By Bob Kendall
Was Iraq oil acquisition worth the tragic loss of 4,242, U.S. service personnel whose flag-draped coffins coming back to the U.S.A. were barred by the Pentagon from being shown on TV?
Was it worth the wounding and suffering of over 55,000 U.S. service personnel?
While the war was still raging, Bush donned a flight uniform in San Diego and boarded a helicopter which swiftly transported him to a waiting naval ship. Once he landed on deck, with TV cameras grinding, Bush dramatically declared, “Mission Accomplished!”
Sadly, this was not true. U.S. service personnel remain in Iraq until 2012, and even after that an occupying force of 50,000 U.S. service personnel will stay. The U.S. now has its largest embassy in Iraq’s capital city of Baghdad.
Bush is still blithely chasing around like a conquering hero, darting off to Calgary, Canada, giving a lecture at $400 per person for the best seats. All this occurs while Bush protestors are still continuing in marches in cities across the U.S.A. carrying signs proclaiming that Bush is a war criminal.
The New York Times March 19 headline announced: 2007 U.S. BIRTHS BREAK BABY BOOM RECORD.
The headline was expanded in the article that followed by Erik Eckholm:
“More babies were born in the United States than in any other year in American history, according to preliminary data by the Center for Health Statistics.
“The 4,317,000 births in 2007 edged out the figure for 1957 at the height of the baby boom. Also, in 2007, for the second straight year, and in a trend officials find worrisome the rate of births by teenagers rose. The growth has mainly been fueled by increases among adult women. Racial and ethnic differences remain large: 28 percent of white babies were born to un-married mothers, in 2007, compared to 51 percent of Hispanic babies and 72 percent of black babies. The U.S.A. has the highest rates of teenage pregnancies, birth and abortion of any industrialized country.”
While the U.S. represents only 5 percent of the world’s population, it uses 50 percent of the world’s illicit drugs. This tragic fact fuels the drug wars raging in major U.S. cities.
The longest war in U.S. history in Iraq goes on and Obama is sending more troops into Afghanistan to step up that campaign.
As if the horrors on the foreign front weren’t enough, the fateful prediction by British historian Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay over 100 years ago came true:
“Your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth, with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravage the Roman Empire came from without and your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country, by your own institutions.”
According to the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Coalition, 3.5 million people in a given year will experience homelessness with 1.5 million of them children. The current national jobless figure stands at over 8 percent and is rising while there are 37 million Americans on food stamps.
In an economic meltdown Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, the nation’s biggest banks, have collapsed with a hundred more standing on the edge of the same fate.
It took a $700 billion loan bailout from China to prop up U.S. banks, and another $700 billion stimulus package to salvage what was left of teetering American International Group, which is linked to bank failures worldwide.
No doubt about it. The U.S.A. was number one in producing more children without a father, number one in illicit drug use, and number one in triggering the world economic meltdown.
Perhaps proclaiming that we are the greatest nation in the world in 2009 is inappropriate!
Also See:
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Video: How The US Is Shifting The Financial Crisis Onto The Rest Of The World
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Survivalism: How to Prepare for the Economic Collapse
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IMF Chief Warns Of Riots In Response To Economic Crisis
Video: The Great Depression of the 21st Century
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2009 Predictions – Prepare For The Worst
US 2010 apocalypse avoidable: Scholar
Video: Russian prof. predicts U.S. to disintegrate by 2010
September 11th, 2008–America’s Economic 9/11?
Fear of global depression rises as US reveals true extent of decline
The “Great Financial Crisis”: A whole new kind of struggle is emerging
Pepsi and IBM are Now More Creditworthy than the U.S. Government
Poll: 31% of Europeans blame Jews for global financial crisis
Project 2012: Predictions Coming True? Nuclear War Begins Soon? Updated
The question should be was it ever the greatest nation in the world? Perhaps it depends on how you define “greatest”. If you mean does it have the largest defense budget then the answer would be yes. If it means does it start and then continue to make war around the world more than any other country then the answer would be yes. If it means does it use the most fossil fuels of any nation on earth then the answer would be yes, or does it produce the most pollution of any country on earth then the answer would be yes. There are a lot of yeses piling up. But what if it means does it support peace throughout the world, then the answer would be no. How about does it give foreign aid without strings attached, then the answer would be no. What about does it foster international law and the bringing to justice of war criminals, then the answer would be not any more. So is it the greatest country in the world? You tell me.