{"id":115140,"date":"2018-07-23T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2018-07-23T11:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=115140"},"modified":"2018-07-22T10:12:20","modified_gmt":"2018-07-22T09:12:20","slug":"usas-military-drops-a-bomb-every-12-minutes-and-no-one-is-talking-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/07\/usas-military-drops-a-bomb-every-12-minutes-and-no-one-is-talking-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"USA\u2019s Military Drops a Bomb Every 12 Minutes and No One Is Talking about It"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

20 Jul 2018 – <\/em>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, someone\u2019s home, family, life and body are being blown into a thousand pieces in our names.<\/p>\n

Once every 12 minutes.<\/p>\n

The United States military drops an explosive with a strength you can hardly comprehend once every 12 minutes. And that\u2019s odd, because we\u2019re technically at war with\u2014let me think\u2014zero countries. So that should mean zero bombs are being dropped, right?<\/p>\n

Hell no! You\u2019ve made the common mistake of confusing our world with some sort of rational, cogent world in which our military-industrial complex is under control, the music industry is based on merit and talent, Legos have gently rounded edges (so when you step on them barefoot, it doesn\u2019t feel like an armor-piercing bullet just shot straight up your sphincter), and humans are dealing with climate change like adults rather than burying our heads in the sand while trying to convince ourselves that the sand around our heads isn\u2019t getting really,\u00a0really hot<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re thinking of a rational world. We do not live there.<\/p>\n

Instead, we live in a world where the Pentagon is completely and utterly out of control. A few weeks ago, I\u00a0wrote about the $21 trillion<\/a>\u00a0(that\u2019s not a typo) that has gone unaccounted for at the Pentagon. But I didn\u2019t get into the number of bombs that ridiculous amount of money buys us. President George W. Bush\u2019s military\u00a0dropped 70,000 bombs<\/a>\u00a0on five countries. But of that outrageous number, only 57 of those bombs really upset the international community.<\/p>\n

Because there were 57 strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen\u2014countries the U.S. was neither at war with nor had ongoing conflicts with. And the world was kind of horrified. There was a lot of talk that went something like, \u201cWait a second. We\u2019re bombing in countries outside of war zones? Is it possible that\u2019s a slippery slope ending in us just bombing all the goddamn time? (Awkward pause.) \u2026 Nah. Whichever president follows Bush will be a normal adult person (with a functional brain stem of some sort) and will therefore stop this madness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We were so cute and naive back then, like a kitten when it\u2019s first waking up in the morning.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported<\/a>\u00a0that under President Barack Obama there were \u201c563 strikes, largely by drones, that targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the fact that bombing outside of a war zone is a horrific violation of international law and global norms. It\u2019s also the morally reprehensible targeting of people for\u00a0pre-crime<\/a>, which is what we\u2019re doing and what the Tom Cruise movie \u201cMinority Report\u201d warned us about. (Humans are very bad at taking the advice of sci-fi dystopias. If we\u2019d listened to \u201c1984,\u201d we wouldn\u2019t have allowed the existence of the National Security Agency. If we listened to \u201cThe Terminator,\u201d we wouldn\u2019t have allowed the existence of drone warfare. And if we\u2019d listened to \u201cThe Matrix,\u201d we wouldn\u2019t 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\u00a0swamp of plastic waste.<\/a>\u00a0\u2026 But you know, who\u2019s counting?)<\/p>\n

There was basically a media blackout while Obama was president. You could count on one hand the number of mainstream media reports on the Pentagon\u2019s daily bombing campaigns under Obama. And even when the media\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0mention it, the underlying sentiment was, \u201cYeah, but look at how suave Obama is while he\u2019s OK\u2019ing endless destruction. He\u2019s like the Steve McQueen of aerial death.\u201d<\/p>\n

And let\u2019s take a moment to wipe away the idea that our \u201cadvanced weaponry\u201d hits only the bad guys. As\u00a0David DeGraw put it<\/a>, \u201cAccording to the C.I.A.\u2019s own documents, the people on the \u2018kill list,\u2019 who were targeted for \u2018death-by-drone,\u2019 accounted for only 2% of the deaths caused by the drone strikes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two percent<\/em>. Really, Pentagon? You got a\u00a0two<\/em>\u00a0on the test? You get five points just for spelling your name right.<\/p>\n

