Uncle Sam's Arms Shack--Our Policies Are Insane!

If you be my friend, I will give you a gun. Then we can prove how friendly we both are by using our guns on somebody with whom we're not so friendly.

Call it ridiculous, sure, but you also need to call it U.S. policy. A report today written up on OneWorld.Net as listed by Yahoo News writes:

The United States ranks top among the world's arms exporters and in developing countries, a majority of its arms are sold to regimes ''defined as undemocratic by our own State Department,'' says the study released Wednesday.
[...]
''In all too many cases, U.S. arms and military technology can end up in the hands of U.S. adversaries, as happened in the 1980s in Iraq and Panama, as well as with the right-wing fundamentalist 'freedom fighters' in Afghanistan, many of whom are now supporters of al-Qaeda,'' it adds.

''At a minimum, the time has come to impose greater scrutiny on U.S. arms transfers and military aid programs,'' the report concludes. ''The facile assumption that they are simply another tool in the foreign policy toolbox, to be used to win friends and intimidate adversaries as needed, must be challenged in this new era in U.S. security policy.''

The United States transfers more weapons and military services than any other country in the world, according to the report. Between 1992 and 2003, the last year for which complete data are available, it sold $177.5 billion in arms to foreign nations.

Those dates don't go as far back as 1983, when the U.S. sent a very special envoy with some very particular presents to a foreign leader who seemed as sweet as (any ruthless to his people but nice to us dictator) could be.

The good news is that with the U.S. providing all these weapons to the world, it's easier to go get these countries when we're in the mood, claiming we have to disarm them.