If These Were My Last Remarks

 The following are the remarks I made at the conclusion of the Renaissance Weekend on September 6, 2021 in Monterey. California, on the topic of "If These Were My Last Remarks".

On the topic of "If These Were My Last Remarks", if these were my last remarks, they would be "Wake up!"

This Summer, we have seen horrific events occur in a distant land and thanks to the book The Afghanistan Papers, we have come to learn that the horrific events we have witnessed have come at the end of twenty years of duplicity -- of lying -- by our political and military leaders.  Wake up!

For the past twenty years, the United States has had a military ally -- Pakistan -- which, for twenty years has aided, abetted, and sheltered the ones who we have called our enemy.  Wake up!

For over thirty years, Saudi Arabia has founded and funded madrasas -- Muslim religious schools -- in which the Wahhabi brand of Islam is propagated around the world.  The Wahhabi brand of Islam gave us Osama Bin Laden, 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers, and has greatly influenced such groups as Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIL, ISIS, Boko Haram, and Abu Sayyaf.  Saudi Arabia is considered to be our friend.  Why then is Saudi Arabia giving birth to so many groups whose members hate us?  Wake up!

To all who can hear my voice, for the sake of our children, for the sake of our country, for the sake of our world -- for heaven's sake -- please Wake Up!

Hidden Figures of the Muslim Diaspora

 The following is the opening segment of a presentation I prepared for the September 4, 2021, sessions of the Renaissance Weekend held in Monterey, California.  Due to time constraints, this opening segment was all that I was able to give and to discuss.

Good Morning,

I do not have a lot of time.  Only one hour.  So I will need to make this presentation as fast as I can.

I originally planned on taking you on a leisurely stroll through some of the more notable people from the Muslim Diaspora especially focusing on those associated with Afghanistan.  I wanted to tell you about the marvelous Jamal al-Din Rumi, the great Sufi poet of the thirteenth century whose expressions of Divine Love helped to heal the divisions in the fractured Muslim world.  And then there is Gowhar Shad, the fifteenth century wife of the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh.  Gowhar Shad, is known for building many beautiful mosques and madrasas in Herat, as well as being the de facto ruler of the Timurid empire for a decade after the death of her husband. 

But Jamal al-Din Rumi and Gowhar Shad were just two of the hidden figures that I wanted to talk about in relation to Afghanistan.  There are also those of the Afghan diaspora such as Khaled Hosseini, the noted author of three bestselling novels including The Kite Runner; or Abdullah Jaffa Bey Khan, the Afghan American who went by the name of Robert Joffrey and who founded the Joffrey Ballet; or the four star general Stephen J. Townsend who has been the commander of the United States Africa Command since July 2019; or maybe we could have talked about Shaesta Waiz, the youngest women to fly around the world solo in a single engine aircraft, whose record is being challenged by a 19 year old Belgian woman as we speak.

However, instead of providing such historical insights, instead I begin by quoting a warning that seems to reverberate throughout time: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."  This statement is generally attributed to the writer and philosopher George Santayana.  But whoever may have said it, the statement seemed to me to have taken on more relevance this past month with the events in Afghanistan.  As I watched the rapid collapse of the Afghan army, I was reminded of how the Taliban came to power in the 1990s.  When you leave here, I invite you to read the New York Times bestseller entitled Taliban, by Ahmed Rashid.  The book is from the year 2000, the year before 9/11, when the Taliban was a relative new player on the international stage.  In that book, Mr. Rashid describes a similar capitulation of the Afghan army to the Taliban in the 1990s and notes that the key to the Taliban's success then was the role Pakistan and Saudi Arabia played in bribing the Afghan army leaders who essentially found it in their financial interest to sell out the Afghan people. I am just an amateur historian, but it seems to me that much of what happened a few weeks ago could have been foreseen by simply reading Mr. Rashid's book from twenty years ago.  But hey, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."  I leave it to your own assessment as to whether that saying applies to the events of today.

Based on what I have seen, there are many pundits who are willing to provide various answers as to what has happened, and what will happen, in Afghanistan. For the sake of my own sanity, I will not attempt to do so here. Instead, I hope to focus on my specialty which is writing about historical personalities -- especially hidden historical figures -- and, in a few moments, I shall discuss some of the personalities associated with the Muslim Diaspora -- the spread of Muslims around the world.  However, before doing so, there are some hidden numerical figures that I feel compelled to share.

I believe that it bears reminding everyone that the United States is in Afghanistan because of what occurred some twenty years ago during the terrorist attacks that occurred on 9/11.

2,996 people died during the events we know as 9/11.  This number includes the 19 individuals who seized the four planes used in the terrorist attacks.  

15 of the 19 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, 2 from the United Arab Emirates, 1 from Egypt and 1 from Lebanon.  None were from Afghanistan.  None were from Iraq.

Some 3,000 children also lost a parent on 9/11.

The coordinated series of attacks of 9/11 were attributed to the Wahhabi terrorist group known as al-Qaeda and its enigmatic leader Osama Bin Laden.  Osama bin Laden had been a fighter with many of the Taliban leaders during the Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s. He also was a long-time financial benefactor of the Afghan insurgents during the war and afterwards.  At the time of the 9/11 attacks, Osama Bin Laden was being sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In response to the terrorist attacks, and in an endeavor to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice, the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan.  The superior military force employed by the Allied Nations led to the capitulation of the Taliban government and, for the next twenty years, the Allied Nations occupied the country.

These facts most people know, but the hidden figures that people do not know are these: 

The last time the Taliban seized Afghanistan was in the 1990s.  As a consequence of the Taliban gaining control of the country, millions of Afghans fled the country.  Some 4 million Afghan refugees wound up in Pakistan, and close to 2 million went to Iran.  After the Taliban were overthrown in 2001, some 4.5 million of the Afghan refugees returned, but some 1.5 million refugees remained in Pakistan and Iran.  How many Afghan refugees will there be now that the Taliban are back in power, and where will they go?

In 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the Afghan people supported, in part, by the United States fought a guerrilla war against the Soviets that lasted nine years.  It is estimated that as many as 2,000,000 Afghans died in this conflict and millions became refugees primarily in Iran and Pakistan.  Many of the Afghan refugees who went to Iran (some 780,000) are still in Iran today as refugees.  It has been over forty years.

After the Soviets departed in 1989, Afghanistan descended into the first of three civil wars.   Thousands of Afghans were killed in these civil wars, millions of Afghans were displaced, and millions became refugees,  The second of these civil wars gave birth to a new militant group called the Taliban and in the third civil war the Taliban caused the collapse of the Afghan government and the emergence of the Taliban as the dominant political force in Afghanistan.  Santayana says that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  Does the Taliban victory over the United States and its allies portend the descent into another series of Afghan civil wars?

Now, the United States involvement in Afghanistan appears to be coming to an end.  It has cost the American people some 2,400 military casualties, some 1,800 American civilian casualties, and tens of thousands of physically and mentally wounded warriors. It has also cost some 2.4 trillion dollars.  For the Afghan people, it has cost some 70,000 Afghan military casualties, some 50,000 Taliban casualties, hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, millions of physically and mentally wounded people, and potentially millions of new Afghan refugees. The wounds of war are likely to take a long time to heal in Afghanistan.  Will the leaders of the new Afghanistan be able to set aside their resentments from the last twenty years or will they seek retribution beyond what has already been achieved?

Since the September 11 attacks, the United States government has carried out drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan.  In Afghanistan alone, there have been some 13,072 drone strikes.  It is estimated that some 10,000 people were killed in these drone strikes.  It is also estimated that 900 of those killed were civilians and that 184 children were among those who were killed.  Thus, when President Biden assures everyone that those involved with the bombing at the Kabul Airport will be hunted down, it is likely that he means that a drone will be used to extract retribution irrespective of the collateral civilian casualties that it may cause ... much like what we have witnessed just this week.  A rather tragic act that sadly may be so emblematic of what went wrong with the Allied occupation of Afghanistan.

