Juan Cole lists top 10 ways Iraq war harmed US
in this powerful post. He describes this as the first in a series of posts he intends to do looking back on the decade since the war commenced. He reminds us bluntly:
Coming into 2003, the US enjoyed a great deal of sympathy and solidarity from the rest of the world (including Iran) over the al-Qaeda strikes of September 11, 2001. In the aftermath of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the US was widely seen as an international bully.He also finds that because of propaganda against Arabs and Muslims we have moved away from the tendency towards greater decency in our public discourse in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, although on that point I think I would disagree in part: by the Reagan administration we were already seeing a coarsening of our civic discourse, and any impact thereupon as a result of the propaganda to promote our aggressive actions towards Iraq occurred in the framework of an already increasingly coarse civic discourse.You can simply go read the Cole, or go below the cheese-doodle where I will list and summarize, offering a few additional observations.
considering an uncertain future
I will be 67 in May. When I retired in June I planned so that if I had no income I could go 15 months before I would be dipping in to prior savings. Because of consulting and the few months I spent teaching again, I actually would have been able to go even further before my wife's illness hit and I had to give up that job. And of course we will be looking at a chunk of medical bills not covered by insurance.
At this point we are reasonably confident she will be able to return to work fulltime relatively soon, and colleagues have donated enough leave that she will going forward probably be fully paid.
I however am a different story. It would be hard enough for me to find another teaching job with either of my two barriers - 1) my age; 2) how much I was previously making. Even though I am willing to work for far less that I made as an experienced teacher in a public setting, some school systems will not hire someone with more than ten years experience, independent schools are reluctant to hire someone who has not taught in an independent school - you get the picture.
Meanwhile, while I used to have superb computer skills, those are now obsolete. As for politics or government jobs, it would mean giving up my independent voice the moment I went to work for a political figure, and many friends have urged me not to do that, even as they understand that if I want to keep my independent voice and perspective I am limited in how much I might be able to make from my writing. Here I have been luckier than many, in that I have on occasion been paid to write for online sites - usually but not always on education.
So I face a bit of a conundrum.
Let me share some of my thinking below the cheese-doodle.
At this point we are reasonably confident she will be able to return to work fulltime relatively soon, and colleagues have donated enough leave that she will going forward probably be fully paid.
I however am a different story. It would be hard enough for me to find another teaching job with either of my two barriers - 1) my age; 2) how much I was previously making. Even though I am willing to work for far less that I made as an experienced teacher in a public setting, some school systems will not hire someone with more than ten years experience, independent schools are reluctant to hire someone who has not taught in an independent school - you get the picture.
Meanwhile, while I used to have superb computer skills, those are now obsolete. As for politics or government jobs, it would mean giving up my independent voice the moment I went to work for a political figure, and many friends have urged me not to do that, even as they understand that if I want to keep my independent voice and perspective I am limited in how much I might be able to make from my writing. Here I have been luckier than many, in that I have on occasion been paid to write for online sites - usually but not always on education.
So I face a bit of a conundrum.
Let me share some of my thinking below the cheese-doodle.