October 4 – Gun Rights Versus a Community’s Right Not to Be Massacred; Whose Side is Iraq On?; Collateral Damage on Top of Taliban Victories in Afghanistan

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the frustration expressed by President Obama that mass shootings have become routine in America, prompting Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush to remark that “stuff happens”. Saul Cornell, the Chair of American History at Fordham University and the author of “The Second Amendment Goes to Court’ joins us to discuss his article at The Atlantic “The Slave-State Origins of Modern Gun Rights” and the reason for the paralysis in the gun safety debate that Obama wants to move away from a focus on gun rights to the rights of ordinary citizens not to be exposed to the recurring threat of mentally unstable people carrying out massacres with arsenals of weapons that are easily obtained because of lax and inadequate gun regulations.

Part 2

Then we look into the role of Iraq in helping Russia and Iran keep the Assad regime in power in Syria while the U.S., after spending trillions and sacrificing thousands, still is supporting a government in Baghdad that defies U.S. foreign policy objectives while receiving billions in American aid. Juan Cole, a professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History and the author of “The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East”, joins us to discuss the contradictions of fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and bombing them in Syria, which helps the Assad regime stay in power and contradicts our stated goal of getting rid of this murderous regime responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of its own people while reducing much of the country to rubble and causing a refugee crisis in Europe.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the disastrous U.S. attack on the only hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan that is run by the French charity Medecins Sans Frontieres which resulted in 22 civilians killed including MSF staff, patients and children. Marvin Weinbaum who served as an analyst on Pakistan and Afghanistan at the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and is the author of “The Future of Afghanistan”, joins us to discuss this tragic case of collateral damage compounding the already humiliating capture of Afghanistan’s third largest city by the Taliban.