Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

The Postal Service Is the Most Popular Federal Agency in America. Let’s Massively Expand It.

For most of its 244-year existence, the United States Postal Service (USPS) was widely considered as an innovative powerhouse binding the American experiment together. Alexis de Tocqueville, the French diplomat who toured America in the 1830s, called it a “great link between minds.” During World War I, the post office teamed with the Department of Agriculture to institute a “Farm to Table” program to help distribute produce and other nutrient-rich foods across the country. Today, USPS stands as Americans’ favorite federal agency.

Since the 1970s, however, a combination of financial woes and political attacks have wounded the post office. What would it take to return USPS to a pioneering force capable of addressing our country’s multiple crises? Why not leverage the nearly 250,000 letter carriers and over 30,000 post offices that blanket all 50 states for more than just mail delivery? Why not expand the workforce and presence of the American public’s most favored government agency?

With mega companies like Amazon vying for the future of delivery, and conservatives increasingly calling for privatization, the U.S. Postal Service needs a makeover, not a dismantling.

In an era of little faith in government, a reimagined postal service could demonstrate how public solutions can solve many of our collective problems, from climate change to a predatory financial industry. That’s exactly what the post office did in the country’s early days.

As journalist Winifred Gallagher describes in her 2016 book How the Post Office Created America, universal mail service helped spark a communications revolution rivaling that of the telegraph through slashing the price of correspondence and buoying westward expansion. The 1792 Postal Act effectively underwrote newspaper circulation, spreading national and global news across the newly formed states and territories. 

In 1897, a resident of the Arizona Territory wrote to the Postmaster General, “I am more than ever proud of being an American citizen. I live three and a half miles from the Tempe post office, and have been sick for a week past, yet my mail is brought to my door every morning, except Sunday.” The abolitionist John Brown served as a local postmaster before making his contribution to emancipation, just as did Abraham Lincoln.

But by 2001, as first-class mail usage began to decline, and scares of anthrax increased following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, USPS’s financial losses were growing. Five years later, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, limiting its ability to innovate beyond the delivery of mail and packages, just as the internet began to boom. The law also required the agency, which receives no taxpayer dollars, to make annual payments of $5.5 billion for ten years to fund the healthcare of its future retirees. Today, the postal service continues to bleed money despite delivering more packages than ever due to e-commerce.

As calls for privatization mount, the agency still manages to innovate within its limited mandate. Letter carriers deliver “last mile” parcels for FedEx and UPS, helping keep both corporations’ services affordable. The agency has also built the world’s largest gantry robotic fleet, which moves 314,000 mail trays per day.

Handing over the keys to the private sector would run counter to USPS’s stated purpose of connecting every American home and business, no matter how remote. Private corporations, following the whims of the market, would likely charge more for delivery in less dense, rural areas, while pricing out low-income residents everywhere.

True modernization would expand the agency’s ability to serve the common good, not undermine it.

Post office locations could provide free Wi-Fi access, computers with access to government services, printers, and public meeting rooms. Clerks could provide drivers’ license renewal, multilingual translation, help with immigration processing and other services. The American Postal Workers Union (APWU) has proposed expanding vote by mail, providing follow-up census services, and notary, among other services.

The buildings themselves could be used to extend broadband infrastructure and be fitted with green technology like solar panels, electric car charging stations and rooftop farms. USPS’s Los Angeles mail processing facility has 31,000 solar panels, making it one of the city’s largest buildings generating electricity through solar. Depending on their location, some buildings could even be rebuilt as community-controlled, mixed-use development, to include affordable housing.

USPS could also return to providing affordable banking services, as it did from 1911 to 1967. In addition to the international and domestic money orders it already sells, the post office could allow Americans to collect savings, cash paychecks, transfer money electronically and pay bills. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) recently introduced such postal banking legislation aimed at curbing predatory lending practices. Such a move would help catch the country up with the rest of the world: Less than 10% of post offices across the globe do not currently offer basic financial services.  

None of these ideas are as revolutionary as it was to blanket the country with post offices. Yet, a truly modern postal service would be more than the sum of its parts. It would help restore confidence in the public sector’s role in serving the common good, at a time when faith in government seems so hard to come by.

Exxon accurately predicted 2019's climate change and CO2 emission in 1982:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21368593

Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people...

When do the #clocks change around the #world? And why? | News | The Guardian

Abolish the #DaylightSavingTime charade!

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/oct/21/spring-forward-fall-back-who-changes-the-clocks-when-and-why

Study casts doubt on carbon capture
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191025170810.htm #climatechange #climatecrisis

They Know What You Watched Last Night

Recent deals involving the media conglomerate AT&T, the streaming device seller Roku, the advertising giant Publicis and other companies have expanded the surveillance infrastructure that operates in the background of streaming services. While viewers focus on the action onscreen, tracking technology quietly sops up information about their habits and uses it to target them with more relevant, traceable ads. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/business/media/streaming-data-collection-privacy.html #privacy #security

The Return of The Limits of Growth:

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-01-10/return-limits-growth/

Five years from now: "Whoops, it turns out we trained our AI on existing staff so it finds white men most trustworthy. Sorry everybody, we were told AI was unbiased." https://www.maketecheasier.com/face-scanning-ai-judge-job-applicants/

Climate Change-Fighting Youth Need Adult Allies. Their Teachers Should Be First in Line.