On a more positive note, the Allied occupation of Afghanistan did lead to some progressive changes that found acceptance in the West.  During the occupation, a constitution was adopted for the country.  Under the post-Taliban constitution of 2004, Afghan women were granted all kinds of rights, and the post-Taliban political dispensation brought social and economic growth that significantly improved their socio-economic condition.  From a collapsed health care system with essentially no medical services available to women during the Taliban years, the post-Taliban regime constructed 3,135 functional health facilities by 2018, giving 87 percent of the Afghan people access to a medical facility within two hours distance -- at least in theory, because subsequent Taliban, militia and criminal violence made travel on roads increasingly unsafe ... especially for women.

In 2003, fewer than ten percent of girls were enrolled in primary schools.  By 2017, that number had grown to 33 percent.  Female education in secondary education grew from six percent in 2003 to 39 percent in 2017.  Thus, by 2017, some 3.5 million Afghan girls were in school with some 100,000 Afghan women studying in universities.

The life expectancy grew from 56 years in 2001 to 66 in 2017, and the mortality during childbirth declined from 1,100 per 100,000 live births in 2000 to 396 per 100,000 in 2015.  

By last year, 2020, 21 percent of Afghan civil servants were women (compared to almost none during the Taliban years), with sixteen percent of them in senior management levels, and 27 percent of Afghan members of parliament were women.  This great progress is directly attributable to the Allied occupation and its financial support.  

However, this progressive social progress was not universal.  The progress occurred far more abundantly for women in the urban areas.  For many rural women, particularly in Pashtun areas but also among other rural minority ethnic groups, actual life was not changed much from the Taliban era.  Rural women were still fully dependent on men in their families for permission to access health care, attend schools, and work.  Many Afghan men remained deeply conservative.  Typically, families allowed their girls to have a primary or secondary education only to have their "educated" daughters married away in arranged marriages. Even if, by chance, the educated daughter is allowed to complete her university education, her father or husband might not permit her to work after graduation.  And even without Taliban oversight, most Afghan women in rural areas continued to wear the burqa. 

Indeed, despite the economic, social, and political empowerment that came with the Allied occupation, Afghan women in rural areas -- where an estimated 76 percent of the country's women live -- mostly experience the devastation of bloody and endless fighting between the Taliban, the Afghan and Allied forces, and the local militias.  Loss of husbands, brothers, and fathers to the fighting generated not only psychological trauma for them, it also fundamentally jeopardized their economic survival and ability to go about every day life.  In a culture where a woman should not venture out in public unless accompanied by a man, a widow and her children are highly vulnerable to a whole variety of threats and disruptions due to the loss of the  husband and father.  For the rural women, for the 76 percent of Afghan women, ending the war was the highest priority, not the advancement of women's rights. 

In the discussions that arise over the next months and years, I hope that these hidden figures are kept in the front of your mind.  After over 40 years of conflict, millions of deaths, and millions of people having to flee to foreign lands, I, for one, find it disconcerting to say that the Afghan people have not been willing to fight for their country.  It seems to me that for over 40 years fighting for their country is the one thing that the Afghan people have done, it is just that the country they have been fighting for happens to be different from the one that appears on the map... or the one that we here in America envisioned it would be.  

Forgiving Richard Nixon

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the resignation of Richard Nixon.  In listening to the many retrospectives, I find myself conflicted.  Nixon accomplished a great deal during his presidency but his most lasting legacy appears to be the remembrance of his descent into political hell during and after the Watergate fiasco.  Forty years ago, I believed that his fate was well deserved and, I suppose, I continue to think so today.  And yet, these days I find myself feeling a tad more sorry for the man and his failings than I find myself felling angry.  I wonder if others amongst us have similar feelings about the man as well. 

Peace.

*****

In my youth, I actually had nightmares about Nixon.  Indeed, in my lifetime, he is the only President, I have ever had a dream about.  I remember riding the Greyhound bus across the country on my way to Amherst and listening to this song and thinking about Nixon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhmrnYbIVqs

I also remember cringing when Sammy Davis, Jr. famously hugged the man and my anger at Sammy for doing that prevented me from appreciating Sammy as an artist for many years to come.

But I am no longer so young and my nightmares tend to be few and far between these days.  Long ago, I forgave Sammy and actually bought a CD of his greatest hits. To my surprise, Sammy could really, really sing.  And so, today, I can appreciate him for his talent and forgive him for his failings.

