Creating future conflicts

[MadHound]

One of the least talked about aspects of America's ongoing wars is the simple fact that we continue to create those conflicts all by ourselves.

The US is the world's top arms exporter, has been for a long while. Year in, year out, we ship billions of dollars of arms and armament overseas to some pretty shady places, all in the name of profit. At one time, post WWI, this was thought to be a rather unethical practice. Those who engaged in it were known as merchants of death, and there were some pretty damning things written about their practices. There were even Congressional hearings that damned the arms industry in the US.

No more, today the merchants of death are enjoying a boom time, selling arms around the world to anybody, I mean anybody, who can come up with the cash. Such sales have a twofold profit motive. First, there is the immediate profit that the corporation realizes in selling its product. But they are also insuring future profit, as the US then feels compelled to upgrade its own weapons systems in order to continue to be the biggest military power in the world. It is a win-win for the merchants of death.

The downside to this practice is born by innocents around the world. Their government will repress them with the latest weapons systems bought in the US. Or the innocents of another country will suffer as their newly armed neighbor decides to invade them. Or even the US, deeming them to be a threat for some reason, or no reason, will invade, wreaking death and destruction. It is a system where the merchants of death reap immense profit, and death reaps its bloody toll.

One can sometimes tell where the US will get militarily involved next. During the eighties, the US was happy to sell arms to Iraq, and then turned around and hammered Iraq for the next two decades(and counting). In the period 2004-2008, thirty seven percent of our arms exports went to the Middle East, and here we are now, going into Libya, and running missions into Yemen. What's next, war with Saudi Arabia?

People wonder why the US has to play world policemen, well, the reason is because we continue to supply the world with arms. It is the lust for profit by the few that continues to kill and endanger the many, and it will wreck our country. We can no longer afford to be the world police, and the only way we're going to stop being the world police is to stop providing the world with weapons.

Otherwise, sooner or later, we will die by our own sword.

[RKP5637]

1. Capitalism at its finest, profit at any cost. It's a very very dangerous game. And there

are a slew of profit takers reaping the secondary benefits of death and destruction.

[applegrove]

2. There is also an arms race going on between the police and gun owners

in the USA. Look at the armoured personnel carriers police forces need these days to fight off assault weapons. It is just sick.

[sad sally]

3. It's almost as if there has to be a sinister evil for America to hate.

The Nazis, Imperial Japan - good reasons to hate them. Communists? They were everywhere - we hated them all. Then came 9/11 - Taliban in Afghanistan, ayatollahs in Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Indonesian separatists, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt - all al-Qaeda or at least radical Islamic Muslims?

Now that bin Laden is resting at the bottom of the sea, who or what will become the next world enemy we'll learn to hate?