and keep nuclear weapons in southern Turkey. She defended the assassination of Gen. Soleimani. She's a big fan of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and says that as president, she would "bring in American support again in a big way for Israel." She wants to keep the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem and leave in place the Trump administration’s policies on Israeli settlements.

And on it goes.

In other words, Klobuchar represents a wing of the Democratic Party that stands in direct opposition to progressives like Sanders and Warren on most of the fundamental issues.

She even slams Warren personally for being "too wonky."

So my question is, why would Elizabeth Warren decide to block with Klobuchar against Sanders Tuesday night? Was it just to score a few quick points against her long-time political ally in order to supplant him as the current progressive frontrunner? Was it simply an act of retaliation for Sanders' alleged "a woman can't win" comment in a private conversation? If so, it failed badly. It was a short-sighted, opportunist move that will divide the progressive wing of the party and will likely hurt mainly her as well as Sanders' chances of winning the nomination.

I hope not.

18 years of lies on Afghanistan revealed

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” -- Napoleon Bonaparte

Three U.S. presidents, Bush, Obama, and Trump, have bought and sold this big lie to the public and built their failed foreign policies upon it.

A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable. -- Craig Whitlock, Washington Post

LOOKING BACK...On Oct. 2, 2002, then IL State Senator Barack Obama said in a major speech at an anti-war rally we organized in Chicago that "I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars." He referred to the Iraq War as his "dumb war" example in contrast to Afghanistan, which was billed as a winnable and necessary war to topple the Taliban government, drive out al Qaeda terrorists and install a pro-U.S. regime in Kabul.

"We must embrace America's singular role in the course of human events but we must also be as pragmatic as we are passionate, as strategic as we are resolute. 

Then there was...

Hillary Clinton supported the 2009 increase in U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan. During the administration's Afghanistan War review in 2010, Clinton endorsed General Stanley McChrystal's recommendation for 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, before endorsing a fallback proposal (ultimately accepted by Obama) for 30,000 troops. -- NYT

And regime-changer McCain...

Robert Kagan, a former adviser to his 2008 opponent John McCain, warned that a quick withdrawal threatens recent gains against the Taliban - and popular opinion could swing against the president if an emboldened enemy takes the speech as a cue to step up attacks.

"This is a political decision, not a military decision," he told POLITICO. "Americans are tired of this war, that's true. But they hate losing more, and if there's the perception that we're being run out of there, the public will turn on him fast." 

Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures.

The government has not carried out a comprehensive accounting of how much it has spent on the war in Afghanistan, but the costs are staggering -- into the trillions.

Now, Trump says he's ready to engage in peace talks with the Taliban, in preparation for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

News of the talks came just before The Washington Post reported it had obtained more than 2,000 pages of government documents that it says show how U.S. officials have for years misled the public about the war in Afghanistan.

What an irony it would be if Republican Trump, facing impeachment and a difficult 2020 re-election campaign, ended the war that Democrats couldn't or wouldn't end. Shades of Republican, Richard Nixon in March of 1973, withdrawing his defeated army from Vietnam, only to be impeached in October of that same year.

I'm doubtful. Most likely, this is for media consumption.

The media has been complicit... The editorial board of the very same WaPo that this week revealed the pile of lies driving the Afghan war, opposed the war's end just months earlier.

The Washington Post’s editorial board (1/28/19) was similarly apprehensive at the prospect of US withdrawal. Lamenting what it considered a deal brokered “mostly on the enemy’s terms,” it proclaimed that “an end to the Afghan war is desirable, but not at the expense of everything the United States has helped to build there since 2001.” -- FAIR

Tell us, WaPo. What exactly has the U.S. built there? The truth, this time please.  

