The Washington Post - USA (2021-11-11)

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A


THURSDAY Opinion


F


or months, I have been making the
case that vaccine requirements are
necessary to reduce the spread of
the coronavirus that has already
claimed more than 755,000 American
lives. We hold our individual freedom as
sacrosanct, but the freedom to remain
unvaccinated stops when people choose to
be in public settings where they could
infect others with a deadly disease.
Many disagree with this viewpoint.
President Biden’s vaccination require-
ment for businesses with more than
100 employees is the latest pandemic
measure to face intense backlash, with
states and businesses filing lawsuits to
stop the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration from implementing the
rule.
I am troubled by the real possibility that
the challenges to the federal rule could
cause long-term harm to public health.
Nevertheless, I still believe Biden must do
everything in his power to increase vaccine
uptake.
To help unpack this nuanced issue, I
spoke with Scott Gottlieb, senior fellow at
the American Enterprise Institute and for-
mer commissioner of the Food and Drug
Administration. He raises three major
concerns.
First, Gottlieb worries about further
politicizing covid-19. “We will literally have
governors running for president against
this mandate,” he told me. “It’s not just a
small number of Americans who oppose it
— the 20 percent of Americans who are the
holdouts and haven’t been vaccinated. It’s
other people who got v accinated but don’t
like the idea that government forced them
or is forcing others to do it.”
Second, he thinks that opposition to the
coronavirus vaccine will engender distrust
of other vaccines. “To the extent that we
now have this political and cultural issue
that people are fighting over, I worry that
this will bleed into opposition to other
vaccine mandates that we’ve long come to
accept,” Gottlieb said. Most voters, he add-
ed, will not “parse the difference between a
mandate on the coronavirus vaccine and a
mandate on vaccines generally.”
Third, court battles could end up weak-
ening long-standing vaccination require-
ments. “In order to accommodate work-
place mandates, we are seeing a growing
acceptance for exceptions that are being
embraced by businesses as a relief valve to
sidestep the covid-19 vaccine mandate,”
Gottlieb said. “To me, that’s the most
dangerous legacy. If courts and businesses
start to move in the direction of recogniz-
ing broader exemptions to vaccine man-
dates, those loopholes will bleed right into
things like childhood immunizations. We
will end up having widened gaps that
we’ve spent years trying to close.”
I found Gottlieb’s arguments sobering
and compelling. But does that mean Biden
should pull back the OSHA mandate, as
Gottlieb favors? I don’t think so — not
because I’m unconcerned about the conse-
quences of further politicizing vaccina-
tion, but because I don’t think conceding
will do any good.
Lawrence Gostin, professor of global
health law at Georgetown University,
agrees. “If Biden were to back down now, I
don’t know that it would lower the political
temperature,” he told me. “It might even
inflame the issue and embolden the
o pposition.”
Indeed, the vitriol against vaccines
didn’t begin with the OSHA announce-
ment. As early as April, Florida Gov. Ron
DeSantis (R) signed an executive order
that banned businesses from requiring
patrons to show proof of vaccination. By
June, at least a dozen other states had
banned so-called vaccine passports — even
though the Biden administration was
firmly opposed to them and the White
House wasn’t even requiring vaccines for
its own events. And let’s not forget that
much of the United States continues to
oppose the most basic of protective mea-
sures — masks.
“Anything that public health officials
have done, no matter how reasonable, has
faced major pushback,” Gostin said. If they
gave in each time, what precedent would
that set for curbing future health crises?
Still, it’s prudent to heed Gottlieb’s
words of caution and try to turn down the
temperature in the vaccine debate. The
Biden administration could reframe the
OSHA rule not as a vaccination require-
ment, but as a testing and masking man-
date. That’s already what it is, but OSHA
can be more explicit in describing the rule
as a requirement for employees to be
tested and wear a mask — with an opt-out
for those who are vaccinated.
People who favor such requirements
can help by making their voices heard.
Workers who want the assurance that
those around them are vaccinated aren’t
trying to make a political statement; they
are trying to avoid breakthrough infec-
tions and bringing the coronavirus home
to their families.
In the meantime, we need to brace
ourselves for medium- and long-term con-
sequences to public health. “There’s no
question that public health has been deep-
ly wounded,” Gostin said. “The public
health community is really in trouble.”
This is yet another tragic legacy of our
country’s failed response to covid-19.

