3 is ridiculous. Crime didn't go up! Oh, yeah, except for murder.
Right - why does he phrase the headline that way? The actual chart is interesting, but it should be phrased as "why are violent crime and murder diverging during Covid?"
As one of his commenters pointed out, 5 seems to be trying very hard to hide how much Obama used drone strikes, and that this went down precipitously under Trump.
Although Wikipedia says that Trump increased drone strikes by 400%?
8: Everything always gets more complicated when you try to do your own research.
During his presidency, by one count from the Council on Foreign Relations, Obama authorized 540 drone strikes that killed hundreds of civilians across Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, among other countries.
That's way way less than Drum's chart indicates.
It looks like the CJR number is for drone strikes in just those 3 countries (Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen), so nothing from Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria. The Airwars numbers (https://airwars.org/research/how-do-the-forever-wars-look-under-president-biden/) include all countries, but also all airstrikes, manned and unmanned.
Seems like Biden is back in the drone strike business.
I think we may come to regret normalizing the use of drones strikes as a means of statecraft now that killer drone technology has reached the point of widespread availability.
10: which makes sense, right? Why distinguish between otherwise identical airstrikes delivered by manned and unmanned aircraft?
"I think we may come to regret normalizing the use of drones strikes as a means of statecraft now that killer drone technology has reached the point of widespread availability."
I don't think you're going to see Shahids flying the Atlantic any time soon, sorry
Re: the murder rate, an article I've linked to periodically points out that the murder rate is a lot more meaningful than the rate of other violent crimes, because it's hard to ignore a dead body, but there's all kinds of variation in other crimes. I'm not going to dig up the link now but it's related to "America Is a Violent Country."
...because it's hard to ignore a dead body
People apparently suck at hiding them too.