After 325,890 bombs, U.S. stops counting

Between the 2001 terrorist attacks and February, 2020, the U.S. and allies dropped 325,890 bombs on the Middle East.

How do we know that? Uncle Sam told us in his monthly Airpower Summaries. In March, 2020, the Trump administration abruptly cancelled those summaries. The bombing continued unabated but the U.S. could hide its murderous carnage under cloak of secrecy.

Sadly, the Biden administration has continued this secrecy policy into the third month of his ‘America Is Back’ on the world stage diplomacy initiative.

But when it comes to bombing innocents, America never left.

Let’s name a school for Jeannette Rankin.

Jeannette who, you might ask? She was simply the greatest voice for peace in the 232 year history of the U.S. Congress. Yet, she’s been virtually written out of the American Story, utterly ignored in our school civics and history curriculum.

That is tragic, because her erasure from history feeds into American obsession with war and conquest that brooks no mention of peace activists and their life saving work.

Former Montana Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin served two terms in the US House, 1917-1919, and 1941-1943. Before Congress, Rankin eschewed marriage and family to earn a college degree and work full time as a lobbyist for the National American Women's Suffrage Association. Their victory in Montana is what allowed her into Congress before Universal Suffrage, making her the only woman to vote for it in Congress.

In April, 1917, Rankin was one of 50 members of Congress voting against President Wilson's Declaration of War against Germany in WWI. The majority vote for senseless war was one of the worst decisions in American history. Her nay vote sealed her defeat in 1918. She spent the next 22 years working tirelessly for peace and the rights of women and children.

In 1940, the cause of peace made her run for Congress again. She won and got the chance to vote against our last declared war against Japan. Facing hisses and calls demanding she change her vote to make it unanimous, she said "I can't go to war as a woman so I can't send anyone else." Then she ran from a mob out for blood; hiding in a phone booth and calling the cops for protection. Bounced from Congress again in 1942, Rankin soldiered on promoting peace and justice for another 31 years.

I oppose canceling out historical American figures due to connection with slavery or other transgressions against current moral standards as long as they were not part of Southern treason against the Union. We should use their continued presence to further the historical discussion of the horrific aspects of the American founding as well as its democratic legacy.

But if change must come, I offer no better American personage for a school building to honor. Rankin’s presence will put peace, universal suffrage and women’s rights front and center, literally as well as academically.