How many nuclear bombs have been detonated on Earth, and for what purpose? Only the first question will be answered by the following video by Isao Hashimoto, which logs all of the nuclear blasts until 1998 (this video was created in 2003). Via Discover Magazine.
Ted Koppel reminds us that we have been tricked into destroying ourselves, and wonders whether we will ever have the courage and wisdom to stop:
The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another. Bin Laden deserves to be the object of our hostility, national anguish and contempt, and he deserves to be taken seriously as a canny tactician. But much of what he has achieved we have done, and continue to do, to ourselves. Bin Laden does not deserve that we, even inadvertently, fulfill so many of his unimagined dreams. It did not have to be this way. . . . Could bin Laden, in his wildest imaginings, have hoped to provoke greater chaos? It is past time to reflect on what our enemy sought, and still seeks, to accomplish -- and how we have accommodated him.
I wonder, which is a better recruitment tool for potential terrorists: the burning of a Koran or the following news items from the past month or so:
What is the cost of the U.S. invasion of Iraq? The cost, which will continue to mount for decades, is staggering, even insane. It wasn't $50 B, as W stated; it's already in the trillions. Here are the numbers from the Washington Post. The reason for the U.S. invasion and occupation? Unknown. The deleterious effect on the soldiers, their families and the U.S. economy? Long term and devastating. For the hawks, it was fun going in with all those fancy weapons blazing, but they are not offering any ideas as far as cleaning up this catastrophic mess. And those hawks have absolutely nothing to offer to the massive number of Iraqi refugees, who have spilled all over the Middle East, placing an enormous burden on Syria and Jordan. And combat is not "over," per the recent lies of the Obama Administration. And the corrupt corporate media is, for the most part, not calling out the Obama Administration for this recent fabrication any more than they confronted the U.S. for the fictitious "reasons" for invading in the first place. The media excels at serving as official stenographer for U.S. politicians whenever the topic is war (and see this piece on a documentary by Phil Donahue, and this article regarding Amy Goodman's views about the additional failures of the media). The corporate media bears thus much of the blame for the bleak economic future of the U.S.
This presentation by Andrew Napolitano sums it up for me. Shame on the Obama Administration, for carrying on (and furthering) the policies of the Bush Administration. At the minimum, our government should level with us instead of giving us a constant stream of lies and squandering massive amounts of tax dollars that we could be using for energy independence. If the occupation of Afghanistan is such a great idea, let those who support the aggression pay for it. Let them go door to door and beg for the money. Even if every American citizen paid an equal share of this year's $30 Billion funding for the "war" in Afghanistan, every one of America's 300,000,000 citizens would pay $100. Let them go door to door and try to convince Americans to each fork over $100 for this years' Afghanistan war effort. Maybe then the citizens would demand to see progress and to be informed of the alleged objectives of this "war." Actually, if the citizens were told the truth, they'd be told that this war only benefits America's military-industrial complex, and that it's driven by the cognitive fallacy of sunk costs.