by
Lee Camp
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’s home, family, life and body are being
blown into a thousand pieces in our names.
Once
every 12 minutes.
The
United States military drops an explosive with a strength you can
hardly comprehend once every 12 minutes. And that’s odd, because
we’re technically at war with—let me think—zero countries. So
that should mean zero bombs are being dropped, right?
Hell no!
You’ve 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’t 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’t
getting really, really hot.
You’re
thinking of a rational world. We do not live there.
Instead,
we live in a world where the Pentagon is completely and utterly out
of control. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the $21 trillion (that’s
not a typo) that has gone unaccounted for at the Pentagon. But I
didn’t get into the number of bombs that ridiculous amount of money
buys us. President George W. Bush’s military dropped 70,000 bombs
on five countries. But of that outrageous number, only 57 of those
bombs really upset the international community.
Because
there were 57 strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen—countries 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, “Wait a second. We’re bombing in countries
outside of war zones? Is it possible that’s a slippery slope ending
in us just bombing all the goddamn time? (Awkward pause.) … 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.”
We were
so cute and naive back then, like a kitten when it’s first waking
up in the morning.
The
Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that under President
Barack Obama there were “563 strikes, largely by drones, that
targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. …”
It’s
not just the fact that bombing outside of a war zone is a horrific
violation of international law and global norms. It’s also the
morally reprehensible targeting of people for pre-crime, which is
what we’re doing and what the Tom Cruise movie “Minority Report”
warned us about. (Humans are very bad at taking the advice of sci-fi
dystopias. If we’d listened to “1984,” we wouldn’t have
allowed the existence of the National Security Agency. If we listened
to “The Terminator,” we wouldn’t have allowed the existence of
drone warfare. And if we’d listened to “The Matrix,” we
wouldn’t 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, who’s 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
Pentagon’s daily bombing campaigns under Obama. And even when the
media did mention it, the underlying sentiment was, “Yeah, but
look at how suave Obama is while he’s OK’ing endless destruction.
He’s like the Steve McQueen of aerial death.”
And
let’s take a moment to wipe away the idea that our “advanced
weaponry” hits only the bad guys. As David DeGraw put it,
“According to the C.I.A.’s own documents, the people on the
‘kill list,’ who were targeted for ‘death-by-drone,’
accounted for only 2% of the deaths caused by the drone strikes.”
Two
percent. Really, Pentagon? You got a two on the test? You get five
points just for spelling your name right.
But
those 70,000 bombs dropped by Bush—it was child’s play. DeGraw
again: “[Obama] dropped 100,000 bombs in seven countries. He
out-bombed Bush by 30,000 bombs and 2 countries.”
You have
to admit that’s 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 Trump’s administration puts all previous
presidents to shame. The Pentagon’s numbers show that during George
W. Bush’s eight years he averaged 24 bombs dropped per day, which
is 8,750 per year. Over the course of Obama’s time in office, his
military dropped 34 bombs per day, 12,500 per year. And in Trump’s
first year in office, he averaged 121 bombs dropped per day, for an
annual total of 44,096.
Trump’s
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 that’s behaving
like Lil Wayne crossed with Conor McGregor. You look away for one
minute, look back, and are like, “What the fuck did you just do?
I was gone for like, a second!”
Under
Trump, five bombs are dropped per hour—every hour of every day.
That averages out to a bomb every 12 minutes.
And
which is more outrageous—the 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
Trump’s flaws. They say he’s a racist, bulbous-headed,
self-centered idiot (which is totally accurate)—but they don’t
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 budget—as
we saw with the $21 trillion—and 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 “unaccountable.”
Journalist
Witney Webb wrote in February, “Shockingly, more than 80 percent
of those killed have never even been identified and the C.I.A.’s
own documents have shown that they are not even aware of who they are
killing—avoiding the issue of reporting civilian deaths simply by
naming all those in the strike zone as enemy combatants.”
That’s
right. We kill only enemy combatants. How do we know they’re 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 he’s a maniac. It’s not about Obama,
even though he’s a war criminal. It’s not about Bush, even though
he has the intelligence of boiled cabbage. (I haven’t told a Bush
joke in about eight years. Felt kind of good. Maybe I’ll 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. Let’s get another one started: #121BombsADay.
One
every 12 minutes.
Do you
know where they’re hitting? Who they’re murdering? Why? One
hundred and twenty-one bombs a day rip apart the lives of families a
world away—in 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, there’s 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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