But those 70,000 bombs dropped by Bush\u2014it was child\u2019s play. DeGraw again: \u201c[Obama] dropped 100,000 bombs in seven countries. He out-bombed Bush by 30,000 bombs and 2 countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

You have to admit that\u2019s impressively horrific. That puts Obama in a very elite group of Nobel Peace Prize winners who have killed\u00a0that many<\/em>\u00a0innocent civilians. The reunions are mainly just him and Henry Kissinger wearing little hand-drawn name tags and munching on deviled eggs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

However, we now know that Donald Trump\u2019s administration puts all previous presidents to shame. The Pentagon\u2019s numbers show that during George W. Bush\u2019s eight years he averaged 24 bombs dropped per day, which is 8,750 per year. Over the course of Obama\u2019s time in office, his military dropped 34 bombs per day, 12,500 per year. And in Trump\u2019s\u00a0first year<\/em>\u00a0in office, he averaged 121 bombs dropped per day, for an annual total of 44,096.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s military dropped 44,000 bombs in his first year in office.<\/p>\n

He has basically taken the gloves off the Pentagon, taken the leash off an already rabid dog. So the end result is a military that\u2019s behaving like\u00a0Lil Wayne<\/a>crossed with\u00a0Conor McGregor<\/a>. You look away for one minute, look back, and are like, \u201cWhat the fuck did you just do? I was gone for like, a second!\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Trump, five bombs are dropped per hour\u2014every hour of every day. That averages out to a bomb every 12 minutes.<\/p>\n

And which is more outrageous\u2014the crazy amount of death and destruction we are creating around the world, or the fact that your mainstream corporate media basically\u00a0NEVER<\/em>\u00a0investigates it? They talk about Trump\u2019s flaws. They say he\u2019s a racist, bulbous-headed, self-centered idiot (which is totally accurate)\u2014but they don\u2019t criticize the perpetual Amityville massacre our military perpetrates by dropping a bomb every 12 minutes, most of them killing 98 percent non-targets.<\/p>\n

When you have a Department of War with a completely unaccountable budget\u2014as we saw with the $21 trillion\u2014and 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\u00a0we are running out of bombs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oh, dear God. If we run out of our bombs, then how will we stop all those innocent civilians from \u2026 farming? Think of all the goats that will be allowed to go about their days.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And, as with the $21 trillion, the theme seems to be \u201cunaccountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Journalist Witney Webb\u00a0wrote in February<\/a>, \u201cShockingly, more than 80 percent of those killed have never even been identified and the C.I.A.\u2019s own documents have shown that they are not even aware of who they are killing\u2014avoiding the issue of reporting civilian deaths simply by naming all those in the strike zone as enemy combatants.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right. We kill only enemy combatants. How do we know they\u2019re 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. \u2026 Want me to keep going, or do you get the point? I have all day.<\/p>\n

This is not about Trump, even though he\u2019s a maniac. It\u2019s not about Obama, even though he\u2019s a war criminal. It\u2019s not about Bush, even though he has the intelligence of boiled cabbage. (I haven\u2019t told a Bush joke in about eight years. Felt kind of good. Maybe I\u2019ll get back into that.)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Recently, the hashtag #21Trillion for the unaccounted Pentagon money has gained some traction. Let\u2019s get another one started: #121BombsADay.<\/p>\n

One every 12 minutes.<\/p>\n

Do you know where they\u2019re hitting? Who they\u2019re murdering? Why? One hundred and twenty-one bombs a day rip apart the lives of families a world away\u2014in your name and my name and the name of the kid doling out the wrong size popcorn at the movie theater.<\/p>\n

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, there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Lee Camp<\/em>\u00a0is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp is the host of the weekly comedy news TV show \u201cRedacted Tonight With Lee Camp<\/a>\u201d on <\/em>RT America<\/em>. He is a former comedy writer for the <\/em>Onion<\/em> and the <\/em>Huffington Post <\/em>and has been a touring stand-up comic for 20 years.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 dwfed.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

20 Jul 2018 – And that\u2019s odd, because we\u2019re technically at war with\u2014let me think\u2014zero countries. So that should mean zero bombs are being dropped, right? Hell no! You\u2019ve made the common mistake of confusing our world with some sort of rational, cogent world in which our military-industrial complex is under control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":115146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}