The last 70 years of modern warfare have been filled with atrocities, from the first bomb that exploded the tranquility of Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941 to the advent of large-scale saturation bombing of civilian centers culminating in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Source: IPS News
Few in Washington want to talk much about Iraq these days.
Eager to avoid refighting the intense political battles over Iraq during the George W. Bush administration, both Democrats and Republicans seem to have tacitly agreed on a set of lowest-common-denominator premises: the initial decision to invade may have been questionable, but the 2007 surge worked, and Iraq is now on a slow-but-sure path to recovery.
Stability and prosperity will gradually improve, or maybe they won’t, but in any case Iraqis will have to sort out their problems for themselves.
Another American factory closes. Thousands of union laborers lose their jobs. The host city, in this case Detroit, spirals further into debt. The automobile parts will be coming from an obscure Mexican town, shipped into the United States across a national border.
Activists in Burlington, Vermont are outraged that Mayor Bob Kiss has inked a deal with Lockheed Martin, the world's largest war profiteer, to fight climate change in the city.
What actually sustains life is far more essential than market forces and much more interesting than selfishness.
It was the worst of times
In 2010 joblessness and foreclosures reached record heights. In cities like Detroit and Milwaukee, 50% of African American males, ages 18-60, were unemployed.
In Afghanistan Obama’s troop surge and U.S. air strikes were killing so many civilians that the Afghan people were viewing the U.S. military and NATO as foreign occupiers.
Meanwhile, most Al Qaeda operatives have scattered across the Mideast, Central Asia and Africa. Only a few dozen remain in Afghanistan. Yet our government continues to squander billions on the Afghan war, swelling government deficits and fueling Tea Party discontent.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019