{"id":45470,"date":"2019-04-18T13:01:37","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T18:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45470"},"modified":"2019-04-18T13:01:39","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T18:01:39","slug":"american-wars-are-off-the-charts-under-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45470","title":{"rendered":"American Wars Are off the Charts Under Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/the-number-of-american-wars-is-off-the-charts-under-donald-trump\/257587\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/AP_17201633128884.jpg\" alt=\"President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence greet military personnel during a visit to the Pentagon, July 20, 2017. (AP\/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/the-number-of-american-wars-is-off-the-charts-under-donald-trump\/257587\/\">American Wars Are off the Charts Under Donald Trump\t<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>He\u2019s failed to deliver his promised withdrawals from Afghanistan and Syria, vetoed an order to get out of Yemen, and expanded the U.S. bombing of Somalia, all while eyeing Iran.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>H<\/strong>ere\u2019s a statement it might be hard to disagree with: American war is off the charts. Still, I\u2019d like to explain \u2014 but I\u2019m nervous about doing so. I know perfectly well that the next word I plan to write will send most of you tumbling elsewhere in a universe in which \u201cnews\u201d is the latest grotesque mass shooting; the craziest tweet from you-know-who;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/04\/03\/us\/felicity-huffman-lori-loughlin-college-admissions-scandal.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">celebrities<\/a>&nbsp;marching into court over college-admissions scandals; or even a boy, missing for years, who suddenly turns up only to morph into a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2019\/04\/04\/us\/brian-rini-what-we-know\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">23-year-old impostor<\/a>&nbsp;with a criminal record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How can America\u2019s wars in distant lands compete with that? Which is why I just can\u2019t bring myself to write the next word. So promise me that, after you read it, you\u2019ll hang in there for just a minute and give me a chance to explain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, here goes: Somalia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A country in the horn of Africa, it once glued American eyeballs, but that was so last century, right? I mean, there was that&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/080214473X\/ref=nosim\/?tag=tomdispatch-20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">bestselling book<\/a>&nbsp;<em>and<\/em>&nbsp;that hit&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0265086\/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Hollywood movie<\/a>&nbsp;directed by Ridley Scott (<em>Blade Runner<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>Alien<\/em>!) about the disaster early in Bill Clinton\u2019s presidency that came to be known as Black Hawk Down (aka the battle of Mogadishu).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the age of Donald Trump, wasn\u2019t that a million presidencies ago? Honestly, can you even tell me anymore what in the world it was all about? I couldn\u2019t have, not without\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/history\/legacy-black-hawk-down-180971000\/\" target=\"_blank\">looking it up<\/a>\u00a0again. A warlord, starvation, U.S. intervention, 18 dead American soldiers (and hundreds of dead Somalis, but that hardly mattered) in a country that was shattering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>American Wars Are off the Charts Under Donald Trump He\u2019s failed to deliver his promised withdrawals from Afghanistan and Syria, vetoed an order to get out of Yemen, and expanded the U.S. bombing of Somalia, all while eyeing Iran. Here\u2019s a statement it might be hard to disagree with: American war is off the charts. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7844,23910,10231,776,12674],"class_list":["post-45470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-donald-trump","tag-mint-press-news","tag-somalia","tag-syria","tag-tom-engelhardt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45471,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45470\/revisions\/45471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}