Building a more secure world, with guns

The industrial war machine is one of those things that the people in power like to say is too complicated for us, mere citizens of the world, to understand. I've heard that wars boost the economy, or at least that's what we're told in the U.S., although I imagine it only works if your country is involved in a war elsewhere. War on a nation's own soil doesn't seem to boost anything except the death toll. The U.S. had made it a special kind of a habit to be continuously involved in a war somewhere, anywhere but here.

Our country has been at war with one country or another since its inception with only short 5,10 or 15 year breaks, not including all the covert activities. In fact, the longest period of "peace" was after the Civil War, probably only because we were too broke and had too few young men to fight anyone. Not since the Civil War has there been war waged against the U.S., which probably makes us one of safest countries on the planet. We've never been invaded and yet our military spending far exceeds that of any other country. The entire world spent $1.2 trillion last year and the U.S. accounted for almost half of that. Apparently, though, we're so rich that it doesn't even constitute 4% of our GDP, putting us pretty low on the list of spending as a percentage of GDP. North Korea tops that list at a whopping 22%, yikes!

In the last two years, the U.S. has tripled the number of tanks, helicopters, missiles, jets and warships sold to the international community. At about $32 billion (so far this year), it's still just a drop in the bucket compared to the $583 billion we're spending, but likely represents quite a hike for the buyers. The biggest sales were to Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Iraq and Pakistan. The Pentagon says the deals are to solidify relationships and make the world safer. We can only assume the arms to Afghanistan are to help fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda but 2008 has been the deadliest year yet for U.S. troops there. We've already lost more soldiers this year than all of last year so the proliferation of weapons doesn't appear to making anyone safer. (Poor Australia has probably had to stock up because they're sitting next to Indonesia, which is now a terrorist hot spot.)


Just as I don't believe violence as a strategy leads to peace, it's also hard to believe that having more weapons in the world makes it a safer place. Even a child could figure that one out. It does, however, seem to ensure that there is always a war going on. It would be difficult to wage war on your neighbors without weaponry. Selling our technology to other countries also ensures the need to keep innovating better weapons, to stay ahead of the curve, thus keeping the war machine alive. We have managed to lose far less soldiers in each war but the death toll remains frighteningly high for those whose country we occupy. The U.S. does not keep that count and the whole world is trying to figure out how many Iraqis have died since the invasion. The figures inhabit a terrifying range of 90,000 to 1.5 million civilians and combatants. The Bush administration maintains the lowest number, of course. "Every other source, from the WHO to the surveys of Iraqi households, puts the average well above the Saddam-era figure" of 29,000 per year making our occupation more dangerous than Saddam's.

This latest round of wars, however, are different for the U.S. than previous ones. For one thing, we don't really know who the enemy is which makes it difficult to determine whether we're succeeding to defeat that enemy. Especially as this new kind of war seems to generate a steady supply of new enemies as it progresses; more effective war insurance! Another difference is the number of people who die from non-combat related causes. I just read that 16 soldiers were electrocuted to death because of faulty wiring in their living quarters. One while taking a shower, another while washing the humvee! The contractor responsible, KBR of Houston, who I have no doubt is boosting our economy, was paid "despite the problems, and was hired as recently as 2007 to repair its own faulty electrical work." Finally, because of the duration of the war and the relatively low death toll, most of young men and women are coming home and are physically handicapped and/or mentally damaged. What will be the long-term effect on that generation?

How do we know that the weapons we're selling to those countries will not fall into enemy hands and be used against us? How many times have we supported governments that have later become our enemies? We all know the story of how Osama Bin Laden came to power in the aftermath of being trained by the U.S. as a rebel to fight the Soviet invasion. Haven't we learned that lesson yet? It seems like the best way to defeat an enemy would be to disarm them by stopping the flow of weapons in their direction. Is that not something the international community is capable of?

No, apparently not. Russia and other European countries are also vying for big ticket sales to India and Brazil. In addition to the numbers above for "sophisticated" weapons, the U.S. also sells less sophisticated weapons and those numbers are already $96 billion this year, up from $58 billion in 2005. Then, added to that is the $4.5 billion in aid given to countries to buy weapons (presumably from us) and doesn't include the weapons we give away. According to this article, "The United States has long been the top arms supplier to the world. In the past several years, however, the list of nations that rely on the United States as a primary source of major weapons systems has greatly expanded." Expanded? Clearly, the world is buying because we're selling, not the other way around.

Again, I ask: Isn't it possible that the world would be safer if the U.S. didn't sell weapons to everyone else? It seems that we are in a unique position to stem the flow but the response from the Pentagon is if they don't buy from us, they'll buy from someone else. But countries are buying from us because we make the best and because we're selling. And what exactly would be the harm in the arms being bought from someone else? I would love to know. I think Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it best when he told a congressional committee Wednesday that the U.S. is "running out of time" to win the war in Afghanistan. "We can't kill our way to victory," he said, "and no armed force anywhere, no matter how good, can deliver these keys alone. It requires teamwork and cooperation."

Building a better killing machine

Waiting for my haircut last week, I was reading an article in Rolling Stone called "Soldiers Lost." I think the point was just to humanize the American soldiers by featuring the stories of nine who have died in Iraq. Eight of the nine died by IED, an improvised explosive device, which is the #1 killer there. The massive gas-guzzling Humvees have provided inadequate protection against these devices that kill everyone from civilians to medics.

The other person featured in Rolling Stone was Jeffrey Lucey, a soldier from Massachusetts. He returned home safe but killed himself shortly after by hanging himself with the garden hose. His family had tried to remove everything from the house that he might use to harm himself but hadn't thought of the garden hose. He had spent weeks drinking and taking drugs and repeatedly yelled at his sister "don't you know your brother is a murderer?!" He was haunted by the memory of "the bumps in the road," bodies of children they often had to drive over. In this new war, even children are terrorists and his superiors told him that killing them is included in the new "rules of engagement."

Frankly, I'm surprised that only 1 in 8 soldiers returning are reporting PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). Americans have essentially never gone to war to protect ourselves on our own soil. We fought for our freedom on our soil when we founded the country and fought each other later but our modern wars are fought elsewhere against people who have nothing to lose. Our soldiers have something to live for and can afford to question whether it's right to take a life.

The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has spent 50 years innovating breakthrough technology like the Internet but have only recently ventured into human augmentation - the science of making the human body more powerful. Around the country, the government is funding projects to make soldiers smarter, stronger, need less sleep and food, and give them more energy in life-threatening conditions. One project regulates the body temperature with a special glove that can keep a body from freezing to death or keep a soldier active when his body would normally overheat.

I think this technology is cool, of course, but why aren't we addressing the real problem of war? None of this technology will help the soldier struggling to live with what s/he's done. None of it will help us deal with the fact that war includes killing children. None of it will keep us from going to war. I wonder when we will put our superior brains to work on finding a way not to kill each other instead of killing each other better.