Twentieth Anniversary of 9-11

Ten years ago on the anniversary of 9-11 I wrote:

Television, news magazines, and newspapers have beaten us over the head with non-stop discussions, ceremonies and interviews. It has been ad nauseam repetition. It’s as if no one is aware of what had happened and the media needs to keep retelling the same thing over and over.

Unfortunately the cost to all Americans is great. We have spent lives and money chasing an enemy that will not be easily stopped. Our government has done a mediocre job of preventing another attack. Travel to NYC, San Francisco, Los Angeles or any other city and you will see that ports are unprotected, bridges poorly guarded, and large entertainment media facilities unprepared for another attack. Just the other day, I read in the Los Angeles Times that fire and police agencies still do not communicate on the same air frequencies.

Overseas, rather than chasing al-Qaeda we have focused on nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan. Arab terrorists must be happy to watch us waste our resources in battles we cannot win.

There seems to be a light in the tunnel as conservative Republicans have questioned our purpose in other nations. It appears we are starting to learn we cannot steer world affairs. There is hope!

What changed in the past ten years? Nothing.

President Biden finally ended a war that the past two presidents tried to end but politics got in the way. Sadly our military and embassy led our government to believe Afghanistan was being built into a western style democracy that could survive and stand on its own.

Have we learned anything? I doubt it!

Last Known Jew Leaves Afghanistan

Most of us know there is a large Jewish population in the United States, Canada, and France but did you know that there is a Jewish community in 99 countries. The last known member of Afghanistan’s Jewish community has just left the country.

Historical evidence suggests Afghanistan was once home to a sizable Jewish community. It reached 40,000 in the mid-19th century and began declining around 1870 with the passage of anti-Jewish measures, according to the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, a nonprofit group. Most of the remaining members of the country’s Jewish community left following Israel’s creation in 1948 and then in 1979 after the Soviet invasion, the group said. The last Jew just left that country on the first day of Rosh Hashana, September 6. He was the caretaker of the synagogue in Kabul.

Zebulon Simentov, the last known Jewish person living in Afghanistan, closes the window to the synagogue he cares for in his Kabul home on August, 29, 2009.

I knew two Jewish people who were born in China. Their families had left Europe in the 1930s as Hitler started his campaign against Jews. I know a lady whose family was ejected from Egypt by their dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The Berman Jewish DataBank at Stanford University list all the countries with Jewish residents. Twenty of those 99 countries have only about 100 Jews.

Why am I obsessed with this subject you may ask. My father moved our family into a community where anti-Semetism was prominent. I promised myself I would only live in a community where there is a prominent Jewish population. The article about the last Jew in Afghanistan on CNN web site prompted me to post this.

Rosh Hashana

Rosh Hashana starts tonight at sundown.

Rosh Hashanah, literally meaning “head [of] the year”, is the Jewish New Year. The biblical name for this holiday is Yom Teruah, literally “day of shouting or blasting.” It is the first of the Jewish High Holy Days specified by Leviticus 23:23–32 that occur in the early autumn of the Northern Hemisphere.

It is Hebrew Year 5782.

Climate Change – United States is Not Prepared

Hurricane Sandy, which was also called “Superstorm Sandy” hit NYC October 29,2012. The New York Stock Exchange was closed, all airports in and around NYC were closed, 7.9 million businesses and households in 15 states were without electric power.

Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx, New York after Hurricane Ida

Within two weeks, two storms — Henri and Ida — broke rainfall records in the Northeast. Flash flood emergencies from the remnants of Hurricane Ida stretched for 190 miles from Philadelphia to New York City. Central Park recorded its wettest hour on record.

Meanwhile in the western United States the long-term drought continues to take a toll on the Colorado River, the federal government, in mid August, for the first time, declared a water shortage at Lake Mead, one of the river’s main reservoirs. CNN says there is a looming battle over the available water.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency in 41 of California’s 58 counties on May 10. In that same month, many farmers were warned that they would receive little or nothing from two large allocation systems, the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project.

FEMA is only there to help after a weather event. There doesn’t appear to be a federal agency working to minimize the impact of a weather condition.

Will the United States Defend its Allies?

In his first trip abroad, President Joe Biden told Allies “America Is Back.” My question is what are we back to? Will it be pre-WWII or post-WWII?

“The U.S. remains firm in its commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression and — and our support for Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations,” Biden said at the outset of the discussion, touting new agreements to broaden cooperation on defense, energy and economic development.

In remarks Tuesday marking the end of 20 years of conflict in Afghanistan, Biden espoused something of a foreign policy doctrine, stating that the “fundamental obligation of a president … is to defend and protect America, not against the threats of 2001 but the threats of 2021 and tomorrow.”