On September 20, millions of young people staged a worldwide strike to demand government action on climate change. The New York Times reported, “Rarely, if ever, has the modern world witnessed a youth movement so large and wide, spanning across societies rich and poor, tied together by a common if inchoate sense of rage.”

Something unprecedented is happening among the world’s young people. The youth-led climate movement successfully ramped up the pressure on political leaders at the UN Climate Action Summit on September 23, and it only continues to grow. But young people can’t do it alone. They need adult allies, and their teachers should be the first to join them. After all, teachers have gone through a similar experience finding their voice through a wave of strikes for public education that have rocked the country—including my union, the Chicago Teachers Union, that currently has over 25,000 workers on the picket line.

Teachers are the people who are supposed to be educating our children about the dangers of climate change. With mere years left before it’s too late, the time is now for teachers to follow their students’ lead and help carry their message into the classrooms, the streets and the halls of power.

Energy behind the climate movement surged as a result of a young girl from Sweden named Greta Thunberg, who decided to take dramatic action for climate justice. She describes in her TED talk that after learning about the climate crisis at the age of 8, she fell into a deep depression and refused to eat, talk or go to school. She couldn’t understand how nothing was being done to solve this horrific problem. Instead of solutions big enough to address the problem, she only heard the common refrain: reduce, reuse, recycle.

At that time, Thunberg was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and selective mutism. Nevertheless, in August of 2018, at age 15, Greta began protesting outside the Swedish Parliament. By November of that year, her School Strike for Climate had spread to 112 countries involving an estimated 1.4 million people.  Since then, the movement has only continued to grow, with the most recent strike in September ballooning to an estimated 4 million participants. 

Part of Thunberg’s appeal is that she fearlessly speaks truth to power. In one of her speeches ahead of the recent UN Climate Action Summit, she patiently explained that if we continue our current level of CO2 emissions, we will likely reach a tipping point by 2030, making it impossible to undo a climate catastrophe. Most of us have heard about what this catastrophe will look like: devastating flooding, hurricanes, droughts and wildfires that will lead to mass-extinctions, wide-spread crop failure, famine, millions of climate refugees and unanticipated military conflicts around the world.

Of course, many of these climate impacts are already beginning to take shape. That’s when many of us fall into despair and get stuck. What can we do to counter a problem so immense? For Thunberg and millions of young people, there is no other choice but to join together to demand government solutions on the scale necessary to solve the problem. That means working to pass a Green New Deal.

Our students deserve to understand what Thunberg has learned. They have the right to know what’s at stake and how they can join with others to solve this crisis before it’s too late. To people young and old around the world, Thunberg is a climate hero. But it was only once she found a way to take action that she was able to overcome her depression and transform her personal adversities into strengths in the fight that has become her calling. It is our job to teach our students about the crisis, but also what they can do about it.

Imagine a curriculum that engages students by studying the life of Greta Thunberg and other inspiring youth leaders like Isra Hirsi, the 16-year-old daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). Hirsi is the director of US Youth Climate Strike and a leading organizer of the recent mobilizations. Students can watch the group’s videos, analyze their speeches and grapple with the data they use. A number of texts have come out that could come in handy, including Thunberg’s book No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference and Greta’s Story: The Schoolgirl Who Went on Strike to Save the Planet, also available in Spanish.

By learning about these young activists making history, students will ask, What needs to be done to stop climate change? But also, What qualities enable them to be such effective leaders for the climate? and in Thunberg’s case, How might being differently abled actually be an extraordinary asset? These are the types of discussions that move kids from climate despair toward action for climate justice.

Here are some more ideas for how teachers can join the movement for climate justice:

Try planning a few lessonson climate change and climate justice for your students. With a little help from the internet, this could lead to a unit of study or a school-wide Earth Day event. Use the recent news to strike up a conversation with a colleague and get the ball rolling.
Start a climate education working group in your school, union or district. Search out professional development on teaching climate change and climate justice. Ask the important questions: What are people doing to fight for a just transition to a carbon-free future? What are the public policies we need to make it happen? How can we make sure all teachers feel equipped to teach about the climate problem and solution?
Push for laws to put comprehensive climate education in every school. Work with your union to push for legislation and district policies that mandate climate education across the grades and subjects. Borrow tactics from the victory in Portland, OR where the school board passed the first comprehensive climate justice initiative of a major city in the United States.
Support substantive climate legislation. In Illinois, climate organizers are working to pass the Clean Energy Jobs Act: a bill that would lead to 100% clean renewable energy in the state, decarbonizing the electric grid by 2030. Learn about the Green New Deal and get your union behind it.
Make a plan with your union for the next time students mobilize for climate justice. Call on districts to follow the lead of teachers in New York and Chicago and allow students to protest without the threat of punishment.
Connect climate justice to the fight for racial and economic justice. As public school teachers, we are already active in efforts for educational equity, justice for immigrants and communities of color. Look beyond the school walls and you’ll find that people are also coming together to fight against big polluters that are endangering many working-class communities of color. These fights are directly linked to the fight for climate justice and bring the people most impacted by environmental degradation into the struggle for a climate solution.
Organize a protest that your friends and coworkers would actually attend. You shouldn’t have to call in sick to protest for climate action. The choice can’t be strike or do nothing. Let’s lower the barrier to entry for working adults and hold large after-work rallies the next time students call us to action. This can build for even more dramatic forms of protest in the future.

