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No coitus interruptus, says Bush, as war comes here.  While the Bush administration distracts the press with the Ninja dust of Karl Rove, John Roberts, Jr., John Bolton, and remarks about Intelligent Design in public classrooms, the bloodletting in Iraqnam continues without the benefit of congressional or presidential vacations. Today 14 members of a Marine battalion and their civilian translator were killed, bringing the total of American soldier deaths to 21 within a mere three-day period; 19 of those killed were from the same Ohio reserve unit, and most were from the same working-class town.

Shortly after the American military deaths in Iraq's Anbar province, the president was flown by helicopter into a Dallas suburb for a speech to the American Legislative Exchange Council, at the Gaylord Texan resort in Grapevine, TX. There he declared again his "strategy for success in Iraq"—killing insurgents, training Iraqis to provide for their own security, and bullying Iraqi political leaders into writing up a constitution and preparing for more elections, or at least the appearance of elections.[1] He refused to set a timetable for troop pullout, or for a peace with honor. "The timetable depends on our ability to train the Iraqis, to get the Iraqis ready to fight and then our troops will come home with the honor they have earned," he said.[2] The organization that had invited him to speak gave him its annual Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award. The president swaggered to his helicopter and was flown to his Crawford, TX, ranch for more vacation.

Back in Iraq, a shopkeeper in a Baghdad neighborhood demands: "When is this going to end?" A bystander shows off a cardboard box containing a suicide bomber's body parts. The shopkeeper asks: "When are we going to have quiet again and live like normal people?"[3]

No one said today that the flypaper strategy, the Roach Motel™ model for the US fight against global terrorism, was working in Iraq, and no one dared speak the mantra: "striking the terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them here at home."[4] And perhaps no one mouthed that empty aphorism because this so-called war is no longer confined to Iraq or Afghanistan. It is in Madrid and in London and in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, and with each American death in this war we are facing the terrorists here at home. Go ask the residents of Brook Park, Ohio, as every year of Iraqnam seems just like the year before.

1.  Reuters, August 3, 2005.
2.  Reuters, August 3, 2005.
3.  Washington Post, August 3, 2005.
4.  See President's Radio Address, September 18, 2004.

No child left unbewildered.  The Texas Freedom Network (TFN)[1] is in the news with a nasty report about the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS) and its apparently widely-used curriculum for elective Bible study classes in public high schools in the US. The Greensboro, NC, National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools claims a large installation of its course The Bible in History and Literature (Ablu Publishing, 2005). Says the NCBCPS president and founder Elizabeth Ridenour:

Ridenour claims that the program is designed as a secular course of study, not a piece of indoctrination, and treats the Bible as literature and foundational of US society.

According to a contemporary study by Dr. Mark Chancey, assistant professor at Southern Methodist University, the curriculum actually "advocates a narrow sectarian perspective taught with materials plagued by shoddy research, blatant errors and discredited or poorly cited sources."[3] If that is not enough, he found extensive plagiarism: about a third of the curriculum's content is "reproduced word for word from its sources (both cited and uncited), often for pages at a time, though the curriculum does not note this or indicate that permission has been granted to reproduce these passages."[4]

Chancey was commissioned by the TFN to evaluate whether the Bible program is nonsectarian, whether it is appropriate for public school usage, and to assess its overall quality as a course of study. His studied opinion?

The Board of Advisors is impressive for what it lacks as much as who's who on its list. Says Chancey, "The Advisory Committee's more than 50 members include many well-known figures associated with the religious right and conservative organizations, as well as several politicians." And the "religious organizations listed as endorsers are primarily associated with the religious right; Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, mainline Protestant, and mainstream Jewish organizations are absent. The list also includes neither professional societies in the field of religious or theological studies nor biblical scholars currently holding full-time academic positions at colleges, universities, and seminaries....."[6] Perhaps the real point of the curriculum and its greatest threat to an intelligent understanding of the Bible, what makes it more propaganda than a balanced high school course of study, is contained in an entire unit of the curriculum which is "devoted to depicting the United States as a historically Christian nation—with the strong implication that it should reclaim that purported heritage."[7]

It's still debated whether the aim of public education should include the creation of "good citizens," but I think it's not inappropriate to hold with John Dewey that through our system of education we should "endeavor to shape the experiences of the young so that instead of reproducing current habits, better habits shall be formed, and thus the future adult society be an improvement" (Democracy and Education, 1916). This can't happen if we lure our students into a Sunday School class and call it something it isn't.[8]

1.  The Texas Freedom Network has its own motives, as it "advances a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties to counter the religious right.... Founded in 1995, the Texas Freedom Network is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization of more than 23,000 religious and community leaders. Based in Austin, the Texas Freedom Network acts as the state's watchdog, monitoring far-right issues, organizations, money and leaders. The organization has been instrumental in defeating initiatives backed by the religious right in Texas, including private school vouchers, textbook censorship and faith-based deregulation."
2.  See the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools website at bibleinschools.net.
3.  Executive Summary, Report on the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools[PDF].
4.  Executive Summary. See Report on the NCBCPS[PDF], p. 24: "A considerable amount of the curriculum's content is reproduced nearly word for word from its sources, often for pages at a time, though the curriculum does not note this. In addition, several units include materials for which no sources are cited, but for which verbatim or near verbatim matches can be found elsewhere. For many pages, an online search of any phrase will produce an exact match."
5.  Report on the NCBCPS[PDF], p. 2.
6.  Report on the NCBCPS[PDF], p. 7.
7.  Report on the NCBCPS[PDF], p. 18.
8.  The International Herald Tribune today published a good overview of the issue and the latest reactions to it. The news article is archived at Religion News Blog.

Thrice is the charm.  Okay, today Mr. Bush has given us all the finger for a third time. I am referring specifically to his recess appointment of John Bolton as new UN Ambassador—but in this case I think the insult is not merely to every American, but to every citizen of every country represented in the United Nations.

Let's close SOA/WHINSEC, finally.  As of Friday, July 29, there are now 115 co-sponsors of HR 1217, the legislation introduced by Rep Jim McGovern (D-MA) that would close and investigate the School of Americas (now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation).[1]  School of Americas Watch is encouraged that this could be the congressional bill that finally puts an end to this American "School of Assassins."

Within six weeks of introducing the bill to suspend operation of the SOA/WHINSEC, one hundred members of Congress signed on to co-sponsor the HR 1217, "The Latin America Military Training Review Act of 2005." Go to the SOA Watch Legislative Action Index to find out if your congressional representative is a sponsor—or if he/she needs your insistence to sign on to this important legislation.

1.  The School of the Americas (SOA), renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in 2001, is a combat training school at Fort Benning, Georgia, for Latin American soldiers. Over its 59 years, says SOA Watch, this assassins school has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence, and interrogation tactics; graduates of the school have consistently used their new skills to wage a war against their own people.