Archive - July 7, 2010

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman John Garamendi (D-Walnut Creek, CA) and (Ethiopia 1965-67) who is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, today voted for two amendments that would end the war in Afghanistan and set a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. John voted for an amendment authored by Obey and McGovern that requires the President to present Congress with a new National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan by January 31, 2011 and a plan by April 4, 2011 on the safe, orderly and expeditious redeployment of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, including a timeframe for the completion of the redeployment. By a vote of 162-260, it did not secure a majority vote. Garamendi also voted for an amendment by Rep. Barbara Lee that would restrict funding in Afghanistan to only what is necessary to have a safe and orderly withdrawal, protect soldiers and contractors on the ground, and carry out diplomatic . . .

In the fall of 1962, the Peace Corps Volunteers arriving in Ethiopia were reading, or had packed into our carry-on luggage, Catch 22 by Joe Heller; The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone; Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger; Exodus by Leon Uris. And, of course, The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. There were, I’m sure, a few other books being read on that long overnight flight on TWA out of the old Idlewild  Airport in New York to Rome and Athens, and then in the fleet of Ethiopian DC-6Bs into Africa. There were nearly 300 of us crossing Egypt and Sudan to arrive in Addis Ababa at dawn at the end of the “big rains” when the Ethiopian highlands are blanketed with bright yellow Maskel flowers. We stepped from the plane and smelled for the first time the burning of a hundred thousand eucalyptus fires — the smell of Africa . . .