Teachers have always put their heart and soul into helping nuture the next generation. That passion has led us to rise up in the hundreds of thousands across the country to improve conditions in our nation’s public schools. We’ve found that when we take to the streets and speak directly to the public with one clear voice, meaningful change is possible. This newfound power can also be leveraged for climate justice. Our future and the future of our young people depend on it.

GIS-based analysis of fault zone geometry and hazard in an urban environment

Typical geologic investigations of active earthquake fault zones require that the fault can be observed at or near the Earth's surface. However, in urban areas, where faults present a direct hazard to dense populations, the surface expression of a fault is often hidden by development of buildings and infrastructure. This is the case in San Diego, California, where the Rose Canyon fault zone trends through the highly developed downtown.

Why We Need Young People To Run the Country—And Why I’m Voting for Bernie Anyway

Young people are badly underrepresented in the U.S. government.  The average age of Senators is currently 63, a full 25 years older than the median U.S. resident. In the House, it’s 58. The four leading presidential contenders, including Trump, are all in their 70s. Joe Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972—he has been one of the planet’s most powerful people for nearly half a century, longer than most have been alive.

Politics is often construed as noble public service, but it is also a tremendous privilege. Federal officeholders wield power over not only U.S. voters but also many who have no say in our elections, including residents of other countries and those under 18. In fact, climate change, nuclear war and environmental pollution have the potential to affect all life on this planet for centuries if not millennia to come.

Probably no single government should have such power. At the least, a supposed democracy should share this power as widely as possible. In reality, most ordinary people never get near it.

Over time, this power corrupts. As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) reports: “Behind closed doors, your arm is twisted, the vise pressure of political pressure gets put on you, every trick in the book, psychological and otherwise, is used to get us to abandon the working class.”

“As a consequence of my fundraising I became more like the wealthy donors I met,” wrote Barack Obama of his 2004 Senate campaign in The Audacity of Hope. “I spent more and more of my time above the fray, outside the world of immediate hunger, disappointment, fear, irrationality and frequent hardship of the other 99%. … I suspect this is true for every senator: The longer you are a senator, the narrower the scope of your interactions.”

The youth counterculture of the 1960s used to claim that you can’t trust anyone over 30. Obama’s words suggest that you can’t trust anyone who’s held federal office for over 30 years.

The ancient Athenians would have agreed. They believed elections favor the wealthy and influential, instead appointing (male, non-slave) citizens to political positions for one-year terms through random selection.

Despite high-profile successes such as the victory of Ocasio-Cortez (age 30) over Joe Crowley (age 57), most Congressional incumbents can rest relatively easy, with well above an 80% likelihood of reelection. What we get is an insulated class of professional politicians, propped up by a relatively wealthy and old donor class. As Astra Taylor argues in the New York Times, structural obstacles from age limits to economic precarity to the Senate’s rural-state bias hinder young people (who disproportionately live in cities) from entering politics.

On the surface, this may seem only a modest injustice—can’t millennials just wait our turn? But the importance of youth representation becomes clear when you begin to consider climate change: The old folks in Congress will die before the worst impacts hit. (While the elderly poor are already getting slammed by heat waves and storms, the elderly poor are not who sit in Congress.) They can dismiss youth-led calls for a Green New Deal as a “green dream, or whatever” (Nancy Pelosi, 79), knowing they will be safely in the grave while future generations struggle to make a life among the wreckage. An aging elite is refusing to “pass the torch”—and using that torch to set the planet alight. As Greta Thunberg asked: How dare they?

Of course, age should not be the only factor in making our presidential decisions. It is perhaps ironic that the oldest candidate, Bernie Sanders, has the most ambitious plan to rein in climate change, student debt and war, all issues disproportionately affecting the youth; he also eschews corporate fundraising and, according to Ocasio-Cortez, who recently endorsed him, has maintained “consistent and nonstop advocacy” for the 99% despite his 34 years in elected office. This is probably why the vast plurality of millennials planning to vote in the Democratic primary—this author included—back him.