LEANA S. WEN

Vaccine


requirements


are still worth


pursuing
BY OMAR ALSHOGRE

A


lot of people I know have been
watching the Netflix show “Squid
Game,” the dystopian drama in
which players participate in sur-
real versions of traditional Korean chil-
dren’s games. The losers are punished by
death — until only one is left alive.
My friends see “Squid Game” as a kind of
horror movie, a grotesque commentary on
the gap between rich and poor in today’s
capitalist societies. To them, it’s a fantasy, a
frightening fable.
But I’m fascinated by it for different
reasons. To me it’s a reminder of the three
years I spent in Syrian prisons. I’ve been
watching it — often an extremely painful
experience — to see if the show could help
me make sense of what I’ve lived through.
The whole show, which details a world of
capricious brutality, has exposed me to
some intense emotions. But it’s episode six,
“Gganbu,” that hits the hardest. That’s the
one where the story puts its characters
through their most savage tests yet, pitting
friends and allies against each other.
When the players are asked to choose
partners, their first instinct is to choose
their favorite person. They don’t know they
will come to regret it later. When the game’s
rules are announced, the players learn the
harsh truth: The two partners are compet-
ing against each other, and whoever loses
the game will be “eliminated.”
Inside Syria’s infamous Sednaya prison,
I lived through the real-life version of this
episode. The guards came to the cells and
asked my friend Jihan to name his closest
friend among the inmates. I was surprised
he didn’t give them my name. After all, I
had been his friend there longer than any-
one else.
Instead Jihan named another friend of
ours. Then the guard handed him a screw-
driver and told him in a calm voice, “Use
this to kill your friend or he will have to kill
you. You’ve got ten minutes.”
The guard locked the cell and walked
away. The friend immediately began plead-
ing with Jihan: “If you kill me, my kid is
going to be an orphan.”
But Jihan didn’t see any way out. He
knew that his loved ones would suffer from
his death. As the final seconds ticked away,
he made the decision to kill his friend and
carry the guilt that would live with him
forever. This was one of the scariest mo-
ments of my life in prison. I watched one of
my friends kill another one right in front of
my eyes. Watching “Squid Game” brought
it all back.
Later in episode six, the plot twist involv-
ing the two young female characters, Sae-
byeok and Ji-yeong, took me back to an-
other moment I experienced. In the epi-
sode, Ji-yeong decides to sacrifice her life
by letting Sae-byeok win. She believes that
Sae-byeok has a better future and a better
life waiting for her after the game, so she
allows her to win.
Watching Ji-yeong reminded me power-
fully of my cousin Bashir, who spent months
in prison with us. Unlike Ji-yeong, he was
never put in a position to sacrifice himself
directly — but I firmly believe that he would
have taken that chance had it been given to
him. Instead, he did the same thing indi-
rectly, by giving others the strength to sur-
vive. Even though he was starving like
everyone else, he shared his food with those
weaker than him. And like Ji-yeong, he
somehow managed to keep smiling despite
the horrors the prison was putting him
through. I remember him always sitting
with his arms crossed under his chin, smil-
ing at every prisoner. He used his smile to
help us hold on to our humanity.
He constantly told me about the bright
future that was waiting for me outside of
prison, doing everything he could to give
me a reason to go on living. On March 3,
2014, Bashir died in my arms. As he was
dying, he looked at me and spoke the
phrase “one hundred flowers” — a symbolic
gift of the purest love and forgiveness. For
me, those words in Arabic — mit warde —
have since become a synonym for goodness
and positivity even amid the presence of
great evil.
While watching this scene of “Squid
Game,” I didn’t see Sae-byeok and Ji-yeong.
I saw me and Bashir as he passed away in
my arms.
In “Squid Game,” the honorable police
officer searching for his missing brother
risks everything to put a stop to this ma-
chinery of death. Incredibly enough, he,
too, has real-life equivalents — like the
defector known as “Caesar,” who worked in
one of the Syrian government’s prisons and
ultimately managed to smuggle out thou-
sands of photos of the victims.
Today, the “Squid Game” of the Assad
regime continues with impunity while
dwarfing the level of sadism and criminali-
ty that we see on the show. The show often
depicts characters who rebel against the
inhumanity they’re subjected to. That of-
fers a bit of relief to viewers, whose first
instinct is to wonder how such savagery
can go unpunished.
And yet, in the real world, there are
many people who are perfectly fine with
normalizing the Syrian regime, which is
responsible for torturing countless people
to death. All I can say is that life really
sometimes is stranger than fiction.

The writer is a Syrian refugee, public speaker
and human rights activist.

