We live in a state of perpetual war, and we never feel it. While you get your gelato at the hip place where they put those cute little mint leaves on the side, someone is being bombed in your name. While you argue with the 17-year-old at the movie theater who gave you a small popcorn when you paid for a large, someone is being obliterated in your name. While we sleep and eat and make love and shield our eyes on a sunny day, someoneâs home, family, life and body are being blown into a thousand pieces in our names.
The United States military drops an explosive with a strength you can hardly comprehend once every 12 minutes. And thatâs odd, because weâre technically at war withâlet me thinkâzero countries. So that should mean zero bombs are being dropped, right?
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that under President Barack Obama there were â563 strikes, largely by drones, that targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. âŠâ
Itâs not just the fact that bombing outside of a war zone is a horrific violation of international law and global norms. Itâs also the morally reprehensible targeting of people for pre-crime, which is what weâre doing and what the Tom Cruise movie âMinority Reportâ warned us about. (Humans are very bad at taking the advice of sci-fi dystopias.
If weâd listened to â1984,â we wouldnât have allowed the existence of the National Security Agency. If we listened to âThe Terminator,â we wouldnât have allowed the existence of drone warfare. And if weâd listened to âThe Matrix,â we wouldnât have allowed the vast majority of humans to get lost in a virtual reality of spectacle and vapid nonsense while the oceans die in a swamp of plastic waste. ⊠But you know, whoâs counting?)
There was basically a media blackout while Obama was president. You could count on one hand the number of mainstream media reports on the Pentagonâs daily bombing campaigns under Obama. And even when the media did mention it, the underlying sentiment was, âYeah, but look at how suave Obama is while heâs OKâing endless destruction. Heâs like the Steve McQueen of aerial death.â
And letâs take a moment to wipe away the idea that our âadvanced weaponryâ hits only the bad guys. As David DeGraw put it, âAccording to the C.I.A.âs own documents, the people on the âkill list,â who were targeted for âdeath-by-drone,â accounted for only 2% of the deaths caused by the drone strikes.â
70,000 bombs dropped by Bushâit was childâs play. DeGraw again: â[Obama] dropped 100,000 bombs in seven countries. He out-bombed Bush by 30,000 bombs and 2 countries.â
You have to admit thatâs impressively horrific. That puts Obama in a very elite group of Nobel Peace Prize winners who have killed that many innocent civilians. The reunions are mainly just him and Henry Kissinger wearing little hand-drawn name tags and munching on deviled eggs.
However, we now know that Donald Trumpâs administration puts all previous presidents to shame. The Pentagonâs numbers show that during George W. Bushâs eight years he averaged 24 bombs dropped per day, which is 8,750 per year. Over the course of Obamaâs time in office, his military dropped 34 bombs per day, 12,500 per year. And in Trumpâs first year in office, he averaged 121 bombs dropped per day, for an annual total of 44,096.
Trumpâs military dropped 44,000 bombs in his first year in office.
He has basically taken the gloves off the Pentagon, taken the leash off an already rabid dog. So the end result is a military thatâs behaving like Lil Waynecrossed with Conor McGregor. You look away for one minute, look back, and are like, âWhat the fuck did you just do? I was gone for like, a second!â
Under Trump, five bombs are dropped per hourâevery hour of every day. That averages out to a bomb every 12 minutes.
And which is more outrageousâthe crazy amount of death and destruction we are creating around the world, or the fact that your mainstream corporate media basically NEVER investigates it? They talk about Trumpâs flaws. They say heâs a racist, bulbous-headed, self-centered idiot (which is totally accurate)âbut they donât criticize the perpetual Amityville massacre our military perpetrates by dropping a bomb every 12 minutes, most of them killing 98 percent non-targets.
When you have a Department of War with a completely unaccountable budgetâas we saw with the $21 trillionâand you have a president with no interest in overseeing how much death the Department of War is responsible for, then you end up dropping so many bombs that the Pentagon has reported we are running out of bombs.
Oh, dear God. If we run out of our bombs, then how will we stop all those innocent civilians from ⊠farming? Think of all the goats that will be allowed to go about their days.
And, as with the $21 trillion, the theme seems to be âunaccountable.â
Journalist Witney Webb wrote in February, âShockingly, more than 80 percent of those killed have never even been identified and the C.I.A.âs own documents have shown that they are not even aware of who they are killingâavoiding the issue of reporting civilian deaths simply by naming all those in the strike zone as enemy combatants.â
Thatâs right. We kill only enemy combatants. How do we know theyâre enemy combatants? Because they were in our strike zone. How did we know it was a strike zone? Because there were enemy combatants there. How did we find out they were enemy combatants? Because they were in the strike zone. ⊠Want me to keep going, or do you get the point? I have all day.
This is not about Trump, even though heâs a maniac. Itâs not about Obama, even though heâs a war criminal. Itâs not about Bush, even though he has the intelligence of boiled cabbage. (I havenât told a Bush joke in about eight years. Felt kind of good. Maybe Iâll get back into that.)
This is about a runaway military-industrial complex that our ruling elite are more than happy to let loose. Almost no one in Congress or the presidency tries to restrain our 121 bombs a day. Almost no one in a mainstream outlet tries to get people to care about this.
Recently, the hashtag #21Trillion for the unaccounted Pentagon money has gained some traction. Letâs get another one started: #121BombsADay.
One every 12 minutes.
Do you know where theyâre hitting? Who theyâre murdering? Why? One hundred and twenty-one bombs a day rip apart the lives of families a world awayâin your name and my name and the name of the kid doling out the wrong size popcorn at the movie theater.
We are a rogue nation with a rogue military and a completely unaccountable ruling elite. The government and military you and I support by being a part of this society are murdering people every 12 minutes, and in response, thereâs nothing but a ghostly silence. It is beneath us as a people and a species to give this topic nothing but silence. It is a crime against humanity.
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