Biden seems to be following in the footsteps of his predecessor. Trump policy was America First. In his inaugural address, President Donald Trump announced an America First approach to foreign policy and trade, which centers on reducing U.S. trade deficits and rebalancing burden sharing within alliances. He pressured NATO allies to spend more on their defense and even considered exiting NATO. He spoke of charging South Korea a fee for keeping troops in that country.

What would the United States do if China invaded Taiwan? Russia has already annexed Crimea which was part of Ukraine and other than sending some armament to Ukraine and the United States did nothing.

Our nation is beginning to look like America before WWII when even FDR promised to keep America out of wars in Europe and Asia. The United States adopted an official policy of neutrality between 1935 and 1939, Congress passed five different Neutrality Acts that forbade American involvement in foreign conflicts. The impetus for these laws came from a revitalized American peace movement, the revelations of war-profiteering by American munitions businesses during the Great War (WWI), and a widespread belief among Americans that their intervention in the European war had been fruitless.

The UK stood by its allies when Germany invaded Poland. The United Kingdom declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, two days after the German invasion. France also declared war on Germany later the same day. The UK had not been attacked.

Under what circumstance would the United States go to war even though it was not attacked?

Biden’s Speech on Afghanistan, in 3 Minutes

Biden doesn’t get it. It’s not about his decision to end the war. It’s about the mismanaged withdrawal of our troops and the Afghanis who were our aids.

Afghanistan:’This War Ended in Self-Defeat’

The words of an experienced retired general. H.R. McMaster, former National Security Advisor; Lt. General, U.S. Army (Ret.), talks about the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Even as someone who opposes wars I find his words very troubling.

Ed Asner dies at 91, played gruff but lovable Lou Grant on ‘Mary Tyler Moore Show’

Ed Asner, whose Emmy Award-winning supporting role as the gruff but lovable Lou Grant on the 1970s situation comedy “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” led to his own Emmy Award-winning starring role in the spinoff dramatic series “Lou Grant,” has died. He was 91.

Ed Asner called Lou Grant “the greatest character I ever came across.”
(Wally Fong / Associated Press)

In a memorable, character-defining scene in the first episode during which the middle-aged Grant interviews Moore’s perky Mary Richards for a job at WJM-TV in Minneapolis, he says with an admiring twinkle in his eyes: “You know what? You’ve got spunk. I hate spunk!”

Fiery until the end, Asner unloaded on the far right in his late-in-life book “The Grouchy Historian: An Old-Time Lefty Defends Our Constitution Against Right-Wing Hypocrites and Nutjobs,” which was published in 2017. The following year, he and co-author Ed Weinberger — an award winning television writer — discussed the book at the Los Angeles Times’ Festival of Books.

The Price of War

Why war should be a last resort.

The Department of Defense has released the names of the 13 US service members who were killed in an attack outside Kabul’s airport on Thursday

– Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover, 31, of Salt Lake City, Utah

– Marine Corps Sgt. Johanny Rosariopichardo, 25, of Lawrence, Massachusetts

– Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, 23, of Sacramento, California

– Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22, of Indio, California

– Marine Corps Cpl. Humberto A. Sanchez, 22, of Logansport, Indiana

– Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza, 20, of Rio Bravo, Texas

– Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz, 20, of St. Charles, Missouri

– Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, 20, of Rancho Cucamonga, California

– Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui, 20, of Norco, California

– Navy Hospitalman Maxton W. Soviak, 22, of Berlin Heights, Ohio

– Army Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss, 23, of Corryton, Tennessee

– Marine Corps Cpl. Rylee McCollum, 20, Jackson, Wyoming

– Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Daegan Page, 23, Omaha, Nebraska

President George W. Bush sent our troops into Afghanistan less than a month after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in NYC. The goal was to topple the Taliban government that was the home of Al-Qaeda which was quickly accomplished. We helped establish a new government there. Then came the mistake of trying to create a democracy in a nation of warring tribes.

American service members killed in Afghanistan through April: 2,448

U.S. contractors killed 3,846.

And now the United States is on a revenge mission. That translates to more loss of life.

Why is the United States in countries where we are unwanted occupants?

If only we would listen to Thomas Jefferson who said “I am for free commerce with all nations; political connection with none; and little or no diplomatic establishment. And I am not for linking ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of Europe; entering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance. … The first object of my heart is my own country.”

Yes, I favored WWI, WWII, and Korea because the enemies were obvious and their intent was clear. Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan were fights over religion and oil. Does it make any difference who controls the oil fields and which part of Islam is dominant? Not in my world.

When is “enough is enough?”