SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Washington Post reports
A simple data point offered by a college commencement speaker jumped out at [non-employee Washington Post contributor Philip Bump] before being borne away on the tide of immediacy.
[...]The speaker was ABC journalist Martha Raddatz, and the point is [...]: The graduates have spent half their lives with America at war.
It's a startling idea, but an incorrect one. The percentage is almost certainly much higher than that.
Using somewhat subjective definitions of "at war"--Korea counts but Kosovo doesn't in our analysis, for example--we endeavored to figure out how much of each person's life has been spent with America at war. We used whole years for both the age and the war, so the brief Gulf War is given a full year, and World War II includes 1941. These are estimates.
The page contains a graphic that allows you to see what portion of your lifetime the USA has been formally engaged in hostilities according to your birth year.
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 22 2015, @09:24PM
If you count the Cold War, then my whole life, really. Even after the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union, there was the Balkan War where we bombed a bunch of Serbs. Then there were missile attacks on Sudan and military actions in Somalia. Of course Afghanistan and Iraq round out the set.
It gets harder if you don't count the Cold War, because then you get into all the proxy wars that fell under that general umbrella and whether or not you would call those 'being at war.'
There are also the Drug War and the War on Poverty and the War on Terror. A lot of money is spent on, and people die in, those too. War is a popular concept in America at least.
It would be a welcome change to have a real Pax Terra for a couple generations.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 22 2015, @11:31PM
I'd be pleased with 20 years for a starter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday June 23 2015, @02:05AM
"This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years." - Ferdinand Foch
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday June 23 2015, @02:20AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Monday June 22 2015, @11:53PM
Well.... if you count the War on the People that corporations have been waging.... then I would say that my entire family has been at war their entire lives. Yep, back to before the Great Depression even.
As for the whole point of the affair, yes, I have gone my entire life basically feeling that I'm living in the capitol of Rome, and at some point right near the end before Rome gets sacked. Although, this time around I think the upper echelons figured out to sack the new Rome all by themselves and be well away before the "bill" comes due.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 23 2015, @01:53PM
What makes me laugh and laugh is that so many of them have gotten "well away" to private islands that are particularly vulnerable to things like sea-level rise due to climate change and the collapse of the Antarctican ice sheets. The coming fleets of "Boat People," or perhaps more appropriately, "Yacht People" begging for safe harbor in sodden mink stoles and tattered ball gowns will provide endless fodder for the comedians of the latter half of the 21st century.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday June 23 2015, @04:42PM
Man, could that put a new twist on Gilligan's Island.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Reziac on Tuesday June 23 2015, @12:13AM
Yeah, I think if you count the War on Terror (IMO a stretch), you have to count the Cold War. Or don't count both.
I remember the air raid sirens still being tested every Sunday at noon. Wonder how many of these younger non-mil folks have even that much experience of the real thing.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Informative) by istartedi on Tuesday June 23 2015, @06:07AM
I grew up in the DC area. We had the CD siren tests every month, tension with the USSR, and let's not forget our meddling in Central America which was a proxy war with the USSR. There was this guy in our school who said, "I'm going to go to El Salvador and get myself killed". He was otherwise a very fun person; so this was an oddly dark thing to say. Also, we were backing the Mujahedin in Afghanistan which would later haunt us.
Anyway, even "peace" had a lot of fighting. Oh, a bunch of Marines got killed in 1983 in Beirut [wikipedia.org]. Let's see... there was Grenada, and I'd be surprised if we didn't do something in Haiti during the "peace" period. We always do something in Haiti eventually. I'm probably forgetting a lot of stuff. Oh, oh.... Somalia.
Yep. Peace. Not a lot of it, really.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1) by bucket58 on Tuesday June 23 2015, @03:54PM
Where I live, they still test them every month on the first Monday at noon. They are mostly there for tornado alerts, but they have an alternate sound pattern for Civil Defense mode.
(Score: 1) by J053 on Tuesday June 23 2015, @11:02PM
(Score: 4, Touché) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday June 23 2015, @01:22AM
War is a popular concept in America at least.
That is because war is a profitable concept in America at least.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2015, @02:53AM
There are also the Drug War and the War on Poverty and the War on Terror.
I always say: The US is great at starting wars... it's incredibly bad at winning them.
I think the last one we outright won because of something we did would be WWII I think...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Tuesday June 23 2015, @04:54AM
The US has been involved in "military actions" (whether or not you count them as "war") almost constantly since the late 1800's. As far as I'm concerned we've always been at war, and always will be until the economy can't support it any more.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek