Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi…Made By USA

Americans take pride in their products, proclaiming them ‘Made in America’. One such creation we sought to kill rather than champion was ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdai. And kill him we did in a Syrian cave, hunted down by US Special Forces last week. While President Trump was taking a victory lap Sunday, describing with relish his grisly death, we shouldn’t ignore the fact that ISIS is an American creation. In our berserk response to the 911 attacks we invaded Iraq in one of the great examples of transference, substituting an innocent party for the actual perpetrators, ever. We destroyed and destabilized Iraqi society, setting the table for the growth of a Sunni Islamic cult that waged murder and mayhem in Iraq after the American version. Al-Baghdadi was one of over 25,000 Iraqi Sunnis America imprisoned after our takeover, creating the highly motivated cadre that became ISIS. Then we intervened in the Syrian civil war in 2013, helping to destroy and destabilize that country, enabling a new killing field for ISIS.

Had the US stayed out of the Middle East, hundreds of thousands would not have been killed or wounded. Millions would not have become refugees. There would never have been ISIS. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, not Made In America…Made By America.

That's entertainment

That's entertainment

The boorish demagogue masquerading as president brought his freak show of fear and loathing to Chi Town Monday, trashing Mayor Lightfoot, Police Chief Johnson and all Chicago. After being thunderously booed by sensible Americans at the World Series the previous night, Trump took is wrecking ball to a friendly audience, the International Association of Police Chiefs who form one of his core constituencies. They argue that Trump, unlike Obama, has their back. What nonsense. It is incomprehensible how anyone associated with law enforcement can support a president so committed to law breaking; then pivoting to call out his accusers with vile, demeaning language. Speaking of their backsides, the chiefs should have turned their backs to shun Trump when he disparaged Chief Johnson with jaw dropping viciousness.

But the good people in my life who love Trump...and I do mean love, not like, find great entertainment in Trump's utterly un-presidential conduct. They are oblivious to the damage he is doing to our fragile political culture. They have become so cynical about the profession of public servant that they are all in with a man who makes personal insult and disparagement the cornerstone of his presidency. But even those of us horrified by Trump's debasement of the presidency recognize the entertaining appeal of his hate speech to his millions of voters. They follow his grotesque rallies with glee, claiming he is the best impromptu presidential speaker ever. To them governance boils down to the joy gained from endless personal put down, not substantive policies to improve society. That may be entertainment to them, but to the rest of us it spells a decline from which we will be lucky to ever recover.

More than fetuses saved by abortion doctor

One of the most endearing and oft madding traits of we humans is our obsession to collect the mementos of our life. An example of the latter is late abortion doctor Urlich Klopfer of suburban Crete who died last month at 79. A reclusive hoarder, Klopfer’s jam packed garage coughed up an astonishing collection of 2,246 fetuses, each chemically preserved in a sealed vial. It took 71 boxes to amass these two out of tens of thousands of aborted fetuses Klopfer produced over a five decade career in Chicago and Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

Klopfer’s collection was unknown to anyone but himself, and he left nary a trace of his motivation. It might go back to his traumatic origins as a survivor of the WWII Allied fire bombing of Dresden, Germany where Klopfer grew up. The February, 1945, raid killed tens of thousands of his fellow citizens. Maybe that trauma and its aftermath put Klopfer on the path to a life of service to women in need of the most basic reproductive service largely denied them by a cruel society.

Rather that focus on the ‘why’ of Klopfer’s unusual collection, we should honor his saving the lives of tens of thousands of women from an unwanted pregnancy, allowing them to put their lives back together against tremendous individual and societal obstacles.