We rethink the week with Val Endress, professor of political communications, Rhode Island College; and Stephen Pimpare, Professor at the University of New Hampshire and a nationally recognized expert on poverty, homelessness, and U.S. social policy.
We honor the men and women who have died and been left irreparably damaged in putative service to our country. We also recognize that these brave Americans were put in harm’s way because of our country’s failures of policy and action. When we think of America’s foreign adventures, we realize that – except for World War II – our deep layers of Memorial Day sadness did not need to be. We are left feeling not just a sense of loss, but of *needless* loss.
ACCOUNTABILITY, MR. PRESIDENT? NO, NOT FOR ME!
We discuss Pres. Trump’s systematic effort to remove every Inspector General of every agency of the United States who dares to question or investigate the actions or policies of any of Trump’s appointees. He tries to escape oversight, to avoid any accountability. Not only did Trump let go the Inspector General who reported Trump’s scandals in Ukraine (which resulted in his impeachment). Not only did Trump dismiss the IG who was investigating the Department of Transportation, which is headed by Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao.
He also fired the IG at the State Dept who was investigating SOS Pompeo’s efforts to sell American ammunition to Saudi Arabia – to use in its inhumane war in Yemen – even after Congress had banned such sales. Pimpare reminds us how similar Pompeo’s illegal actions are to the Iran-Contra scandal under Pres. Reagan. In 1986, Reagan administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was the subject of a US arms embargo. In return, Iran was going to make efforts to free American hostages being held by Hezbollah in Lebanon. Reagan’s officials planned to use a portion of the proceeds of the arms sales to fund the Contras’ insurgency in Nicaragua. The Contras – paramilitary fighters (affiliated with the previous military dictatorship) – were waging a guerilla war to overthrow the democratically elected Sandinista government of Nicaragua. As with the 2020 Saudis, Reagan’s 1986 sale of arms to the Contra rebels was explicitly prohibited by Congress.
We agree that Americans must be very careful lest our country descend into tyranny. We cannot let Trump prevent Inspectors General and other government watchdogs from becoming partisan hatchet people who serve only the interests of the president and his cronies. We need these folks to be responsible, independent investigators, to root out corruption and preserve our democracy.
IS JOE BIDEN CAPABLE, AT THIS POINT, OF EVOLVING INTO THE PROGRESSIVE CHAMPION THAT THE COUNTRY NEEDS?
Even before COVID-19, the US was suffering from enormous disparities between rich and poor, black, Hispanic and white, and men and women. Wealthy moguls on Wall Street and multinational mega-corporations controlled the economies and the governments of most countries, including the US. The worldwide pandemic has highlighted many of the problems, as people of color and the working class are hardest hit by the crisis, including losing their jobs/incomes/health insurance and seeing very little in their lives to hope for a future recovery and stability.
So our country will need some inspired leadership in the coming years to help us repair the damage caused by Donald Trump and to recuperate from the pandemic. Is Joe Biden up to the task of articulating and moving such an agenda – and motivating the American people to get out and vote for him to do so? While Biden is very good at positioning himself in the center of the Democratic Party, and while the party has moved – especially between January and May 2020 because of Covid-19 – toward the Sanders/Warren philosophy, it is not clear that Biden will be willing or able to move with them.
Even though he may empathize with the suffering of the underclass and people of color, even though he may abhor the growing disparities and inequality in our society, Biden is basically a conservative person, a centrist. He does not want to rock the boat. Biden is rooted in the Obama administration’s philosophy. He is not looking to move the country forward beyond Obama’s policies.
