Trump's wall is finished...and so are we all

It only took 6 months of Trump creating the worst pandemic response in the world for his ballyhooed wall to be completed. Alas, it wasn't a southern border wall to keep his imagined horde of rapists and murderers out. It was a wall around the entire 11,000 miles of the US perimeter keeping us cooped up in the coronavirus petri dish Trump has created. Other countries have a rightful fear of letting us into their relatively covid free bastions of responsible governance.

Use Russian Taliban bounties story to exit Afghanistan

The timing of unsubstantiated reports of Russian bounties paid to the Taliban last year to kill US soldiers is curious. It comes as we’re in the midst of a troop withdrawal leading to a complete end to US presence there next May. That exit from Afghanistan is twenty years in the making. It recognizes Afghanistan has no connection to America’s national security interests. It even represents the truth that the Afghan war begun October 7, 2001, should never have been fought and the hundreds of thousands killed, including 2,382 US soldiers, were unwarranted and needless.

The media, the congresspersons, the military and the intelligence services pushing this questionable narrative, appear determined to derail the urgent, long overdue end to our Afghan war. If they really are concerned about saving US lives and treasure they should use Russian bounty reports, even if true, to admit it’s time to end our two decade war to control a desolate but geopolitically prized country that can never be conquered.

While the Russian Taliban bounty reports are unsubstantiated, US military support for Osama bin Laden’s Mujahedeen, which helped kill 15,000 Russians during Russia’s failed 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, is absolute fact. We gloried in the billions we funneled to bin Laden, until he turned on America, knocking down the World Trade Center, killing 2,800 US civilians.

There is no upside to US wars of revenge and conquest except for the proponents of those wars who become rich and powerful waging them. Horrified that the end is near, they’ve seized on an old, unverified report of Russian interference to distract America from the task at hand…ending our senseless, failed and utterly wasteful Afghan war. Don't let them do that.

Hawk named Crow derails Afghan pullout

The folks running around with their hair on fire over Trump’s desire to get every last soldier out of Afghanistan have a friend in Congressman David Crow (D-CO). Crow introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act which puts up numerous requirements before Congressional funds be used to end our 19 yearlong, immoral and failed Afghan war. Passed 45 – 11, the Crow amendment would block funding if troop levels fall below 8,000 and then again 4,000, unless the administration certifies doing so:

1. Doesn’t compromise U.S. counterterrorism efforts in
Afghanistan
2. Doesn’t increase risk to remaining U.S. personnel
3. Is done in consultation with U.S. allies
4. Is in best interests of United States
5. Contains an analysis of remaining threat from the Taliban,
effects on Afghan human rights, the Afghan peace process
and bad actors seeking to undermine Afghan sovereignty

The Crow amendment essentially slams shut the door on the two proposed reductions which would reduce troop levels from 8,600 to 4,000 to zero in 10 months. Coming at the peak of hysteria over unsubstantiated reports Russia offered the Taliban bounties to kill US soldiers, the amendment was likely timed to exploit that hysteria to keep our longest war, our failed war, our murderous war…going on forever. Who needs Russian bounties to get U.S. soldiers killed when we’ve got hawks named Crow who can do it with legislation?

Embers or conflagration?

"We’re aware that there are embers that need to be put out"

- Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany explaining the extraordinary surge in pandemic infections leading 16 states to re-impose self and public isolation restrictions. If what's occurring now is 'embers', I'd dread to fathom what an actual conflagration is like.

107 years too long to acknowledge Wilson’s racism

Woodrow Wilson became president March 4, 1913. He comes to mind 107 years on due to Princeton University’s decision to excise his name from its public policy school and one of its residential colleges over documented racist governance. Wilson rose to fame and the presidency during his 8 year tenure as history professor and president of prestigious Princeton. He parlayed that tenure to the New Jersey governorship, then the presidency in three short years.

Throughout his career Wilson developed an almost cult like worship as a reformer, progressive champion and world peace visionary, culminating in the reverential biopic ‘Wilson’ in 1944. Throughout most of the century after his leaving office in 1921, Wilson ranked in the top ten of our 44 presidents. Rumblings of his long papered over racism finally dropped him to eleventh spot last year.

