President Biden Has Not Forgotten

 

One of the most significant figures behind the 9/11 attacks, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been taken out by way of drone while hanging out on a balcony in Afghanistan, at a safe house where he was hosted by Sirajuddin Haqqani. 

So, a couple of things--this demonstrates that we did not still need to be at war in Afghanistan for our principal counterterrorism mission to be continued. If someone wants to bring up the Doha accords, I'm just echoing what has already been established, the Taliban never renounced al-Qaeda. Not attacking our troops as we were pulling out was the bare minimum. Just as with the Osama bin Laden operation, this demonstrated the resolve of the United States to follow through in the pursuit of terrorists--where we cannot receive full justice, we will avenge. 

I would not be fully in character if I did not take the opportunity to backhand the twice-impeached one-term wonder who hosted the KSA-backed LIV golf tournament at his Bedminster property and dissembled that "we" never got to the bottom of 9/11. He too, could have gone after al-Zawahiri, but apparently did not know who that was. As to Trump's "successful" attacks of his own, I have never been persuaded he fully knew what he was doing. I mean really, I think he was clueless, you guys. We can pretend al-Baghdadi was a bigger get for a whole moment of stony silence in Trump's honor, if he likes. And I think he really would. 

I'm not short on memory. I think a lot of us consider the savaging of Trump at the 2011 WHCD followed by Obama's announcement that the US got bin Laden both scared Trump off of running in 2012 and began his supervillain origin story to become the only president to plan an attack on the US homeland himself. 

That should not be forgotten, either. 

My Eyes Don't Deceive Me

 

The opponents of critical race theory, not more than a handful of months ago, were telling us it was a damn shame that Dr. Seuss was being cancelled for racial caricatures in a handful of nearly-forgotten children's books (yes, I do believe the Venn Diagram there is exactly a circle) but I wonder what they would say about the banning of books by Black authors in a school district in Pennsylvania. To me, it looks an awful lot like my impression that the criticism of CRT is actually a way to demonize a very specific kind of Black history (the kind that comes from Black voices and is heard from even when it isn't February) is pretty much the mood being catered to. 

The reason certain people want CRT to be minimized, want to discredit the 1619 Project, want to talk about All Lives Matter instead of why Black lives need to be discussed, why Latino/a/ex lives need to be discussed, why Asian lives need to be discussed, all within their contexts, is because the context doesn't show white culture in a positive light. Because it shouldn't. 

In discussing policing in the US, it's hard to divorce law enforcement from the slave patrols charged with keeping the peace (for a very racially-biased version thereof) in our early history, and about as hard to separate our Border Patrol from the same. 

So when right wing people talk about caravans and the gathering of Haitian refugees (just like the "threat" of Syrian refugees) and think of course violence will turn them away because who even are they? I don't think my eyes deceive me. I see human beings who deserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But I know those other folks don't and I see what they are, too. And it's not so much that I want to emulate our nation's founders--I think we could do better. 

We are not free if we don't believe in these principles for all. All. One runny pimple on Montana's ass just got upset at the notion of a mere 75 Afghan refugees resettling there, some very small quantity of a huddled mass of people yearning to breathe free.  Sure, 75 human beings, with hardly nothing to their names, women and children included, are going to overrun your whole dumb gun-toting red white and blue-blooded state.

I'm not a Christian, but I believe what you are willing to do for the people with the least is your whole job as a human, because you need to know that could be you, too.  Politics and weather and poverty and all the shit fate throws at you permitting. But there's a very good label for what my eyes see when I see CBP deploying whips (or whatever your sensibility prefers to call the lash or the strap) on Haitian asylum-seekers. 

And it's the very word the anti-CRT folks want to pretend very much the US isn't about anymore, but you know what? Maybe we still live with that history and need to recognize and confront it. And we shouldn't fear people fleeing from danger so much as to hate, revile, and punish them on top of their own tragedy.