is that if you’re interested in them, there’s always one around. Unlike soccer fans who wait for the World Cup every four years, to use a sport analogy, a military buff literally has a plethora of military activity to choose from. Take this moment in time, as of July 2006, there are 24 major wars and a host of minor skirmishes taking place all over the world. The present one on everyone’s radar is the Israel-Lebanon conflict, but it’s not an unexpected development, given Israel’s history in the region and the wounds left in the aftermath of the last Israel-Lebanon conflict in 1982.
So you can sit in your comfortable chair and watch the mechanized killing on almost any channel on TV. Since much of TV is a blood sport anyway, they should really show the sponsors, a la Coke ads during the Superbowl:
Israel-Lebanon 2006 is brought to you by Lockheed Martin, 1000+ killed and rising, stay tuned.
The Sri Lankan civil war, brought to you by the Russians, the French and the Indians, running unabated since 1983, over 65,000 dead, sure to get more popular
and so on.
But, if we didn’t supply these nations with arms, we wouldn’t make billions of dollars. And, since they’re so keen on killing each other, they’d find a way to do it anyway, look at Rwanda. A million souls sent on their way with machetes. Who cares about millions of Third World corpses as long as the top executives in defense firms can buy their third wives augmentation mammoplasties.
If there was an algorithm for arms profiteering and conscience control, this would be it
1. Sell arms to dictators and human rights violators, make a killing
2. Watch placidly as arms are used on the innocent
3. Make a big deal about how they’re so unscrupulous for using them on women and babies and what have you
4. Look good in front of the rest of the world for pretending to care
5. Repeat ad infinitum
It’s not so much that you should mind that your hands are drenched in blood, since there isn’t much you can do about it. But now at least you know whose blood your hands are soaked in. Look for more victims at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_wars
A picture is worth a thousand words and here are several thousand words.
