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War or Peace

Donald Trump has secured his name on another building. Too bad it's a vacant structure, but then that never bothered him. The US Institute of Peace, gutted and then destroyed by the DOGE deluge now reads the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace. What a joke. All his bloviating and whining about wanting a Peace prize finally paid off. What he'll do with this defunct institution is anybody's guess. In a recent roundtable discussion by political pundits on CNN this topic came up. After mostly agreeing that Trump is aching for some sort peace prize, the discussion finally focused on what the US Institute for Peace actually was, and that it didn't really do much. I take exception t that...strongly. About 25 years ago I spent a few weeks in Washington DC as a member of a summer institute for educations sponsored by the US Institute of Peace. Had I been part of that roundtable discussion I'd have informed those present what I was doing there and what was accomplished. Aside from an intensive schedule, the educators attended a meeting at the OAS, the Smithsonian's display of the Enola Gay, the plane tht dropped the atomic bomb, and worked many afternoons on curriculum for high school students examining critical issues and junctures in American Foreign Policy. When educatgors from all over the country get together, usually something useful and original emerges and often existing curriculum becomes inhanced. Money well spent.
Aside from being suppported by thid opportunity to trave and engage with other teachers, the institute was one of the few federal organizations that made teachers feel that they mattered, that their ideas were important and valued, and that if offered the chance to collaborate with others, everybody would benefit. Trump's laughable behavior has led him to make false statements about all the wars he has ended and all the wars that never started because of them. He ends them before they start, in his mind. His name on that building is another lie. There will soon be a time when Donald Trump is a footnote (lots of them) on history. Aside from all the things that have to be restored and re-assembled, I only hope thatthe US INstitute of Peace can one day become a reality. THis administration that established a Department of War, that flagrantly violates international law, that gutted the Department of Education is hardly peaceful.

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