When President Donald Trump ordered an armada of naval vessels, fighter planes, bombers and high-tech surveillance drones to the Middle East, he thought he had the answer to decades of tension and terrorism from Iran. He may well be right.
Well, the answer to the headline is undoubtably Clinton, Okla. The potential is ripe. Now that ripeness could refer to sweet fruit or the ripeness of another sort that makes people outright hold their nose. Where things stand when the proverbial dust settles will depend upon the efforts of many.
There will be no quick or easy wins – even on U.S. and Israeli terms. They have celebrated assassinating Iran’s supreme leader; their offensive has also killed more than 1,000 civilians so far, including scores of children, according to a U.S.-based rights group. As Iran retaliates, hoping America’s allies will try to rein it back, it is targeting U.S. bases and civilian sites across the region – even in Oman, which was at the forefront of efforts to stave off the war. Gulf powers are increasingly irate, though wary of acting on threats to go beyond defensive action. Israel has ordered hundreds of thousands of civilians to leave a vast swathe of southern Lebanon, blaming Hezbollah’s retaliation for the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
This is the moment when total war meets the fog of war.
CLINTON DAILY NEWS EDITORIAL
On his 54th birthday, former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska was given a cake that proclaimed, “Happy last Birthday Ben!”
SWAMPSCOTT, Mass. – “No star fades faster than that of a high-school athlete,” the author John Grisham wrote in his 2006 book “The Innocent Man.” Today’s column is about a high school athlete whose star never faded – and whose star is casting a gentle light over the community he electrified as a football halfback, basketball guard and baseball shortstop for the Swampscott High Big Blue more than a half-century ago.
CLINTON DAILY NEWS EDITORIAL
Devastating wildfires, flooding and winter storms were among the 23 extreme weather and climate-related disasters in the US which cost more than a billion dollars last year – at an estimated total loss of $115billion. The last three years have shattered previous records for such events. Last Wednesday, scientists said that we are closer than ever to the point after which global heating cannot be stopped.
When Black leaders proceeded from Selma to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1965 to demonstrate for voting rights, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched beside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “I felt my legs were praying,” he said.