Editorials

I told you and I told you and I told you! But you went and did it anyway and look what happened. I hate to say it, but I told you so.

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The September 9 issue of the London Review of Books led off with a full page of quotes on Afghanistan from foreign policy luminaries, all the way back to Zbigniew Brzezinski speaking to the Afghan mujahedin in 1980 :“Your cause is right and God is on your side!” through President Biden’s Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in August of this year:“This is manifestly not Saigon.”

In between were stirring quotes from both establishmentarians and contrarians: “ I will venture a prediction. The Taliban/al-Qaida riffraff, as we know them, will never come back to power:”--Christopher Hitchens, 2004.

There was only one women among about two dozen opiners, and she was only one who questioned the wisdom of the enterprise. Yes, you guessed right, it was the East Bay’s beloved Congressmember, US Representative Barbara Lee, on September 14, 2001:“Let’s step back a moment. Let’s just pause, just for a minute. And think through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control.”

No one paid attention, so the downward spiral she anticipated is just now hitting bottom. Our country’s involvement in the Islamic world turned into the eternal distant conflict foretold in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Fourl, where citizens of Oceania are not sure who’s the enemy, or even if the reported battles are actually taking place. And it’s lasted for two decades. 

I happened to be in Italy at the time of the 9/11 attacks, and had to stay there (hard duty) for a couple of weeks until I could get a flight home, so I missed the war fervor which took over the United States. But I was grateful for Barbara Lee’s heroic opposition to the invasion—like many of us in the East Bay I put a “Barbara Lee Speaks for Me” bumper sticker on my car right away. 

I was around for the next act of this ongoing drama. I marched down Market Street in March of 2003 to protest the Bush invasion of Iraq, proud to be joined by a dozen or so members of my immediate family including at least one babe in arms. I remember thinking that maybe eventually we’d have the warmongers outnumbered. But nope… 

Searching the Planet archives to refresh my recollection of that demonstration and my thinking at the time, I ran across a charming piece by Zac Unger, Raised on Revolution, about taking his baby to the Berkeley demo on that same day, 

Here’s how it starts: 

”I took my infant daughter, Percy, to her first protest march a few weeks ago in the hopes that nine pounds and 10 ounces of pure political muscle in pink footsie pajamas might be just enough to tip the scales toward peace. “ 

Well, by my calculations his daughter and my grandbabies who went to those protests are now old enough to vote and even to go to demonstrations on their own. Not only that, the mothers of those granddaughters, who like Zac went to anti-war protests in backpacks and strollers, are over 50 and they vote too. But have we tipped the scales toward peace yet? 

Without the aid of Wikipedia and its clones, I can’t even recall much about the sequence of events between entry to and exit from Afghanistan. Iraq I and II and Syria and Libya and all the rest are no more than muddy memories for me—I’m like one of those 1984 citizens of Oceania who can’t be sure if the enemy in the distant forever war is Eurasia or Eastasia. 

“As a child in the semi-sovereign Berkeley principality of Rockridge I was raised with a picket sign in my hand”, said Zac. 

Our kids might say the same thing. Well before this series of forever wars in the Middle East gathered steam, they were marched in strollers and pulled in wagons in the picket line around Ann Arbor City Hall every Monday for two or three years in the early 1960s, challenging the city council to enact a fair housing ordinance, and when that had been accomplished they took trips to Washington to oppose the war in Vietnam. Weather in DC is lovely in the spring, or it was before climate change. 

In 1970 the kids passed out Shirley Chisholm for President fliers in Michigan, just as Barbara Lee did in California. But we still haven’t had a woman president, let alone a Black woman president, though Barbara’s protégée Kamala Harris is a step in the right direction. 

Now it’s widely acknowledged that all those Middle East wars were a terrible mistake, despite the enthusiasm with which they were initially endorsed by the kind of Very Serious People quoted in the LRB. Has anyone learned anything from the experience? 

Living long enough to remember what’s merely history to most of your fellow citizens is a curious experience. The year I graduated from high school some of my older relatives must have remembered the turn of the 20^th century, which seemed to me at the time to be as distant as the period when the French started building the Cathedral of Notre Dame. When I hear supercilious Whiteboy YIMBYs nattering on about exactly what constituted and caused housing segregation in the 50s, I must remind myself that they weren’t there and that might be why they don’t know what they’re talking about. 

What other people, powerful people, will have learned from the Afghanistan debacle is not clear. But the main thing I’ve learned from watching the world for three-quarters of a century is that the world is never saved—you have to keep saving it over and over again. 

As Barbara said way back when, we must always”think through the implications of our actions.” And she’s still not shy about reminding us that there’s always a lot still to do. 

Here’s a simple example from today: 

One of her main forms of activity now that she’s well into her eighth decade is online fundraising for others, since her East Bay seat has been a lock from the beginning. 

From her latest missive: 

“Only 2 Black women have ever served in the United States Senate. Currently, there are no Black women in the chamber, since Kamala Harris took the office of the Vice Presidency. 

“Cheri Beasley in North Carolina and Val Demings in Florida are running for Senate to change that. 

“They are both trailblazers in their own right, and would help expand our tiebreaking majority in the Senate by flipping these Republican-held seats.” 

I’ve seen that we have benefited immensely from the work of the vigorous Black women who have served in public office in my lifetime. That would include not only Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Lee, but Barbara Jordan and Maxine Waters and Sheila Jackson-Lee and a host of others. 

Something as simple as contributing to a successful campaign for one of the two women Barbara Lee is backing could make a lot of difference in what will be accomplished in future Senates with a reliable progressive majority. 

What we do today is still what causes tomorrow. If others in Congress had paid attention to Barbara Lee in 2001, the last two decades might have been very different. 

If you’re looking to do a little something to contribute to the future, you might consider supporting Barbara’s candidates for 2022. We’ve had a good look at Val Deming as a very effective congressperson, and my North Carolina friend tells me Cheri Beasley, a former state supreme court justice, would be a terrific senator. Let’s do it.