It is probably not coincidence, however, that the long-tenured Sanders has been reluctant to embrace such institutional reforms as abolishing the filibuster or expanding the Supreme Court. Several younger candidates, such as Pete Buttigieg (37) and Kamala Harris (55), are much more open, as is Elizabeth Warren (70). Their relative youth and newness to politics may give them a fresher perspective on how government should be operated. (Warren, although just eight years younger than Sanders, has only held elected office since 2013.)

In fact, Buttigieg, the youngest candidate at 37, introduced “intergenerational justice” as a campaign theme and has voiced the strongest support for court packing. (Unfortunately, the details of his court-packing plan are needlessly convoluted and, like his whole campaign, leave much to be desired.)

Sanders’ other electoral weaknesses—his improved but imperfectmessaging around raceandgender; baggage and old grudges from 2016 (not totally his fault); concerns about his heart—also correlate with age and length of time in politics. All of this suggests that “passing the torch” to a younger, more diverse suite of left politicians will need to happen sooner than later.

It is to his credit that Sanders is doing this, both directly and indirectly. The organization that came out of his 2016 campaign, Our Revolution, is actively working to build up new progressive leadership at every level of government. And many of the young people mobilized by that campaign have gone on to hold office, from Ocasio-Cortez to socialist Chicago alderman Andre Vasquez (now 40). Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn., age 38), too, says she was inspired to run for Congress by the Sanders campaign.

We may have seen a glimpse of the future in New York this October, where Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez shared a stage before an audience of 26,000.

“Are you willing to fight for young people drowning in student debt, even if you are not?” Sanders asked to close his speech. “Are you willing to fight for a future for generations of people who have not yet even been born, but are entitled to live on a planet that is healthy and habitable? Because if you are willing to do that, if you are willing to love, if you are willing to fight for a government of compassion and justice and decency … [then] together we will transform this country.”

Later, in a joint interview, Ocasio-Cortez was asked whether she would work in a Sanders administration. Bernie jumped in: “Yes, you would!”

This is part of a debate about whether age matters in a presidential candidate. Read the first entry, “Ageism Has No Place in a Presidential Election,“ by Susan Douglas, here.

Magnets sustainably separate mixtures of rare earth metals

A new study describes a novel approach for purifying rare earth metals, crucial components of technology that require environmentally-damaging mining procedures. By relying on the metal's magnetic fields during the crystallization process, researchers were able to efficiently and selectively separate mixtures of rare earth metals.

Aim Low

The Emmett Till memorial in Mississippi was shot so many times they had to make it bulletproof.

Ben Rhodes’ False Atonement for the Yemen War

On March 27, 2015, two days into the Saudi-led war on Yemen, Barack Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor publicly defended the U.S.-backed military operation. Ben Rhodes, then 37, had begun as a speechwriter to the Obama campaign in 2007 before rising in the  administration’s ranks. He assured the press that, although the situation was complex, the administration was more than able to handle it. “We are always very careful to sort out who are the groups that actually pose a threat to the United States,” he said, as recorded in an NPR clip.

By the time that clip aired, at least 39 civilians had been killed in a war that would within a year become—on Obama’s watch—“probably the worst humanitarian situation in the world," according to Adnan Abdulfattah, the head of UNICEF's office in Hodeidah, Yemen. By 2018 the UN was also calling it the worst, seemingly running out of ways to warn the world that the combination of air bombardments and naval blockades was cutting off food and medicine—and pushing the country to famine. 

Throughout 2015 and 2016, as the U.S.-Saudi coalition bombed weddings, hospitals, funerals, factories and a school bus, Rhodes went on press calls and media interviews to defend U.S. political and military backing of the war, while issuing vague assurances the Obama administration was doing what it could to protect civilian lives.

Fast forward to the present—for Rhodes, a book tour and think tank co-chairmanship later—and this history seems almost entirely lost to public knowledge. Rhodes has reinvented himself as a vocal opponent of the Saudi-led war in Yemen—a war he once defended—and through this reinvention gained influence in liberal circles. In an era of nostalgia for Obama, he has even been asked to speak among Washington, D.C., liberal and progressive groups working to end the onslaught. His media appearances and commentary are so frequent, his P.R. blitz can only be seen as an effort to become an influential player in the 2020 election—and possibly even audition for a role in a potential Democratic administration.

Yet his denunciations are remarkably devoid of atonement: He somehow skipped the step where he is held accountable for his own significant role in starting U.S. participation in the onslaught, and went straight to the part where he righteously criticizes the Trump administration for escalating it. In his criticisms, he clings tightly to the idea that Obama’s support for the Yemen war was infused with humanity and restraint, a dubious claim used to sell the Yemen War—and used to sell brutal invasions throughout U.S. history.

Of course, Trump deserves to be criticized, and everyone and anyone should be calling for the war to end, including the people who started it. But Rhodes’ failure to account is important because we’re not going to stop wars of aggression by treating them like partisan aberrations from the norm. If we let the Obama-era warmongers define a “progressive” foreign policy through a narrow, anti-Trump lens, we open political space for Democrats—including the next Democratic administration—to revert to Obama’s deeply harmful policies. 

