We can do better than this:
Beyond the mass death, international agencies suggest that at least 110,000 people in Gaza have been injured, including at least 25,000 children. And Unicef estimates that between 3,000 and 4,000 children in Gaza have had one or more limbs amputated. That small tract of earth is now home to more child amputees per inhabitant than anywhere else in the world.
And this:
Two U.S. Tomahawk missiles obliterated an elementary school in Minab on Feb. 28, killing more than 150 people — including at least 123 children. In terms of child casualties, it’s the deadliest American military targeting error of the 21st century
This where 50 years of a US foreign policy establishment that is insanely, irrationally Islamophobic and is run by defense contractors and lobbyists has led us. More child amputees than the world has ever seen and 170 Iranian girls slaughtered inside a school. This is the US foreign policy that Haley Stevens and her boyfriend are defending and protecting. They tell us we must continue this, forever. No, Haley. We won’t.
Ben Rhodes is former Obama staffer who began the process of questioning the US foreign policy establishment (both Democrats and Republicans) when the US backed the genocide in Gaza, and never looked back. I myself put down my Blue Team pom poms about two years ago and found I wasn’t alone- there are a lot of smart and thoughtful fellow travelers I can read and listen to. I don’t think I was a very good cheerleader anyway. I couldn’t pull of the cartwheel contortions necessary to continue to yammer on about international law and norms and human rights while the Democratic President was helping to make tens of thousands of child amputees as a matter of US policy.
Here’s Rhodes on the meltdown and desperate attacks of the foreign policy status quo defenders and endless war enthusiasts now that it looks like Abdul El-Sayed might win:
We have now seen this cycle play out twice – before Abdul, it was with Zohran Mamdani in my native New York City. Like Abdul, Mamdani models a fearless and joyful brand of progressive politics. Like Abdul, he was pilloried for his positions on Israel. Today, Mamdani enjoys an approval rating of nearly 70 percent in the largest Jewish city in the world outside of Israel.
Perhaps that is what some of these politicians fear: that principled progressives, including those who happen to be Muslim, might just represent the future.
They said all the same shit about Mamdani. they now say about Abdul They predicted (hoped) he would fail. They told us we couldn’t have child care, or laws against wage theft or politicians who actually tell the truth about what we’re doing to people in places like Iran and Gaza and the West Bank and Lebanon and Yemen. They said he was racist and an antisemite and a Communist. They refused to endorse him and booked lots and lots of tv appearances to try to beat him.
They told us we had to settle for the moral and ethical bankruptcy of the bigoted misogynist Andrew Cuomo because the Muslim was too scary and told the truth about our foreign policy. They were wrong. We can do better. We raised the bar with Mamdani and we will raise it again.
The same status quo defenders who are launching bigoted, sleazy attacks on El-Sayed will betray us on getting out of Iran. Bet on it. If you think Chuck Schumer is planning on ending an assault on an Evil Empire in the War On Terror I have a Haley Stevens endorsement I want to sell you. So we’ll have to drag the Democratic hawks, kicking and screaming, out of yet another war on Muslims in Iran just like we had to drag them out of the war on Muslims in Iraq.
This is just Round One, Haley. See you at Round Two!