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Wayne LaPierre, head of the NRA

... also pushed to arm teachers and called on schools to be “the most hardened targets in this country.” -- Washington Post

Derek Black

 We Shouldn't Call Teacher Salary Hikes 'Raises' -- EdWeek

Chicago Tribune Guild 

'We did it... We have a union' -- Statement

Charles J. Johnson, Tribune editor & union organizer 

 "We have been badly mistreated by a series of corporate owners, Tronc only being the most recent, and we've decided to take some control over the future of our journalism in the city of Chicago." -- NPR

Atty. Lorna McMillion

“You have a charter school that can, in one breath, say, ‘Hey, we’re a public school, don’t sue us,’ and in the next say, ‘Hey, we’re not a public school, don’t sue us.'” -- Texas Tribune

Greg Hinz

 I'm particularly interested to see if Police Board Chair Lori Lightfoot gets in [Chicago mayor's race] because, more than most candidates, she has a foot in all sorts of political camps. -- Crain's 

Afghanistan 17 years later...

 “They’ve got to screen everybody who’s going to be working directly with the [brigade],” said an Army officer who was involved in preparing bases for the new adviser teams earlier this year and who, like others contacted for this story, agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. “That means screening basically the whole damn Afghan National Army, and we’re way behind the power curve on that.” -- Politico

Steve Doocy

"Keep in mind, whatever [Gina Haspel] did" to torture detainees, "she was doing it as a directive and it was all within the law". -- Fox & Friends

Trump's speech heralds a continuation of eternal 'war on terror'

Someday, after an effective military effort, perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan, but nobody knows if or when that will ever happen. -- Donald Trump on eternal war

Since this blog is supposed to be mainly about education politics, I feel it necessary to reiterate -- war is the mortal enemy of education. Case in point: The greatly underestimated 16-year Afghan war price tag currently stands at $1.72 trillion. 

I know. I know. A trillion doesn't go as far as it used to. But still, that's enough to fund the Chicago Public Schools for the next 300 years, with enough left over to resolve the pension crisis, provide handsome raises for teachers and staff and replace all outworn facilities.

Trump's speech last night never mentioned the assumed cost in human lives and treasure of his "plan" to escalate and continue the war indefinitely. He also never uttered the words, North Korea, Syria, Yemen, or Venezuela. Oh yes, those were last week's wars. The generals, it seems, love the Afghan war because it drags on indefinitely with minimal political fallout and no big domestic anti-war movement to worry about.

Trump offers no rhyme or reason for his grand campaign flip-flop except to blame it on the generals. He seems to recognize (or if he doesn't, he should) that war in Afghanistan is a no-win proposition, as all previous invading imperialists and colonialists have learned the hard way.

The Trump escalation is essentially a continuation of the Bush/Obama plan to keep enough troops and mercenaries in country to keep from "losing," and to prop up the corrupt drug-dealing regime in Kabul. But there is one added dimension -- Trump's naked attempt to provoke a new war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.

Unlike the neocons and Clinton Democrats, Trump says he's not a "nation builder" trying to force U.S.-style democracy (such as it is) on Afghanistan.

He says:

I share the American people’s frustration. I also share their frustration over a foreign policy that has spent too much time, energy, money, and most importantly lives, trying to rebuild countries in our own image, instead of pursuing our security interests above all other considerations. [So therefore, I will continue the policy indefinitely.]

We are a partner and a friend, but we will not dictate to the Afghan people how to live, or how to govern their own complex society. We are not nation-building again. We are killing terrorists.

 And by "killing terrorists," he means...  173,000 dead, with 183,000 others seriously injured so far. An estimated 31,000 of those have been civilians, including women and children.

Trump's speech is also a break from former adviser Steve Bannon's populist wing (that correctly refers to it as "unlimited war," and compares Trump's strategy to that of former President Barack Obama) and the Republican Party's libertarian isolationist wing.

As for the Democrats, there was hardly a token peep out of them. The top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island criticized the speech as "too vague." Ouchie!  Nancy Pelosi said the speech was "low on details but raises serious questions." Sizz! What else could they say? Trump was echoing their own war policy under Obama.