The only way to prevent future wars is to stop not only the Trumps and Boltons of this world, but also the Obamas and Rhodes.

What Rhodes did while he was in power

While Rhodes was in a high-level government position, positioned to help stop the war had he wanted to, his statements on the Yemen War were relatively sparse. Those statements he did make are a case study in how liberals sell brutal military interventions to the public, gesturing toward humanitarianism, restraint and respecting alliances.

On Sept. 2, 2015—six months into the war on Yemen—Rhodes held a press call alongside Jeff Prescott, the administration’s senior director for the Middle East, about the upcoming visit of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman. It was less than two months after the Iran nuclear deal was announced, and Obama was eager to appease a Saudi monarchy angry that the U.S. had made even the slightest overture toward its rival Iran.

By the time of this press call, it was well documented that the U.S.-Saudi coalition was using cluster bombs against civilians. That June, U.N. envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, had warned Yemen is "one step" from famine, and in August several human rights groups had called on the UN to mount a human rights inquiry.

Rhodes seemed eager to appease Saudi Arabia and establish common ground. “This is an important visit at an important time with the many developments in the region where we have a shared interest with Saudi Arabia,” he said. After saying he “welcomed” Saudi support for the Iran deal, however, he then suggested it was important to look at the other side of the coin:

At the same time, [Saudi Arabia has] expressed concerns about other Iranian activities in the region, which are understandable, given Iran’s destabilizing actions in places like Yemen, Syria and other countries. And so we’re going to continue to be focused on discussing with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf partners how we can build more effective capabilities and cooperation to counter that Iranian activity.

This message is important because, at the time, the Obama administration was overstating the role of Iran in backing the Houthis, and then using this overstated role to justify intervention. It was easier to sell a war against an Iranian bogeyman that key U.S. allies—Saudi Arabia and Israel among them—agreed needed to be opposed.

Rhodes did vaguely gesture towards concern about civilian deaths and injuries, something Obama also did on occasion. But Rhodes talked as though it were someone else doing the killing and maiming. “We're deeply concerned about, in particular, the deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Yemen,” he said on the September 2 call. “And what we have been doing is urging all the parties involved, including the Yemeni government, coalition members and others, to take steps to allow for unfettered humanitarian access to all parts of Yemen, to enable the operation of the Red Sea ports to humanitarian and commercial traffic, and to avoid damage to Yemeni infrastructure that's used in the delivery of assistance and other goods and services. And of course, that includes a call on all parties to use restraint in terms of the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure.” 

His remarks give the impression that the U.S. was interceding between warring parties in order to protect civilians—using a presumption of benevolence to justify the intervention. Yet, the “parties involved” included the United States, which was providing intelligence support, identifying bomb targets, refueling Saudi warplanes and, in April 2015, had expedited arms shipments to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. The vast majority of bombings and civilian deaths were caused by the U.S.-Saudi coalition—not the Houthis.

Later in September, the UN declined to mount a human rights probe into the Yemen War, following intense Saudi opposition. Rhodes and the Obama administration were mute on this obstruction effort.

Rhodes held another press briefing on April 21, 2016, at a summit between U.S. and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) defense ministers, at the invitation of King Salman. The latest round of peace talks had just faltered, in the aftermath of a shaky ceasefire agreement that was never fully implemented. The briefing came two weeks after a report was released by Human Rights Watch documenting a March 15, 2016, bombing by the U.S.-Saudi coalition that hit a “crowded market in the village of Mastaba,” killing “at least 97 civilians, including 25 children.” The strike was carried out with U.S.-made bombs. 

Amid this climate, Rhodes’ tone can only be described as flattering towards Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), another member of the Saudi-led coalition. The following passage is worth reading in its entirety, because it contrasts so starkly with Rhodes’ later (September 2019) proclamation—tweeted when he was no longer serving in a presidential administration—that “Saudi Arabia is not an ally of the United States.”

So on the atmospherics, I think yesterday the President had very long meetings with both King Salman and Mohammed bin Zayef of the UAE. I think that was probably his longest meeting, with King Salman. It went over two hours. I think it was a very open and honest discussion where they were able to discuss a whole range of issues, some of which we've been on strong agreement and some of which have been sources of tension. I think they both agreed that it was to essentially have this opportunity to clear the air and to reaffirm that even as there have been some tensions over the years, that on a set of core issues we are in alignment, whether that's counterterrorism, whether that's the security of our Gulf partners, whether that's the outcome that we would like to see in a conflict like Syria. So I think it definitely moved the ball forward in aligning our approaches, and they were able to be very open and honest and free-flowing with one another in their discussion.

Rhodes went on to assure a reporter that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are closely aligned: “I think on the core of the relationship, that remains very solid, and that includes our commitment to Saudi Arabian security and sovereignty. They are a country with whom we share significant interests in this region.”

