World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

In 1916, US President Woodrow Wilson campaigned on the pledge:  “He Kept Us Out of War.”  When World War I ended in 1918, more than 100,000 American soldiers died in the fighting in Europe.

On 24 October 1964, US President Lyndon Johnson stated at the University of Akron:

“We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

In 1973, when the US pulled out its troops from Vietnam, more than 58,000 US soldiers had died in Asia.

On 11 February 2015, US President Obama said:

“The resolution we’ve submitted today does not call for the deployment of U.S. ground combat forces to Iraq or Syria.  It is not the authorization of another ground war, like Afghanistan or Iraq….As I’ve said before, I’m convinced that the United States should not get dragged back into another prolonged ground war in the Middle East.  That’s not in our national security interest and it’s not necessary for us to defeat ISIL.  Local forces on the ground who know their countries best are best positioned to take the ground fight to ISIL — and that’s what they’re doing.”

Eventually, we will find out what “enduring offensive combat operations” means.

An Argentine prosecutor has asked a federal judge to investigate the role of the Argentine President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, for her possible role in the cover-up of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994.  The suspicions of some is that Kirchner cover-up the Iranian role in the blast in exchange for better deals on the price of oil.  At this time, there is really no public evidence supporting the charge.  But some believe that the previous prosecutor, Albert Nisman, was killed because he had uncovered such evidence.

Scientists have estimated that there were about 8 million metric tons of plastic in the world’s oceans in 2010, and are predicting that that number will rise to 9 million tons by the end of this year. The number is staggering and the effects on the health of the oceans and of all life in the oceans are devastating.