U.S. Marine sniper unity in Afghanistan (Guardian)

So what did a politically isolated Trump have to gain by going on national TV with his escalation plan? One explanation is that he's trying to shake his image as a KKK, white supremacist apologist by cynically claiming that war and militarism brings the races together.

The men and women of our military operate as one team, with one shared mission, and one shared sense of purpose.They transcend every line of race, ethnicity, creed, and color to serve together — and sacrifice together — in absolutely perfect cohesion. 

What a load of crap! The very same racist and pro-fascist forces who invaded Charlottesville last week often find a comfortable sanctuary within the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Iraq and other battlefields. Thas has been well documented, including in this piece by the Guardian's Matt Kennard.

Kennard writes:

The neo-Nazi movement has had a long and tense relationship with the US military. Since its inception, the leaders of the white supremacist movement have encouraged their members to enlist. They see it as a way for their followers to receive combat and weapons training, courtesy of the US government, and then to bring what they learn home to undertake a domestic race war.

With his poll numbers plummeting into the low 30s, DT hoped to take Charlottesville off the front page and rally the nation around war patriotism. Why not? It's always been, as Samuel Johnson put it, the last refuge of a scoundrel. It may buy him time. I doubt it.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Thousands crowd Daley Plaza in Chicago, demanding Trump reveal his taxes. 

Shane Bauer

Militias, alt-right, nazis etc won today in Berkeley. They outnumbered the opposition, pushed it back, and held downtown. Today's America. 6:28 PM - 15 Apr 2017 -- Esquire

Head of ICE in N.J.

 "The executive order basically expands who we should be arresting," -- NJ.com

Joe Biden

Let me tell you, it bothers me most if Secretary DeVos is going to really dumb down Title IX enforcement. --  Interview in Teen Vogue

Neal Broverman commentary

If corporate cheerleader DeVos reconsiders the plan to streamline loan servicing, she could hand the giant contract over to Navient, which allegedly "mishandled loan payments, buried critical information in fine print and set obstacles for borrowers trying to release co-signers from their loans, among other failings, according to the consumer bureau’s legal filing." -- Betsy DeVos Screwed You Over Last Week

Rep. Gary VanDeaver (R-TX)

“Are we talking about a parents’ right to choose where their child is educated or are we talking about giving public funds to private and faith-based schools...The reality is that we have options in public schools." -- Austin American Statesman

Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai

US’ MOAB bomb was an ‘immense atrocity against Afghan people’ -- Al Jezeera

Unlike a Rolling Stone...

Rolling Stone Magazine is pissing in the wind with their endorsement of Hillary Clinton. I doubt if many millennials among their readership base are buying. They just don't think another war hawk in the White House bodes well for their future. Neither do I.

Matt Taibbi writes in response to RS:

Hillary not only voted for the Iraq War, but offered a succession of ridiculous excuses for her vote. Remember, this was one of the easiest calls ever. A child could see that the Bush administration's fairy tales about WMDs and Iraqi drones spraying poison over the capital (where were they going to launch from, Martha's Vineyard?) were just that, fairy tales. 

Yet Hillary voted for the invasion for the same reason many other mainstream Democrats did: They didn't want to be tagged as McGovernite peaceniks. The new Democratic Party refused to be seen as being too antiwar, even at the cost of supporting a wrong one.

Kevin Drum, writing in Mother Jones, responds to Taibi with a pitifully weak -- she's not that bad --defense of Hillary. He even makes this concession:

On a policy level, I don't get the sense that her foreign policy instincts have changed much based on events since 9/11, and that's by far my biggest complaint about her. Finally, I'm not thrilled with political dynasties.

 The Iraq invasion: This one is totally fair. Hillary did support the invasion, and it was the wrong call. What's more, this is a good proxy for her general hawkishness, which is her weakest point among millennials and her weakest point among an awful lot of older voters too.

 Put this all together and here's what you get. Hillary's instincts on national security are troublesome. If that's a prime issue for you, then you should vote against her. 