Wilson deserves further downgrading when the poll of historians is held again. Virginia borne Wilson’s racist views were forged early on as 8 year old Wilson watched in horror his beloved Virginia’s defeat to the North in 1865. As president Wilson not just held racist views, he acted upon them. During the ‘Red Summer’ of 1919, when white mobs viciously attacked Blacks throughout the US, Wilson was silent, except for maliciously claiming the riots were started by Blacks influenced by communist agitators. Worse, Wilson re-segregated the Federal bureaucracy. Long term Black managers were given a choice: accept lower pay subordinate jobs or quit. Wilson believed Black managers were bad for white bureaucrats’ moral.

I’m against removal of historical statutes and other tributes such as the Wilson named Princeton school except for those of Confederate traitors. Instead, use their existence to tell the complete history of the flawed men who added important benefit to the American Story at the same time they disgracefully ripped at our delicate social fabric.

Good god…Mississippi replacing racism with religion on state flag

It’s not easy being a non-theist (the term we prefer to the pejorative ‘atheist’). Seven states still have laws banning us from seeking elective office (tho unenforceable). No openly non-theist in our 244 years has run for president. Why? When a voter poll shows that overall, the electorate is more comfortable with a Black, Hispanic, gay, female or socialist presidential candidate, than a non-theist, we know we’ve got a long slog ahead to respectability.

The American Experiment that heralded separation of church and state in the Constitution of 1787, also has a long slog ahead, this one to decency regarding that hallowed concept. After 180 years, the terrific US motto ‘E Pluribus Unum’ (Out of many, one) was replaced in 1956 with ‘In God We Trust’. That was likely a sop to the McCarthyite wing of the electorate obsessed with godless communism.

Today brought joyous news that Mississippi’s state flag, the last to display the white supremacist, pro slavery confederate battle flag, would be removed after 126 years. But the news was a tad bittersweet as the law mandates the battle flag be replaced with, yep…’In God We Trust’. No doubt the legislature is throwing a bone to the dead-ender white majority in Mississippi being deprived of its last remaining gasp of the old, gallant South. Now, besides our currency and the Florida state flag, we’re stuck with Mississippi joining in to thumb its nose at separation of church and state, disparaging us 10 million non-theists. The new law sets up a procedure to complete the flag revision. How bout if they incorporate humorist Jean Shepherd’s famous take on the offensive motto with ‘In God We Trust…all others pay cash’?

Trump's wall is finished...and so are we all

It only took 6 months of Trump creating the worst pandemic response in the world for his ballyhooed wall to be completed. Alas, it wasn't a southern border wall to keep his imagined horde of rapists and murderers out. It was a wall around the entire 11,000 miles of the US perimeter keeping us cooped up in the coronavirus petri dish Trump has created. Other countries have a rightful fear of letting us into their relatively covid free bastions of responsible governance.

Forget bounties, US just drops bombs to kill in Afghanistan

Americans are outraged, and rightly so, over reports Russia offered bounties to Afghan Taliban fighters to kill American soldiers there. That dead soldier could be someone’s spouse, sibling, child, besides just an anonymous fellow citizen. But it’s unclear if any of the 22 US service personnel killed in 2019 were the result of a bounty. The Taliban doesn’t kill for money. They kill to take back their country from the American invader, who has killed with guns and bombs, tens, if not hundreds of thousands, since we immorally invaded Afghanistan 19 years ago. And they are surely winning as the US just announced a second round of troop withdrawals, which will drop US presence to a paltry 4,600 troops by fall. Besides that avalanche of dead Afghans, the US invasion brought back 2,382 dead Americans, all killed for nothing in a war that should never have been fought.

Yes, let’s express outrage that Russia would act to get Americans killed in Afghanistan. But our focus must remain on withdrawing remaining US soldiers from a land that should never have been invaded and can never be conquered. Where’s the outrage, indeed?