@DAEMON: Unemployment stats are not a measure of the number of people in the country without jobs; it's the count of the number of people who want jobs but don't have them.

People who quit looking for work aren't counted as 'employed', they're removed altogether from the job market, and bundled with the kids, elderly, and stay-at-home parents who are also not interested in finding jobs.

This is perfectly normal, and not something they've done to fudge these particular stats.

It makes a kind of sense to do it this way, but it means that there's a 'hidden' unemployment rate during recessions, consisting of people who have given up. I'm not sure how much of that is the government's (or statisticians') fault, and how much of it is the media, which grabs onto "4% unemployment" and put it in all the headlines, totally ignoring the other stats (which do exist!) about how much the job market shrank and how. "Unemployment at 4%!" makes a better headline than "Unemployment at 4%, but job market shrinks 3%, 50% of which was due to job-hunters giving up!"

There's a few differences between the two situations. One was a UN action, one was a unilateral US action. In one case, a major genocide was underway and could have been prevented; in the other, a smaller genocide had occurred in the past (with the tacit approval of the US).

Also, it wasn't 'Merica's fault that Africans were killing Africans, but it makes sense for Americans to have an internal discussion about the appropriate response.

No situation in a foreign country should be 'actionable' to the United States acting alone, unless US national security is actually, seriously threatened--for honest.

Defensive much?