Thanks Kevin. I already have.

Whose idea was this?

But it's not just about Hillary's foreign policy, ie. her support for the Iraq war; her prime role in the destruction of Libya as a viable state; her stated willingness to use nuclear weapons against Iran; her out-Trumping Trump in her pandering AIPAC speech; or the lunacy her policies helped create in Syria where forces backed by the CIA and battling forces backed by the Pentagon, that leaves me Hillary-horrified.

Unlike Drum, I can't separate foreign policy from domestic.

The toll of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the longest in modern history, in terms of blood and (at least $4 trillion) in treasury is unfathomable. Our inability to disengage in the slaughter, now called the eternal "war on terrorism", has not only brought that war home, but precipitated the massive structural imbalance in the U.S. and global economies, including the financial collapse, the great recession, bankruptcy of our public school systems, and steady downward pressure on wages and living standards.

As we learned during the Vietnam war, you can't have guns and butter both. Certainly not without an accompanying lost of freedom and civil liberties.

Hey Spike. Why not name the film, 'ChiRahm'?

The city has recorded 355 shootings this year as of Monday compared with 253 shootings for the first quarter of 2014, according to crime statistics released by the Chicago Police Department on Wednesday. Eighty murders were recorded in the first quarter of 2015. There were 62 in the same period last year. -- USA Today

But it was clear that the mayor was none too pleased. If he wants to press the issue, Emanuel could use the Hollywood pipeline provided by his brother, super-agent Ari Emanuel, to make his feelings known to Spike Lee. -- Sun-Times

Yes, Spike Lee is naming his new movie "Chiraq". That is, unless Mayor Rahm Emanuel calls brother Ari, out in Beverly Hills and asks him to pressure Spike otherwise.

Rahm calls Ari: "Hey bro, it's Rahmbo. I need you to put an arm on Spike Lee. He's naming his next film, 'Chirac' and that's going to scare tourists away."
Ari: "I'm on it little brother. He'll change the name or he'll be through in this town. He'll never set foot in Nate & Al's deli again."

Let's see how that works.

The mayor is pissed at Spike. He's afraid the word "Chiraq" will conjure up an unfair image of HIS city. Scare off potential visitors who might mistakenly think Chicago is a city where shootings are up by 40%  and homicides 26%  over a year ago. How silly of them!

He also calls on his pal, Sen. Double D to spread the good news:

“There’s no question that Chicago, as most cities, has its share of violence, but the honest answer is we’ve seen a decline in the numbers. . . . So I hope this is not creating an image of the city that is unfair.” -- Sen. Dick Durbin

Sen. Durbin and Sen. Kirk

Remember when Double D stood next to his buddy, Republican Sen. Kirk who called for the rounding up and jailing of 18,000 black men as a way to cut into Chicago's crime rate?

Then Rahm drudges up one of his city council puppy dogs, Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), to carry his water on this one. Beale tells the Sun-Times:

“We’re trying to attract tourism. We’re bringing jobs in to Chicago. The city is growing. We’re trying to promote the good things in this city every single day. To highlight the problems we’re having with that type of name is an insult.” 

Yes, Beale is so concerned with Spike Lee's threat to tourism that he doesn't mention the hundreds who have fallen victim to the city's pandemic gun violence, mostly black and Hispanic men between 20 and 35, many in Beale's own ward.

Beale says he also has a problem with the Constitution. Fran Spielman asks him: "What about the 1st Amendment?"

“Freedom of expression still does not mean you can insult the people of this city,” says Beale.

Rahm & Ald. Beale

He obviously never passed his high school civics class thereby making him extra-qualified to become a Chicago alderman..

I'm happy that Spike Lee is making his movie here and shining another light on the horrific conditions of violence and joblessness, especially for black and Latino youth in the city's neighborhoods. I predict filming it here will be great for tourism. It will also provide some jobs for lots of black actors and those working behind the cameras.

