The Right Wing is stating the Democrats are cowards and substitute poverty as a means to avoid war. Do we need this type of inflammatory speech when 300 girls are missing? No one needs war mongering and political rhetoric when lives hang in the balance.
Jake Harriman is the CEO of Nuru International and a former Platoon
Commander in both the Infantry and a special operations unit of the U.S.
Marines.
...Even though (click here) the settings are very different, my new work in Kenya is similarly critical to U.S. national security. In fact, thoughts of U.S. national security occupy my mind as much now (or perhaps even more) as during my seven years as an infantry and special operations platoon commander in the Marines. I served four operational tours in Iraq, the Horn of Africa, and areas of southwest Asia alongside some of the bravest individuals I have ever encountered in my life. We fought side by side on the frontlines of the “War on Terror” – a war that has cost so many lives, including many of my closest brothers. But as we fought together in that war, I came face to face with an unnecessary evil that takes more lives each day than are lost in Fallujah, Gaza, Kandahar, Mogadishu, and Jaffna combined, an evil that is directly connected to the proliferation of the terrorism and insurgency that we were fighting: the evil of extreme poverty.
Extreme poverty is the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time and a fundamental contributing factor to 21st century terrorism and insurgency. I’ve discovered that it is controversial to make this claim, so don’t take my word for it. Brilliant people of our time have also made this connection, and are attempting to shake our generation from its slumber and catalyze global action in the fight against extreme poverty. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “You can never win a war against terror as long as there are conditions in the world that make people desperate — poverty, disease, ignorance.” Former U.S. Secretary of State General Colin Powell stated, “We can’t just stop with a single terrorist or a single terrorist organization; we have to go and root out the whole system. We have to go after poverty.”...
I agree with Former Secretary Powell. Rooting out the whole system is the real challenge we all face. If 300 girls are in danger than we all are. It is generational poverty.
Jake Harriman is the CEO of Nuru International and a former Platoon
Commander in both the Infantry and a special operations unit of the U.S.
Marines. ...Even though (click here) the settings are very different, my new work in Kenya is similarly critical to U.S. national security. In fact, thoughts of U.S. national security occupy my mind as much now (or perhaps even more) as during my seven years as an infantry and special operations platoon commander in the Marines. I served four operational tours in Iraq, the Horn of Africa, and areas of southwest Asia alongside some of the bravest individuals I have ever encountered in my life. We fought side by side on the frontlines of the “War on Terror” – a war that has cost so many lives, including many of my closest brothers. But as we fought together in that war, I came face to face with an unnecessary evil that takes more lives each day than are lost in Fallujah, Gaza, Kandahar, Mogadishu, and Jaffna combined, an evil that is directly connected to the proliferation of the terrorism and insurgency that we were fighting: the evil of extreme poverty.
Extreme poverty is the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time and a fundamental contributing factor to 21st century terrorism and insurgency. I’ve discovered that it is controversial to make this claim, so don’t take my word for it. Brilliant people of our time have also made this connection, and are attempting to shake our generation from its slumber and catalyze global action in the fight against extreme poverty. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “You can never win a war against terror as long as there are conditions in the world that make people desperate — poverty, disease, ignorance.” Former U.S. Secretary of State General Colin Powell stated, “We can’t just stop with a single terrorist or a single terrorist organization; we have to go and root out the whole system. We have to go after poverty.”...
I agree with Former Secretary Powell. Rooting out the whole system is the real challenge we all face. If 300 girls are in danger than we all are. It is generational poverty.
