Ready for War

Over the next five days, the country of Israel will be holding the biggest war drill in the country's 60 year history. The need for such a drill is due to the rising tension between Israel and their adversary to the east, Iran. Most experts believe that Iran is currently trying to develop nuclear weapon capability, and Israel must be on their heels. The drill will include: "simulated rockets, air raids and other attacks on infrastructure and essential facilities, and use of weapons on civilians" (CNN). I believe that Iran will have nuclear weapon capabilities in the next two years, and if the US and Israel don't somehow make peace with Iran soon, or destroy their nuclear plants, anything is possible.

Suicidal Military

An U.S army base located in Kentucky is shutting its doors for the next three days in order to hold an anti-suicide event. Over the next three days, the base will hold an "suicide stand-down training event," in which the intent is to show each on of the soldiers that their life matters. And this is not the first on, they had something just like this earlier this year. The events are due to a extreme rise in suicides on the base, and in the military as whole. There have been 64 suicides in the army this year, and 11 of those occurred at the base in Kentucky. According to CNN, "more soldiers killed themselves in January of this year than died in battle." That is crazy to me. What are the commanders and generals and whoever else leads the military doing to cause this uprise of suicides. You cannot blame 64 suicides in 5 months solely on the soldiers themselves, the leaders must be pushing them to do this. We need military commanders who are compassionate to their own soldiers, even during a war. This is very upsetting to me, and Obama should definitely make some changes aat the top of the military.

Playing with Patriotism

The use of the flag here shows how it can be used as a sales tool. It is likely that a child is not more likely to buy a toy car if there is an American flag on it, however, it could impact the parents decision to buy the toy. If there is one truck with a flag, and the exact same one without, and the child does not care which one he or she gets, I would say that most of the parents would choose the one with the flag. Even though its does not prove anything, in terms of patriotism, the feel more patriotic inside, and they believe that their kids are more patriotic.