‘Squid Game’


reminds me of


my years in a


Syrian prison


BY JAMES R. CLAPPER
AND MICHAEL HAYDEN

B


y now, it is well documented
that in 2020 a sitting president
and his allies tried to overturn
the results of an election, trig-
gering the worst political violence this
country has seen in living memory. It is
also clear that this attempt to under-
mine our democracy did not end with
the transition to a new president, but
continues with active efforts to make
sure the next sabotage succeeds where
the last one failed. What is less widely
understood — and what keeps us up at
night — is how great a threat these
activities pose to our national security.
This looming crisis is why we, along
with nearly 100 other former national
security and military officials, issued a
statement urging Congress to
p rioritize protecting election integrity.
We both served at the highest levels of
our country’s intelligence community,
under Republican and Democratic
presidents alike, and we know that our
foreign adversaries and other bad
a ctors are licking their chops as they
watch efforts to destabilize our
e lections.
At the heart of the attack is a
homegrown disinformation campaign
meant to sow doubt in the U.S. voting
system. Unfortunately, it is working —
poll after poll shows declining trust in
our elections and declining belief in
the concept of democracy, particularly
among Republicans. And these effects
will not be contained to our borders.
We have personally seen the lengths
to which our foreign adversaries will
go to take advantage of any cracks in
the foundation of our democracy. One
of us was director of national intelli-
gence during the period leading up to
the 2016 presidential vote and saw
firsthand how Russia used social me-
dia to exploit disinformation, polariza-
tion and divisiveness. The Russians’
objective was to breed discord, and
they succeeded beyond their wildest

expectations. Now others have gone to
school on the Russian example — and
will seek to prey on our country’s state
of affairs in just the same way.
Unfortunately, adversaries are find-
ing increasingly fertile ground for
their efforts. A society struggling to
separate fact from fiction is the perfect
environment for these actors to fur-
ther erode electoral trust and kick
democracy into a death spiral. They
might also seek to take advantage of
the exposure of sensitive information
about election equipment or voter data
that resulted from recent hyperparti-
san election “reviews” such as Ari-
zona’s, as well as the inevitable decline
in security that will accompany the
mass exodus of expert election officials
facing violent threats. And if disinfor-
mation leads to more political violence
like we saw on Jan. 6 — as seems
increasingly likely — you can bet the
house that enemies abroad will be
ready to seize on the resulting chaos.
There are also serious foreign policy
consequences to this crisis. The United
States’ power since World War II has
come not just from our military might
but also from the political stability and
economic prosperity a thriving democ-
racy provides. America stood as a
model and inspiration for other coun-
tries, exercising the kind of soft power
that drives diplomacy and encourages
the spread of democracy around the
world. But the once-high regard for
American democracy is in steep de-
cline, and with it America’s global
influence and moral authority.
While the situation is dire, it is far
from hopeless. There are clear and
simple steps the Biden administration
and Congress must take now to harden
our defenses against the risk posed by
election destabilization.
To its credit, the administration
recognizes that preserving our democ-
racy is a national security imperative.
It is convening a Summit for Democra-
cy next month that should promote not
just voting rights and election integrity

but also executive branch accountabil-
ity and civic education and engage-
ment. For its part, the Justice Depart-
ment should continue to seek account-
ability for the Jan. 6 attack, and must
do more to prosecute those who un-
lawfully intimidate election officials. If
we fail to hold these people account-
able in the present, we invite similar
efforts in the future.
Meanwhile, Congress must provide
adequate funding to state and local
governments to help them secure their
election infrastructure against mali-
cious foreign and domestic actors.
Legislators should also immediately
enact safeguards we know will make
our federal elections more resilient,
such as paper ballots to facilitate result
verification in the event of a dispute or
attempted sabotage. Other necessary
measures include requirements for
protecting ballots and election equip-
ment, as well as election workers, and
meaningful penalties for attempts to
violate such laws or manipulate an
election. Some of these proposals have
already been introduced in Congress;
there is no excuse to delay.
Three decades ago, the promise of
American democracy helped us prevail
in the Cold War. Today, our enemies
can smell the weakness in our political
system, and they will be ready to
exploit it. We must be prepared to meet
that threat — for our national security,
for our democracy and for the future of
our country.

James R. Clapper, a retired Air Force
lieutenant general, was director of national
intelligence in the Obama administration.
Michael Hayden, a retired Air Force four-
star general, was director of the National
Security Agency from 1999 to 2005 and
principal deputy director of national
intelligence in the George W. Bush
administration. He was director of the
Central Intelligence Agency from 2006 to


  1. The views expressed here are theirs
    alone and do not imply endorsement by
    any U.S. government agency.


We must protect our elections


now. National security is at stake.