Likewise, with Nixon, I guess I have seen so much over the years.  Time has passed and like so many others that I once feared and/or despised, Nixon just no longer seems to merit such negative energy.  Today, in looking back at him, he just seems more and more like a pathetic man who through hard work was able make his own living hell.  In looking at such a life, I find myself feeling more pity than anger.  

Of course, I could never condone the sins of the man, but I continue to work on forgiving the sinner.

Peace.

P.S.  Please see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5voM2HExV_Q

and 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE4EoAPIOgU

ENJOY!

A Wise Comedian

One of the more memorable moments for me from my attendance at the Amherst Black Alumni Reunion in 2013 did not occur with the Amherst Black Alumni.  In fact it did not occur at Amherst at all.  One of the more memorable moments occurred the Monday night after the reunion when, after a day of sightseeing in New York, Ping and I returned to Princeton, New Jersey, for our night's rest.  Before returning to the hotel, Ping treated me to dinner at what appeared to be one of the better eating establishments in downtown Princeton.  During the course of our conversation, we found ourselves engaged in a conversation with a man who had been dining alone at a table one over from our own.  Somewhere during the conversation, we became aware of each other's backgrounds and we briefly discussed the fact that his profession in life was the buying of companies. I suppose he would be akin to the Richard Gere character in the movie "Pretty Woman". We discussed some of his business dealings for a brief while but surprisingly the conversation took on a more spiritual tone.  For the next two hours, we sat there chatting about our personal theologies and spiritual experiences.  We talked and talked until the restaurant workers began to indicate that it was time to close.  So we left the restaurant and talked on the streets of Princeton for a good fifteen to twenty minutes more. 

Since that time, we have kept in touch and last week he sent me an unusual email about a commencement address given by the comedic actor Jim Carrey.  It may seem strange, but I found the address given by Mr. Carrey to be rather profound.  Perhaps, you will as well.

Peace.

  

To watch a great commencement speech by Jim Carey MUM, go to:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V80-gPkpH6M

 

It will be well worth your time.

Another Perspective on the Civil Rights Act of 1964

A couple of years ago, I was at a conference where, after the sessions had ended, a number of the participants offered to show the other participants some of the formal steps involved in dancing (foxtrot, Charleston, swing). Being a bit adventurous, my girlfriend and I decided to take the opportunity to learn a few dance steps. A very enthusiastic guy named Roy took Ping and me through our stumbling paces and by the end of the session we were able to do a few steps, but we were still in awe of the steps of the master dancer Roy and his very limber partners.  At the end of the lessons, we may not have been as masterful as Roy but we were grateful for the lessons that he had attempted to impart to us. 

Today Roy sent me an email asking me to read an op-ed piece he had written and to comment on it.  I did so and reflected that in this op-ed piece Roy was once again providing a lesson.  Perhaps, you may see it as a lesson as well and, perhaps, you too will "dance."    

Peace.

By Roy Herron

Special to Viewpoint

Fifty years ago, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I was in elementary school and had no clue about the law that would drastically change daily life for African-Americans. I surely had no idea how it would improve life for white Americans like me.

This historic legislation outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin at “places of public accommodation.” The movie theater I frequented had to discard its “coloreds only” entrance and the segregated balcony. Restaurants where we ate had to let African-Americans out of the kitchens and into the dining areas. My future friends, like state Sen. Reggie Tate of Memphis, were no longer excluded from admission to the Mid-South Fair six days a week.

The new law gave the U.S. attorney general authority to seek redress when school boards deprived students “of the equal protection of the laws.” Two years later, my school in Weakley County, Tennessee, was desegregated. And for the first time, I began to spend time daily with African-American children. I had new friends in the classrooms, and the lessons went beyond reading and writing.

After signing the Civil Rights Act, President Johnson said to an aide, “We (Democrats) have lost the South for a generation.” The president underestimated the political impact, which continues now two generations later.

In 1966, just two years later, the people of Tennessee for the first time popularly elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate.

In 1968, in Memphis, the sanitation workers went on strike and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was struck down. In Nashville the Republicans took control of the state House of Representatives for the first time since Reconstruction.  Then in 1970, Tennessee elected a second Republican to the U.S. Senate, throwing out Democratic Sen. Albert Gore Sr. 