My problem with the name "Chiraq" is that may reflect badly on Iraq. It has been pointed out that young African-American men are statistically safer in Baghdad or Kabul then they are on the streets of Chicago.

I'm suggesting that Spike name the film, "ChiRahm" instead of "Chiraq". But I'm guessing he will tell me the same thing he tells Rahm and Ari.

VETERANS DAY, REALLY?

As the nation prepares to commemorate Veterans Day, President Obama has authorized the deployment of an additional 1,500 troops to Iraq. The plan will more than double the current U.S. force in Iraq and will reportedly cost $5.6 billion. That's enough to operate the Chicago Public School system, including the hiring back of all laid-off teachers and custodial staff.

Among the hidden costs
After all the parades and football game cheers have ended, Iraqi and Afghan war vets are still dying from suicide upon their return home at a much higher rate -- more than 22 a day -- then on the battle field.

More than half of the 2.6 million veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars struggle with physical and mental health problems stemming from their service,


This is no longer "Bush's war". It's Obama's. What is he thinking? The real cost will be paid in human lives in a war that's has no end, no victory, only victims -- including vets. They are returning home to communities with few well-paying jobs, deteriorating schools, and inadequate health care for them and their families.

Matthew Hoh, is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. He is a former Marine and State Department official who resigned in protest from his post in Afghanistan over U.S. policy in September 2009. Prior to his assignment in Afghanistan, he served in Iraq.

He tells Democracy Now's Amy Goodman:

 I think, in the United States, scratching their head and wondering: What are we doing? What does the United States government really think it’s going to accomplish by putting more American troops into the middle of the Iraqi civil war and into the middle of the Syrian civil war, particularly coming off of 13 years of war in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya, in Somalia, in Yemen, etc.? So, my response, Amy, is more or less the same as most people’s, of a—very concerned and, you know, lack of a better phrase, this is crazy.

Support the troops. Bring 'em home. Provide counseling, health care, school and job opportunities at a living wage.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Daisy Rittgers, 105 year-old retired teacher depends on her 3% pension COLA to survive. (E. Jason Wambsgans)  

Daisy Rittgers

"Why should anybody take it away from me? Right's right, and wrong's wrong." -- Chicago Tribune, "Pension reform could hit oldest retired teachers the hardest"

Sun-Times Editorial

Crime grows like a weed from the ground up; cops and prosecutors can only lop off the ugly blooms. If we as a city are truly fed up with the killing, no longer able to look away, we must pour our energies like never before into all those ways in which an enlightened society grows a beautiful flower — better schools, more after-school programs, greater economic investment in the neighborhoods and more jobs that pay a wage a person can live on. -- Murders bind Chicago and Newtown in tragedy

 Bonita Robinson, retired Chicago teacher

Listening to person after person eloquently, yet desperately, plead for their schools not to be closed during the Austin-North Lawndale Network school utilization hearing on Jan. 31 brought forth, to my mind, heart-wrenching images of our enslaved African-American ancestors pleading for their loved ones not to be beaten, sold at auction, or killed. -- Letter to S-T editor

Jackson Potter, CTU

“Barbara [Byrd-Bennett] has said she wants to hear from the communities, and they’re listening, but here is a district that has never done this well saying they want to expand it tenfold?”  --  Sun-Times "School chief calling in the Marine to help in school closings"  

Chris Hayes

"Any time I see a bipartisan consensus on foreign policy, I run headlong in the opposite direction." -- Up with Chris Hayes

WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

Fred Shavies

"That’s our Birmingham. So, twenty years from now this movement could be the turning point, the tipping point, right. It’s about time your generation stood up for something. It’s about time young people are in the streets. [...] Ya’ll don’t need to throw gas canisters into a group of people occupying an intersection."  -- Undercover Cop At Occupy Oakland Condemns Police Brutality

