(NAME-MCE) Is Colin Powell a good choice for Sec'y of Ed?

[sheila hamanaka]

Sorry, I seem to have lost the posts but someone mentioned that Obama 
is considering Colin Powell for Sec'y of Education, and then another 
person asked if she thought he was a good choice.

My unsolicited opinion is, no.

Colin Powell defended Muslims, but is it possible to forget that he 
lied to the public about weapons of mass destruction, a lie that 
contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslims? The 
Muslim kids killed by US bombs or sanctions will never get to be 
President. If they were your kids, you would want him arrested and 
tried for aiding and abetting war crimes alongside Bush and Cheney, not 
given a plum job.

Powell is a military man. When I was at CCNY during the Vietnam War 
students around the country protested the presence of the ROTC on 
campus. The military should be keep out of schools, like religion. Why 
make a retired general the head of education when there are so many 
qualified EDUCATORS out there?

And, the choice should ideally be an antiracist educator. Antiracism is 
more than one statement. It's a commitment to dismantling institutional 
racism, and the US military (and the State Dept) is nothing if not the 
enforcer of US institutional racist oppression abroad aka colonialism 
aka imperialism aka US corporate interests.

The military subsists on a poverty draft. That's more racial injustice. 
Dishonest recruiters hold out college as a lure to desperate kids who 
want an education. I don't recall Powell speaking out against that. 
Forget the loans. Stop the wars and pay kids to go to college. That 
would be an antiracist higher education policy.