MATT MCCLAIN/THE WASHINGTON POST
A voter fills out a ballot at a polling place in Falls Church, Va., on Nov. 2.

e ssays and test scores.
Eliminating gifted and talented pro-
grams has become fashionable on the
left, based on well-intentioned desires to
close the achievement gap for African
American and Latino students, but it’s
alienating many parents — as well as
graduates — who prospered under high-
er standards. Throwing less-prepared
students into classes with motivated
children forces teachers to reduce the
rigor of lesson plans so that everyone can
keep up.
Complicating matters is the fact that,
as of 2018, roughly a quarter of San
Francisco’s children already attend pri-
vate schools, compared to 9 percent in
California. Any parent who can afford to
do so will likely consider private school if
they believe a public system is lowering
standards. “Sadly, our school board’s
priorities have often been severely mis-
placed,” Breed said in a statement. “And
parents feel members of the board aren’t
listening.”
Breed’s warning is a reminder that
national Democrats risk being branded
as the anti-education party if they don’t
speak out more forcefully against con-
tinuing assaults on gifted and talented
programs.
The Virginia governor’s race shows
the issue’s potency. While much has been
made of Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin’s em-
phasis on critical race theory, the Repub-
lican also promised to fight against
weakening standards for magnet
schools. He said he would push for
Thomas Jefferson High School for Sci-
ence and Technology, a top-flight school
in Fairfax County, to revert to a solely
merit-based admission process. Last
year, the local school board eliminated
an entrance exam for the school and told
reviewers to instead consider “experi-

A


week after Republicans won the
Virginia governor’s race, it is
increasingly obvious that Fox
News and red Twitter did not
invent parental anger about what’s been
happening in public schools. Nor is frus-
tration limited to the suburbs — or
peculiar to the Old Dominion. Efforts to
lower academic standards and scale
back educational opportunities in the
name of racial equity are backfiring on
liberals from coast to coast, including in
the bluest big cities in America.
Consider San Francisco. Mayor Lon-
don Breed (D) just endorsed the recall of
three far-left school board members in a
February special election, including
someone she appointed in 2018. Other
Democratic officeholders and donors
also back their removal, and recall orga-
nizers submitted 80,000 signatures to
remove the commissioners, undercut-
ting the argument that this is some
right-wing conspiracy.
The recall has been a long time com-
ing. Anger boiled over in the Bay Area as
schools stayed closed months after most
districts restarted classes. The San Fran-
cisco board voted in January to rename
44 schools, including those that honored
George Washington, Paul Revere and
Abraham Lincoln, before reversing itself
amid national mockery in April. But the
board’s most fateful mistake may have
been messing around with Lowell High
School.
Lowell has long been one of the
United States’ most prestigious public
schools. Alumni include three Nobel lau-
reates and Supreme Court Justice
S tephen G. Breyer. Rather than try to
make other schools as great as Lowell,
the school board voted to start admitting
students there by lottery — and no
l onger consider grade-point average,

ence factors,” such as a child’s socioeco-
nomic background.
Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe
boasted about reducing the number of
tests that children in Virginia are re-
quired to take, but Youngkin ripped him
for lowering standards so that failing
schools could still get accreditation.
Youngkin’s strategists say promising to
raise education standards helped Repub-
licans make meaningful inroads among
Asian American and Latino voters. Re-
acting to McAuliffe’s loss, Democratic
strategist James Carville told PBS: “What
went wrong is this stupid wokeness.”
Democrats other than Breed are re-
versing course, too. New York Mayor-
elect Eric Adams (D) promised during
the campaign not to implement a plan
announced by outgoing Democratic
Mayor Bill de Blasio to eliminate elemen-
tary school gifted and talented programs
in the nation’s largest school district.
Adams said he wants to preserve the
programs and expand additional oppor-
tunities for advanced learning.
But California keeps moving in the
opposite direction. Confronted with ris-
ing numbers of minority children getting
Ds and Fs, some schools have decided to
simply stop giving out Ds and Fs. The
districts in Los Angeles and San Diego
have reportedly told teachers not to
penalize students for bad classroom
b ehavior, poor work habits or missed
deadlines.
None of these allowances prepare chil-
dren to succeed in college or careers. If
testing shows a widening achievement
gap, it doesn’t mean we need to hold back
the students who are doing well. It
means we need to do more to lift up those
who have fallen behind the most during
the pandemic. This is the true civil rights
battle of our time.

JAMES HOHMANN

The Democrats need to go back to school

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