Just six months after Rhodes made this statement, Reuters would reveal that Obama administration State Department officials were privately concerned that the United States might be implicated in war crimes. Some, Reuters reported, were “skeptical of the Saudi military’s ability to target Houthi militants without killing civilians and destroying ‘critical infrastructure’ needed for Yemen to recover.” 

The press call included one telling exchange with a reporter, who asked, “In the war in Yemen, did any of the GCC countries ask for specific weapons or more U.S. assistance in Yemen?” Rhodes replied:

With respect to your second question, there was not really a discussion of U.S. military assistance in Yemen. We have provided some support to the GCC operation there, but I think, because they’re now in this window where there’s a cessation of hostilities, the focus of the discussion was really on humanitarian access, humanitarian assistance to the people of Yemen, and the prospects for a political process, and our threat assessment as it relates to AQAP.

In this exchange, Rhodes used the discussion of humanitarian assistance to play down U.S. military aid to the coalition. But U.S. aid was extensive at this time: Reuters reported in September 2016 that “U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has offered Saudi Arabia more than $115 billion in weapons, other military equipment and training, the most of any U.S. administration in the 71-year U.S.-Saudi alliance.” Meanwhile, the cessation of hostilities Rhodes referred to—officially declared April 10, 2016—by then had already crumbled, with Saudi Arabia unleashing air strikes on Marib province.

The briefing came less than two weeks after Reuters revealed that, as a consequence of the war, al-Qaeda was able to seize significant territory and run “its own ministate.” From all angles, U.S. participation in the war was a disaster for the people of Yemen. Yet, the United States did not back away, that month deploying special forces to Yemen.

Amid this escalation, Rhodes employed a number of rhetorical tactics to justify direct involvement: He played down this involvement, giving the sense that the U.S. was a benevolent actor above the fray. He also claimed U.S. participation was necessary in order to restrain human rights abuses and protect civilians—providing no evidence of exactly how the U.S. was protecting anyone. And, most glaringly, he emphasized the importance of the special relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, repeatedly playing down the brutal actions of the Saudi monarchy.

What Rhodes did once he was out of power

Once he was no longer in a position of power, Rhodes’ tune began to change—albeit slowly. In his 424-page memoir “of the Obama White House,” published in June 2015, Rhodes never once seriously grappled with the Obama administration’s massive wrongdoing to the people of Yemen, an omission that also marred Powers’ more recent memoir.

While hitting the media circuit to promote his book, however, he did made some partial gestures toward acknowledging that harm—but only partial. . On June 22, 2018, as a guest on the podcast of left-leaning journalist Mehdi Hasan, he tried to argue that the U.S. was making an effort to restrain Saudi Arabia: “Well we — we spent a lot of time trying to bring about ceasefires and to end those conflicts. I think this is an issue, Mehdi, when I think back on it, where you know we were pursuing a certain approach of trying to restrain them but trying to work with them, thinking that working with them could allow us to better shape what they were doing in Yemen and get this into a political process.”

This dubious assertion has been echoed by other Obama aides, like former Russia ambassador Michael McFaul. But right out the gate, Obama was bending over backwards for the coalition: His administration agreed to a $60 billion dollar arms deal in 2010 and a $30 billion dollar deal in 2011. Obama did, during his last month in office, halt shipment of precision-guided munitions to Raytheon. But for 22 of the 23 months the war waged under his watch, Obama didn't put any meaningful restrictions on Saudi Arabia––then, with only five weeks left in office, he decided on leveling relatively small limits on missile sales (knowing full well a bellicose Trump would lift them). One could suspect this gestures was taken because he and others in his White House knew the stain of their support for the violence in Yemen would haunt them for years to come.

When asked by Hasan about the more than $115 billion total in U.S. military aid to Saudi Arabia, Rhodes tried to make it sound like Obama was pushing Saudi Arabia to change its approach:

You know, I think that our approach, you know which was very visible for everybody to see, especially in the last two or three years, was to go to the Saudis and the other GCC countries and try to get them to reorient some of their approach to their defense away from even the big-ticket hardware that they like to purchase, away from the kind of air campaign that you saw in Yemen, and say to them, “Look, if you have concerns about certain threats from Iran and ISIS that are asymmetric,” right, like interdicting weapons shipments, like cyber-security, like missile defense, “you should focus your defense procurement on those capabilities.

Rhodes seems to think that he can suggest, without documentation, that the United States was maneuvering all the while behind the scenes trying to stop the bloodshed. Never mind Rhodes’ multiple public statements as a high-ranking Obama aide in support of the war. This, “Trust me, it only looked like I was supporting the war—I was actually opposing it from the inside,” line is certainly not unique to Rhodes. (See presidential 2020 hopeful Joe Biden’s revisionism on his support for the Iraq War.) Rhodes supplies no evidence for why the public is supposed to trust him. A good starting point would be to reveal what was actually happening behind the scenes.