Despite the backlash, the Civil Rights Act changed customs and changed society. With those changes, what could not have been imagined in 1964 became reality in 2008: An African-American was elected president.

Yet some Republicans responded to this historic progress with crude jokes and racist appeals to fellow bigots. In just one of many examples, a Tennessee Republican state legislative aide sent e-mails caricaturing President Barack Obama’s official portrait as two cartoon eyes peering from a black background.

When in 2010 I ran for Congress, racism was too easy to find. I can still see the angry face of the man at the duck supper who responded to my handshake with “Lemme talk with you about your (N-word) president.” And the scowling man at the rodeo who snarled, “I don’t shake hands with darkies or Democrats — and they’re often the same.”

Thankfully, most Republicans are not racists. But while most Republicans would never discriminate, degrade or demean, their leaders’ legislative actions still repress voters and reverse progress.

All over the country, Republicans are pushing new impediments to discourage and decrease voting by minorities and low-income citizens. While Republicans say they oppose big and oppressive government, they rammed through Tennessee’s government ID law, now notorious as one of the nation’s most burdensome. Only certain government cards now are acceptable at the polls, after Republicans outlawed using a Social Security card or even photo ID cards from the Memphis public library or the University of Memphis.  Those without a driver’s license – nationally, 25% of African-Americans – now must go to a driver’s license station, but fewer than half of our counties even have such a station. 

Republicans claim these laws fight voter fraud, but instances of persons trying to vote while using someone else’s identity are almost nonexistent. And researchers at the University of Southern California showed strong evidence that “discriminatory intent underlies legislative support for (these new) voter identification laws.”

The first book of the Bible teaches, “So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them.” God’s image does not have a color, but it does have a creed. The Apostle Paul put it this way in Galatians 3: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” 

Our American ideals long have taught that we are one. The Great Seal of the United States proclaims “E pluribus unum” — from many, one.

But it was just 50 years ago today that statesmen and idealists and people of a deep faith in Almighty God and in America together created the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Let us celebrate their good work for justice and freedom. And let us carry on their good work, so all God’s children can live in peace and love in truth.

Roy Herron is chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party. Communications director Rick Herron and interns Garrett Jennings and Hannah Oakley of the state Democratic Party assisted in researching and writing this column.

 

The Price of Inequality and the Corporate Bottom Line

As the documentary "Unnatural Causes" notes "Recent data suggests that chronic stress associated with being a minority, particularly being African American, for some biological reason, increases the risk of delivering a premature, low birth weight infant." Earlier this month a firestorm erupted over the remarks made by Tim Armstrong, the AOL CEO, concerning the impact caring for "distressed babies" could have on the corporate bottom line

http://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2014/02/10/aol_tim_armstrong_distressed_babies_and_the_bottom_line.html

Armstrong received a great deal of criticism, causing him to soften his message and to apologize for any offense he may have caused

http://www.nbcnews.com/#/nightly-news/distressed-baby-mom-forgives-aol-boss-armstrong-after-apology-n26006

However, the criticisms made against Armstrong were often emotionally tinged rather than grounded in fact

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-10/what-aol-s-tim-armstrong-got-right.html

Indeed, the facts and the epidemiological studies all point to the fact that caring for premature babies is a costly proposition. The facts and the epidemiological studies also indicate that minorities, especially African Americans, are more likely to have premature babies. If minimizing health care costs is a legitimate business concern, then why would it not be a legitimate factor in the corporate hiring process. After all, all things being equal, the studies now show that there are racially specific disparities in the health prospects of potential employees. Would it not be prudent in the corporate world to take those racial disparities into account in hiring new employees?

It is a Brave New World, a brave new world indeed.

Peace.

Native American Sports Names

This past week, a local high school abandoned is long held mascot name. Based on the arguments that have been made, it appears that it is long past the time to end the practice that is maintained by some of our professional sports teams. So those of you who reside in Washington, D. C. (Washington Redskins); Cleveland (Cleveland Indians); or Atlanta (Atlanta Braves) you appear to have a ready made cause for you to consider supporting. What say you?

Peace.

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/11/25/california-high-school-votes-remove-apache-mascot-152415