jp1 is right. This isn’t our worst era. It doesn’t even make the top ten.
jp1 is right. This isn’t our worst era. It doesn’t even make the top ten.
"Countries bombed: Obama 7, Bush 4."
That’s True.
We asked Lizza for his list and he sent us this:
Bush: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Somalia.
Obama: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and Syria.
As we fact-checked Lizza’s statement, we found little reason to challenge the nations he named. If anything, he shortchanged both presidents.
There is no dispute whatsoever about airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Bush launched wars in the first two countries and drone strikes in Pakistan have been in the news for a long time, with or without official acknowledgment. Airstrikes in those places continued under Obama.
Somalia falls largely in the same category as Pakistan. The New York Times, BBC News and other news organizations reported airstrikes as early as 2007 against people linked to the al-Qaida network.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a nonprofit news service based at City University London, maintains a running list of U.S. military actions in a number of countries, including Somalia and Yemen. The bureau annotates each incident with links to press reports. By its tally, American drone strikes against suspected terrorists in Somalia occurred under both Bush and Obama.
The same pattern holds in Yemen. BBC News and Timemagazine reported a CIA-directed drone attack in Yemen in 2002. This would increase Bush’s total to five countries, rather than the four Lizza cited. Lizza said he left Yemen off of Bush’s list because it was a "one-off strike, rather than a more sustained bombing campaign. Probably deserves an asterisk."
The air attacks on Libya that helped topple Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 under Obama are well documented. In March 2011, the United States and British warships fired over 100 cruise missiles to destroy Libyan air defenses. And, of course, there’s now Syria.
Lizza said that Obama has bombed seven countries to Bush’s four. Depending on your view of Bush’s reported drone strike into Yemen, he may have slightly undercounted Bush’s tally.
Just read this in a book about Chris Hedges which speaks to the need to have faith, act according to your values, and then detach yourself from the results
And as Father Berrigan says, we’re called to do the good, or at least the good insofar as we can determine it, and then we have to let it go, that the Buddhists call it karma, that for us it’s the belief that the good draws to it the good, that rebellion and resistance itself is a moral imperative. And even though empirically everything around us may appear to deteriorate, it doesn’t invalidate that act of resistance.
"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
www.silententry.wordpress.com
As long as you are committed to thinking for yourself rather than following charismatic figureheads or dogmas, there’s the ability to auto correct against going off in the wrong direction. Our information sources are infected with propaganda. This results in some alien alliances like that of the current progressives and neoconservatives who would seem to have different convictions regarding our military involvement worldwide but join forces to attack politicians they hate even when they make policy decisions that they agree with.
There is nothing you can believe in or no one you can trust....so a feeling of despair develops. That’s very conducive to controlling people. What Catherine is eluding to perhaps....is believe in yourself and the rest will follow. I believe in humanity. I believe that God is uniquely present in all humans. Some put this to work to do good. Otherwise chaos and evil would be the norm and good would be the subject of the evening news.
Worst eras - not in any order:
Great Depression
World War II
Civil War era
Financial crash of early 1890s, I believe
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)