Mitt Romney

“Sometimes you wonder, would there be someway to introduce some private sector competition, somebody else that could come in and say, you know, each soldier gets X thousand dollars attributed to them and then they can choose whether they want to go on the government system or the private system and then it follows them, like what happens with schools in Florida where they have a voucher that follows them.” -- TPM

How He made his millions

“Millions for me, a pink slip for thee,” is the playbook of many private equity firms, and Romney was one of their savviest players. -- Columnist Robyn Blumner

Rick Perry

“I will defend waterboarding until I die.” -- At Republican debate

Michelle Bachmann

"America Should Be Less Socialist… Like China." -- TPM

Cuts have been a disaster for public ed

Conservatives hail cuts as "an opportunity"

Huffington's Joy Resmovitz reports that a UFT survey of 900 New York City schools finds that three quarters of elementary schools, 61 percent of middle schools and 59 percent of high schools had increased class sizes. 

"What we know is what we feared was happening," [UFT Pres. Mike] Mulgrew says. "Now, all 1 million of our students are ... having their education negatively affected by what has happened between the federal, state and city budgets." In addition to budget cuts, all city agencies were recently warned that they would have to make a total of $2 billion cuts in aggregate for the next year. -- Huffington Post

The problem is that our political leaders, particularly our secretary of education, don't believe that exploding class sizes are a problem. Get rid of him, President Obama.

Even worse, Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey and Florida for example, are pushing for even deeper cuts and the privatization of public schools. Chester Finn and his cabal of right-wing think-tankers over at the Fordham Institute  are celebrating the massive cuts.

“If states look at this as a way to really look at how education is structured, it can be seen as an opportunity,” said Chris Tessone, director of finance at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank in Washington, D.C. “It’s a chance to be innovative, to rethink their staffing model. We see this new normal as an opportunity.” -- Fiscal Times

The Daily News reports that almost half of the city's middle schools bought fewer textbooks. Over a third of high schools cut advanced placement classes, electives and gym. 

“We’re suffering from these budget cuts,” said Christine Wong, a special education teacher at Public School 1 in Chinatown. She said her classes have on average jumped from 17 to 25 students this year. If these cuts continue, it will be devastating,” she said. Wong said her classes suffer from a lack of basic supplies, including copy paper, workbooks and pens.

Over at Bridging Differences, Diane Ravitch describes a district (San Diego) which has been  recovering from years of top-down control by corporate reformers.

The district is now led by a dynamic school board chairman, Richard Barrera, and a low-key superintendent, Bill Kowba. Barrera has a background as a community organizer in the labor movement, and Kowba is a retired rear admiral with 30 years in the Navy and administrative experience in the San Diego public schools. Together, they are passionate and effective advocates for the San Diego public schools.

But whatever progress district schools are making is now threatened by budget cuts.

The state legislature has slashed $15 billion in funding from California's public schools in the past four years. San Diego alone has lost $450 million since 2007-2008 and has had to lay off teachers and other staff, increase class size, and eliminate programs for children. San Diego may be forced to declare bankruptcy, along with many other districts.

The latest NAEP scores are but one indicator that the combination of corporate-style reform and massive budget cuts are failing to improve things and are instead continuing to widen the so-called "achievement gap." WaPo's Valerie Strauss suggests a new T-shirt which would read:  “My nation spent billions on testing and all I got was a 1-point gain.”

Without mentioning the Occupy Wall Street movement, Merrill Goozner, writing at Fiscal Times, believes that a political backlash is building against education spending cuts which could have an impact in 2012.

Nearly all the top ten toss-up states in next year’s presidential election have sharply curtailed their education budgets since the recession began in 2008, a survey by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities shows. And with federal stimulus money evaporating, a new round of cuts to state and local budgets are in the offing. That could turn education into a major campaign issue next year, or at least one that roils the local waters where presidential politics will play out.

It's again worth mentioning one more time that after 10 years, we are continuing to spend upwards of $2 billion a week fighting a murderous, senseless, and unwinnable Afghan war. Can we do this and still maintain a public education system in this country? Uh uh.