Three whacks at the fragile structure to prevent war

It continues to be a miracle no nukes have been fired in anger since we dropped the second on Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. A day short of five months old, I don’t recall that one, and won’t mind if I never experience one. But we’ve had more close calls than we deserve without one going off. We’ve truly been more lucky than good.

Unfortunately, the Trump Administration displays an almost psychotic disregard to the fragile structure of peace that has prevented the third hostile nuke explosion now for 75 years.
Tho consumed with combating the coronavirus crisis, Trump officials are preparing to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, a 28 year old agreement designed to avoid accidental war with Russia by allowing overflights of each country by the other to monitor military facilities. Senate Democrats are furious, arguing its cancellation will make America less safe.

This third whack at peaceful détente with potential adversaries follows Trump’s May, 2018 withdrawal from the 5 + 1 Iran Nuclear Agreement and his August, 2019 withdrawal from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).
In baseball, three strikes and you’re out. In Trump’s game against peace, three strikes and you’re just getting started.

Ives’ grading standard deserves scrutiny

Illinois Sixth District Republican candidate Jeanne Ives has a dilemma. She campaign to unseat Congressman Sean Casten in inextricably bound up with her support of President Trump. How then should Ives respond to the avalanche of criticism leveled at Trump’s handling of the pandemic that has now infected nearly 400,000 Americans, killing 11,000?

“I give him a B grade overall”, Ives tweeted, being just a tad less congratulatory than Trump who graded himself a 10 out of 10.

Tho she didn’t elaborate, Ives’ grade includes:

‘For ignoring the virus crisis for six weeks, at one time calling it a hoax’…B

‘For claiming it was 15 cases, soon to go down to one; then boasting that keeping the deaths to 200,000 would represent a good job’….B

For maintaining a bare medical equipment cupboard, then blaming it on the Obama Administration out of office now for 39 months’….B

‘For calling reporters “terrible” and “snarky” and purveyors of “fake news” simply by affiliation with the hated CNN’….B

There’s more, much more, but trust Ives’ grades would be B,B,B.B.

If Ives’ congressional bid fails, she might consider a new career teaching at nearby College of DuPage. Her classes would fill with students seeking a good grade without effort. They all know the easy graders. They’d make a B Line to Ives' classes.

US should attack coronavirus, not nations

Coronavirus has infected nearly 400,000 Americans, killing 10,000, and halving our $20 trillion economy while we cower in fear. But this richest country on earth can’t supply masks, shields, gloves, gowns, respirators and ventilators to effectively combat the disease, allowing it to spiral out of control. Yet, America has spent the last two decades squandering $6 trillion to wage senseless war in at least 8 countries, getting hundreds of thousands killed, and millions displaced…all for nothing. Adding to the US horror show of bombs, we impose draconian sanctions on many countries which degrade their access to medical care needed for their own coronavirus battle.

The US can do this because our leaders are evil and our people don’t care. As long as the economic gravy train of full employment and ever increasing stock portfolios rolls along, most simply shrug and turn away. ‘Not my concern’ is their collective response.

No more. Any person with an iota of sense and decency should realize a nation with a trillions of dollars in murderous military gear but a depleted pandemic medical cupboard is in decline.

Even our over hyped military is being is being schooled by the virus. An aircraft carrier is being evacuated; close quarter military drills and ops are being re-evaluated and scaled back. The bug loves military congregations. It’s telling the warriors, as well as us every day peaceful folks, to stand down. Historians have even linked the origins of the 1918 flu pandemic that killed 50,000,000, to a side story of WWI; the shipping of 96,000 Chinese laborers across Canada in sealed railroad cars to work behind Allied lines on the Western front. It may have influenced the Great War’s end.

Those of us in the peace movement have been telling our leaders for decades to stop using our treasure to kill people; to use it instead for healing and nurturance. Today’s invisible bug from out of nowhere, in a grisly way, may influence an end to America’s perpetual wars a century on.

US to International Criminal Court: Go to Hell

Last month the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, opened a preliminary inquiry into possible war crimes in Afghanistan. All three sides involved were included: The Taliban, the Afghan government, and yes, the United States. The US, one of just 7 countries to vote against establishing the ICC in 2002, (120 approved), went ballistic. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened ICC members, staff and their families, ominously charging: “We want to identify those responsible for this partisan investigation and their family members who may want to travel to the United States or engage in activity that’s inconsistent with making sure we protect Americans.” They should not worry too much about harassment upon entering the US as their visas will likely be denied or revoked.

It wasn’t always this way. A century ago the US championed the establishment of the ICC in the Versailles Treaty ending WWI. Tho not established then, the US spearheaded an ad hoc version of it with the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crime trials following WWII. Some were executed, many were imprisoned; a few even acquitted, demonstrating their fairness. It took another 57 years for the UN to gather those 120 signatories, sans Uncle Sam, to realize a noble goal: justice for war criminals. In the past 18 years the ICC has opened 12 official and 9 preliminary investigations, indicting 45 for war crimes.

But the US, once in the forefront of war crime justice, is fleeing for its life from likely prosecution of high officials going back to our illegal, immoral and criminal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq beginning in 2001. Those invasions cemented US opposition to a worthy venture in justice in complete opposition to US perpetual warfare in the Middle East and Africa.

The US is not the world’s most indispensable nation….just its most unaccountable one.