Thursday, August 14

War Is Over.

... (if you want it.)

The announcement that the Iraqi Yazidis have been freed from their mountaintop refuge -- the most recent war skirmish concluded one day after landing boots on the ground adorning the feet of U.S. military advisers and special op Marines up there -- came as a nice surprise to the dwindling numbers of American people paying attention as summer wraps and new years of schooling begin.

The speed with which the Obama administration announced that the siege had been broken may cause some consternation overseas, given the increasingly dire descriptions from aid agencies about the crisis on Mount Sinjar. The United Nations on Wednesday announced its highest level of emergency for the humanitarian crisis in Iraq.
It's good that the president has worked with his people to effectively free the Iraqi religious minority, and provide protection.  It will also free him up to lead here at home, where an inner-city issue in inner America promises to re-ignite.

There's a safety dance at play in so many school districts:  if you want education, you sometimes must vote with your feet to get it.  Public education funded from the surrounding tax base where the contributions are healthy can provide so many opportunities that even private schools cannot afford in terms of science labs, libraries, the latest written materials delivered via the newest technologies, tools for vocational and driver's education, athletic, music, art programs and so on.

In stable communities, strong public education is opportunity unlimited, the best remedy to provide reparation for past injustices.  If the country can lead people to become critical thinkers, they'll be less bound to fighting the wars of the past.
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ADDED:  Here's some critical thinking about the Yazidis recent rescue in the comments:

Peter wrote,  The White House hadn't even heard the word "Yazidi" until a few weeks ago. Of all the genocides in all the countries to choose to save, it just so happened to be the ones getting killed right by the oil fields that US corporations had evacuated.