Any tentative regret is put solely in partisan terms, failing to acknowledge the horrors of the Yemen War were in full swing under Obama. “If we did know that Donald Trump was going to be president and there wouldn’t be some continuity in that approach that, you know, I think in retrospect we should have been more restrictive in supporting what they were doing in Yemen,” he said. “So that’s an example of a case where the dramatic shift in the orientation of the Trump administration makes me look back differently.” 

It is true that Trump escalated the war in Yemen, and it would be a mistake to flatten the difference between the two administrations. While deaths have been climbing steadily since the onslaught began in March 2015, they spiked in 2018—the deadliest year so far.

Furthermore, the Obama administration did press the Saudi-led coalition not to launch an assault on the port city of Hodeidah. (In June 2018, with Trump in office, the assault took place, with bombs slamming the port that is the conduit for 80 percent of food and aid to Yemen.) Yet, Obama green-lighted numerous other atrocities, including the initiation of the war itself, while shielding Saudi Arabia from scrutiny at the UN.

In short, escalation under Trump cannot erase the atrocities committed by Obama. If the assault on Hodeidaeh was wrong, wasn’t the October 2016 bombing of a funeral, or the early January 2016 bombing of a center for the blind? Is Rhodes only willing to sound his anti-war alarm on the estimated 3,100 Yemeni deaths per month during the worst period under Trump, but not the estimated 2,700 deaths per month during the worst period under Obama? Where is the line for Rhodes, and does it conveniently fall on the other side of the Obama administration?

Notably, Rhodes only clearly admitted to wrongdoing when the political tide was turning against the Yemen War, in an Atlanticpiece published Oct. 12, 2018—10 days after U.S. journalist Jamal Kashoggi was killed by Saudi Arabia, provoking bipartisan uproar. “Looking back, I wonder what we might have done differently, particularly if we’d somehow known that Obama was going to be succeeded by a President Trump,” he wrote. “In hindsight, we were wrong to think that cautious and at times conditional support for the war in Yemen would influence Saudi and Emirati policy, or help shape the actions of [Saudi prince Muhammad bin Salman], particularly given the turn American politics took with the 2016 election.”

Yet, this article—like his previous writing and statements—continues to whitewash his legacy. He speaks as though atrocities weren’t already in full swing under Obama: “In the absence of any U.S. pressure related to the conduct of the war in Yemen, the conflict escalated, and a humanitarian crisis spiraled out of control with no political endgame in sight.” Phil Weiss and Donald Johnson put it aptly in a critique of the Atlantic article for Mondoweiss: “Rhodes is being way too nice to himself and the Obama people. He didn’t touch on Yemen in his book because at that point it was still mostly ignored and he thought he could get away with it.”

In an April 24, 2019, article published in The Nation, David Klion reported that Rhodes grew defensive when pressed on his record on Yemen, as well as Libya and Syria. “I’ll take all the lumps, and people can pick apart those policies,” Rhodes told Klion, “but at the end of the day, the challenges in our politics that lead to these outcomes have to do with much more deeply entrenched forces not just in the U.S. government but in Congress itself.” He blamed Congress for not putting more pressure on the administration to rein in its warmaking.

This is a cop-out. Obama had tremendous power in the realm of foreign policy, and must take responsibility for expanding presidential war-making power through his broad interpretation of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force to justify a host of military interventions, from Afghanistan to Somalia to Yemen, his escalation in covert drone strikes, and his deployment of U.S. military service members to fight in wars Congress never approved. Rhodes wants to point blame at everyone except the administration that, in the case of Yemen, initiated participation in a brutal war unilaterally—that is, without Congress. 

Gaining influence in progressive circles

Today, Rhodes has refashioned himself into something of a public expert on foreign policy, aggressively asserting himself as a political heavy-hitter just in time for the Democratic presidential primary. He is the founder and co-chair of the National Security Action, which describes itself as “dedicated to advancing American global leadership and opposing the reckless policies of the Trump administration that endanger our national security and undermine U.S. strength in the world.” The organization’s other founder and co-chair is Jake Sullivan, the former National Security Advisor to Vice President Biden. (To get a sense of their liberal-imperialist ethos, see this piece on how NATO, a military alliance created to bolster U.S. power during the Cold War, is an “indispensable partner.”)

There is reason to think National Security Action wields political influence: In October 2018, both Sullivan and Rhodes provided guidance to the House Democrats’ National Security Taskforce, headed by three centrist, and relatively hawkish Democrats: Seth Moulton (Mass.), Stephanie Murphy (Fla.) and Jimmy Panetta (Calif.). But more progressive Democrats have also sung Rhodes’ praises: On February 9, Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.) tweeted, “The entire Dem caucus and every Dem Presidential candidate should listen to [Ben Rhodes] who has been one of the strongest voices for restraint and human rights in American foreign policy and has taken on the FP establishment when necessary.”

