That number appears to count only American dead. Those of us who hold every life sacred also mourn the hundreds of thousands of south Asian dead, without respect to political party of the perpetrator.
Yes, this is true, of the following two references I'm not sure which is more accurate, either way this happened:
"Insurgents shot down a U.S. military helicopter during fighting in eastern Afghanistan, killing 30 Americans, most of them belonging to the same elite unit as the Navy SEALs who killed former Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden, U.S. officials said Saturday. It was the deadliest single loss for American forces in the decade-old war against the Taliban."
"U.S. officials tell The Associated Press that they believe that none of the Navy SEALs who died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan had participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, although they were from the same unit that carried out the bin Laden mission."
"The sources thought this was the largest single loss of life ever for SEAL Team Six, known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group."
Nixon pushed for escalation constantly while simultaneously working hard to suppress domestic dissent from his pulpit in the House Unamerican Activities Committee. (He had previously been the puppetmaster behind Joe McCarthy's witch hunts, but neatly avoided being damaged by his fall.)
Nixon didn't exactly end it overnight. He had thousands of tons of bombs to drop on neighbouring countries like Cambodia, first, killing untold thousands, before things wound down.
No, but if you look at troop levels, he began the drawdown in his first year. But his strategy was to make the North Vietnamese so scared of him that US troops could leave. Hence the bombing.
Of course he could not publicly take credit for this, because that would have interfered with the image he was trying to project to North Vietnam.
Is Abe short for something else? I was being facetious about red v. blue silliness but I would love to hear how freeing the slaves was the conservative position, having a hard time seeing how that would work.
Well, it works like this. First republican Abe makes clear he wants to free the slaves, then wins the presidential nomination position in the republican party. Then he gets elected by the republican american people to be president as a republican. Then 7 republican states secede from the US and shortly thereafter they wage war. Then the republican Lincoln wins and a period of slave liberation and movement towards equal rights on a federal level begins.
Also, according to wikipedia: "The republican party [..] founded by anti-slavery activists in 1854".
Now I'm no republican, as a north european you'll find me to be more of the social/liberal kind (yeah.. those two can be together), but I think the republican party has a pretty swell history.
> Then the republican Lincoln wins and a period of slave liberation and movement towards equal rights on a federal level begins.
Right, but during the 20th century there was a pole shift in US political parties. To oversimplify a bit: FDR made the Dems the party of economic liberalism and Lyndon Johnson made them the party of civil rights (on which Johnson famously stated: "We've lost the South for a generation").
The democratic party used to be full of bigoted racists before and during the 60's, let's not forget that.
Both parties have nothing to do with the parties they used to be even 50 years ago.
The republican party became evangelical/right wing in the end of the 70's. But it is not sustainable because of demographics.
A funny fact is most Latinos and Blacks are culturaly more conservative than liberal ( christians / anti-gay ...) , but given the hate on the right they are not going to vote for republicans. And Obama is certainly not a communist. He is not even a progressive.
Agreed, and I'd add that the other biggest issue pushed Abe and Thaddeus McCotter was the issuance of Greenbacks (United States Notes). Today, this and similar reforms aren't a Red/Blue issues either, they're the establishment vs. the anti-establishment of both parties.
