On Arms Merchants and My Love of America

The Merchants of Death are still in business, and doing very well, thank you. The King of these Merchants is The United States; this is unfortunate for me because I grew up Pledging Allegiance, and I still hold sacred many of the precepts of our Founding Fathers (though not slavery!).


Many will say that to criticize America is to be flirting with treason. Bush make this an easy assumption for those non-thinking beings when he said, "You're either with us or against us." Who is "us"? Who said everything must be black or white. I'm "Carlo-coloured", not Caucasian or White or "Italian". I dislike labels. I dislike absolutes. Nobody is perfect.


So: why is it that so many of our (the US) Enemies have so many Weapons of Mass Destruction? Sadly, it is because we gave those weapons to our Enemies to be used...and now they are used against us.


Remember Somalia? Mogadishu? Did you see the movie "Black Hawk Down"? The US gave Howitzers, Air Defense Guns, Light Artillery, mortars, anti-tank rocket launchers, and thousands of hand guns, rifles, and ammunintion to Siad Barre in the early '80s. Guess what those weapons are doing now.


Remember the Evil Iran? We gave "Weapons of Mass Destruction" to our "Friend" Saddam Hussein - yup, including about five strains of that scary spore - Anthrax! What about the other Germ Warfare agents, like botulism? We, or rather many American Companies with the blessing of the U.S. Department of Commerce, shipped these biological agents directly to Good Ol' Saddam as recently as 1989, two years before Desert Shield.


This is just the most current outrage. The US also funded and armed the Taliban in "defense" of the Soviet Union, but it seems that the Afghan issue is largely relegated to Page 10 of your local paper, if it is covered at all.


South and Central America? An atrocity beyond compare can be found in "Operation Just Cause" - in Panama, circa 1989. Our esteemed Mr. Noriega, who is serving 40 years for drug traffic, was brought to justice, but at a cost.


In August 1987, Physicians for Human Rights conducted a fact-finding mission to Panama to investigate allegations of violations of human rights and medical neutrality that occurred following civilian demonstrations in June 1987. This report details evidence of military police attacks on unarmed civilians, indiscriminate use of birdshot and tear gas, severe beatings, and government and military interference in the delivery of medical care to Panamanian civilians.


If you don't know about the "School Of Americas" (SOA), then you probably don't know that the U.S. Army has been responsible for most of the worldwide training of para-military forces - the source of most terrorism.


Contact the US Army Center for Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas for more information! Yes, that Department actually exists.


Now, what do I love about America, the Beautiful? We have Free Speech, we have the right to dissent, we have open elections, and we have a reasonable system of checks and balances. We (usually) treat someone as innocent until proven guilty. We used to have a Laisez Faire attitude and didn't *try* to be a Super Power. We were a melting pot of diversity and fought slavery (!?). Well, as I type this, I have counter arguments for some of these things, but in general, and in theory, the tenets of America are sound.


America MUST stop being a Merchant of Death! We must stop feeding the future enemies, we must stop profit founded on Death and Destruction. We must stop the embargoes that only hurt the innocent (Has Cuba changed over all these years? How many children have died in Iraq because of the embargo?) We must start loving and caring.