Rhodes has emerged as a prominent commentator on the foreign policy injustices of the Trump administration, his takes widely circulated on progressive and corporate media outlets, including MSNBC and CNN, as well as on Twitter. He has received fawning media coverage for being a prominent supporter of efforts to end the war on Yemen, on October 15 signing on to an open letter, organized by Bernie Sanders’ office, urging Democratic leaders “to reassert the power over war that the Constitution vests in Congress in order to terminate unauthorized U.S. participation in the Saudi-led military campaign against Yemen’s Houthis.” (Other signatories include Samantha Power and Sullivan, as the number of Obama aides who oppose the war now, but didn’t then, continues to mount.) 

It is understandable that groups trying to end the war in Yemen would accept support from those who started it, and anything that can hasten an end to the horror of ongoing bombardments is certainly a good thing. But that doesn’t mean those concerned with the long-term reduction of U.S. militarism and violence should give Obama aides a free pass for their own wrongdoing, just because they are willing to criticize the Trump administration. This point is underscored by the fact that Rhodes has used platforms afforded him by liberal and progressive groups to rewrite his own history.

On Nov. 28, 2018, Rhodes was a speaker on a call featuring Win Without War and Human Rights Watch. He spoke in favor of a Senate resolution aimed at ending the Yemen War, based on invoking the War Powers resolution, which says only Congress can declare war. Rhodes said, “passage would send a very clear message to the Trump administration as well as to the Saudis and Emiratis that there is a bipartisan group of senators who believe that the war must come to an end.” While Rhodes was right to support this political effort, it must be noted that, under Obama, U.S. participation in the Yemen War also was waged without approval from Congress.

Rhodes also said, on the call, “I think Congress can begin by undertaking a comprehensive investigation of the Khashoggi murder and this is something that a Democratic House should certainly take up.” It is curious that his call for an investigation only refers to an event that happened after Trump took power, ignoring the war crimes that took place before. Rhodes supports investigations—just not of the Obama administration.

On the call, Bryant Harris, a reporter for Al-Monitor, asked Rhodes if he regrets Obama’s support for the war—and whether Rhodes would provide a “granular rundown of what conditions the Obama administration had on U.S. support that no longer exists.”

Rhodes didn’t clearly answer either question, instead stating the Obama administration believed it could “both restrain the military campaign while helping to shape a political solution—that was wrong.” But he maintained that, if Trump had lost the election, the legacy of the Yemen war might look different. “Um, so obviously we don't know what might've happened if a Clinton administration had come in and continued those diplomatic efforts. My suspicion is you would have seen a continuation of a much more robust effort to achieve a diplomatic solution.” 

His quickness to pivot away from his own responsibility reflects a political environment where overseers of horrific wars are permitted to utter half-baked apologies and then move on—to have successful careers and retain public platforms and institutional power. And they fully expect to be afforded this courtesy, an entitlement made clear in Rhodes’ defensive—and sometimes snippy—responses to soft criticisms.

Even Bruce Riedel—a CIA veteran, fellow at the centrist Brookings Institution, and former Obama advisor—acknowledged in 2016 that the Obama administration could have ended the Yemen War “overnight” by withdrawing support from Saudi Arabia. Rhodes, for his part, could have spoken out against the war when it would have actually mattered. Imagine how much the conversation would have shifted if, in the summer of 2016, one of Obama’s top advisors resigned and went on 60 Minutes to explain why he couldn’t support the Saudi destruction in Yemen anymore. Yes, it may have harmed his personal career, but it would have likely brought the moral urgency of the matter to the broader public discourse years sooner. MSNBC––which entirely ignore the siege of Yemen from July 2017 to August 2018, and barely covered it all during the Obama years––would have been forced to finally discuss the carnage.

Even now, Rhodes could publicly come clean about what exactly he did—and who else is responsible for mass killing on a staggering scale—by providing full documentation, like internal emails and call records. He could have real conversations with Yemenis harmed by the onslaught about what reparations could look like, or at least show some curiosity about what such a process might be. He could beg for forgiveness, instead of declaring himself forgiven. Hell, it’s a low bar, but he could publicly announce he’s decided to donate all the proceeds from his memoir to emergency efforts to help Yemenis survive the ongoing onslaught.

So far as we know, Rhodes has not done any of these things. (He did not agree to speak to In These Times on these issues, citing “time conflicts.”) Nor has any other high-ranking Obama aide. And society has not held them accountable. This is the history of the Yemen War that was handed to Trump, yet Rhodes is hard at work spinning a different, self-serving tale. And in the process, he’s gaining a high profile that’s likely going to position him to serve in—or at least influence—a potential Democratic administration, should that come to pass, and ingratiating himself to Washington, D.C., progressive circles.

This goes beyond Rhodes—and beyond the Obama administration. To prevent another Yemen War, or Iraq War, or bloody Syria intervention, we need to confront the insidious nature of our bipartisan war machine. A war machine that, at times, speaks the language of overt white supremacy and “America-First” chauvinism we’re hearing from the Trump administration. But one that also speaks in liberal cliches of “restraint” and “humanitarian assistance”—and false atonement for past wrongdoings.