We are currently bombing, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Afganistan.

We are engaged in counter insurgency operations in Uganda, Kenya, Chad, and Nigeria.

We love war!

I guess we need to start another shitball going.

All that murder is going to come back to haunt our children and grandchildren. We are aiding and abetting not just murder but horror.

We aren't the only ones responsible for the horror. We can sell all those arms because there is a lot of fear and a lot of demand for weapons.

But we need to do much more to prevent war and less to sustain it. I wonder how much of out export revenue is due to the arms we sell? I wonder to what extent we keep up this "free" trade mania in order to sell our arms? What would we do with all the arms we produce if we couldn't sell them to countries fighting insurrections and rebellions of all sort? And what motivates the insurgents and rebels? Is there an alternative to the turmoil in all the countries mentioned in the OP?

Am I naive in even asking?

Imagine yourself living in one of those countries. What suffering the people must endure. And our weapons add to that suffering.

I don't think our weapons cause the insurrection, but I think our weapons make the insurrection more and not less tragic. But is there an alternative and if so what is it?

I'm rambling, but I think we need to allow our minds to move into a more creative mode of thinking with regard to all the killing in the world.

Afghanistan has been in a continous armed conflict since 1978. The US/CIA installed Al-Maliki as prime minister of Iraq who brutally oppressed the Sunni, Kurdish, & other minorities. The new government came with anti-terrorism laws which allows for indefinite detention which the Shia dominated government lead by a political leader of Iraq from the 70's who lived in exile in Iran under Saddam who used them to detain & torture Sunni civilians. 3 or 4 homes of elected Sunni officials had their homes raided by the Iraqi Army if not more, one was killed. The highest Sunni official in government fled from a political prosecution with the help of Kurdistan from a trial which he received the death penalty. He is living in exile in Turkey IIRC.

Syria right now is very bad -- http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/02/syria-war-civilian-casualties-regime-opposition-jihadists.html

From the article -- Another disturbing aspect in which civilians are caught up in the war is through the heavy indiscriminate bombing of their neighborhoods by the infamous “barrel bombs” dropped by regime helicopters from high altitude on rebel-held areas, the main purpose being to clear out the residents and make the areas easier to capture. Needless to say, the results of such bombing campaigns are catastrophic. This sometimes goes in tandem with crippling sieges that can last for months or even years, causing untold misery and suffering for the people trapped inside, who have to not only contend with a possible quick death from above but also a slow agonizing death from starvation and poverty.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/02/syria-war-civilian-casualties-regime-opposition-jihadists.html##ixzz3XktyRq52


I posted some info on Saudi & Yemen which I'll re-post here

Saudi Arabia - economy

From 2003–2013 "several key services" were privatized—municipal water supply, electricity, telecommunications—and parts of education and health care, traffic control and car accident reporting were also privatized. According to Arab News columnist Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg, "in almost every one of these areas, consumers have raised serious concerns about the performance of these privatized entities." The Tadawul All Share Index (TASI) of the Saudi stock exchange peaked at 16,712.64 in 2005, and closed at 8,535.60, at the end of 2013. In November 2005, Saudi Arabia was approved as a member of the World Trade Organization. Negotiations to join had focused on the degree to which Saudi Arabia is willing to increase market access to foreign goods and in 2000, the government established the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority to encourage foreign direct investment in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia maintains a list of sectors in which foreign investment is prohibited, but the government plans to open some closed sectors such as telecommunications, insurance, and power transmission/distribution over time.

<snip>

Statistics on poverty in the kingdom are not available through the UN resources because the Saudi government does not issue any. The Saudi state discourages calling attention to or complaining about poverty. In December 2011, the Saudi interior ministry arrested three reporters and held them for almost two weeks for questioning after they uploaded a video on the topic to YouTube. Authors of the video claim that 22% of Saudis may be considered poor (2009). Observers researching the issue prefer to stay anonymous because of the risk of being arrested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia

One thing I should point about their economy is it is built off of the backs of imported labor which Kuwait & Qatar does too & so does Pakistan & apparently Libya does too now. So does the US Department of Defense in Southwest Asia as detailed here -- http://www.uclalawreview.org/?p=6348

Saudi Arabia's treatment of foreign workers under fire after beheading of Sri Lankan maid

<snip>

"Some domestic workers find kind employers who treat them well, but others face intense exploitation and abuse, ranging from months of hard work without pay to physical violence to slavery-like conditions," said Nisha Varia from Human Rights Watch. There are about 1.5 million foreign maids in Saudi Arabia, including about 375,000 Sri Lankans.

An International Labour Organisation report last week warned that an estimated 52.6 million domestic workers around the world lack legal rights and protections. But Varia said Saudi Arabia posed unique problems because legal protections were weaker and the chance of access to justice more remote.

<snip>

Amnesty said it had grown alarmed at the "disproportionate" number of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia being executed. "As with Rizana Nafeek, nearly all migrant workers in Saudi Arabia are at great risk if they end up in the criminal justice system," said Amnesty's Saudi Arabia researcher, Dina el-Mamoun.

"In many cases, they're subjected to whole trials where they can't understand the proceedings, which are conducted solely in Arabic, and without translation. They are often not given access to lawyers or to consular assistance."

Mamoun said poor workers from the Indian subcontinent, south-east Asia and Africa did not have the contacts and influence needed to balance a justice system that was weighted against them. "All countries should be advising their residents who might be thinking of working in Saudi Arabia of the risks of mistreatment in detention, of an unfair trial and even of execution. The risks are very real and could be deadly." Amnesty said it knew of more than 120 people – mostly foreign nationals – on death row.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/13/saudi-arabia-treatment-foreign-workers

I'm getting off-track but the point I'm making is they're just fine with a corrupt kleptocracy abusing & exploiting its people but when the people begin to gain control of their government--Yemen is a little more complicated as it is like 3 or 4 way civil war--which is why they assist the corrupt dictatorships

Yemen

Human rights
Main article: Human rights in Yemen

The government and its security forces, often considered to suffer from rampant corruption, have been responsible for torture, inhumane treatment, and extrajudicial executions. There are arbitrary arrests of citizens, especially in the south, as well as arbitrary searches of homes. Prolonged pretrial detention is a serious problem, and judicial corruption, inefficiency, and executive interference undermine due process. Freedom of speech, the press, and religion are all restricted. Journalists who tend to be critical of the government are often harassed and threatened by the police. Homosexuality is illegal, punishable by death.

Since the start of the Shia insurgency, many people accused of supporting Al-Houthi have been arrested and held without charge or trial. According to the U.S. State Department International Religious Freedom Report 2007, "Some Zaydis reported harassment and discrimination by the Government because they were suspected of sympathizing with the al-Houthis. However, it appears the Government's actions against the group were probably politically, not religiously, motivated".

The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants reported several violations of refugee and asylum seekers' rights in the organization's 2008 World Refugee Survey. Yemeni authorities reportedly deported numerous foreigners without giving them access to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, despite the UN's repeated requests. Refugees further reported violence directed against them by Yemeni authorities while living in refugee camps. Yemeni officials reportedly raped and beat camp-based refugees with impunity in 2007.

<snip>

Human trafficking
Main article: Human trafficking in Yemen

The United States Department of State 2013 Trafficking in Persons report classified Yemen as a Tier 3 country, meaning that its government does not fully comply with the minimum standards against human trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so.

Yemen officially abolished slavery in 1962, but slavery is still being practiced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemen#Mutawakkilite_Kingdom_of_Yemen

The part I highlight in bold is especially key because most people probably have no idea when it comes to modern military campaigns in Southwest Asia is that foreign nationals do most of the work, especially the grunt work such as constructing bases to some very dangerous assignments for dirt pay which is par for the course for our gulf allies

A U.S. Fortress Rises in Baghdad:
Asian Workers Trafficked to Build World's Largest Embassy

ohn Owens didn’t realize how different his job would be from his last 27 years in construction until he signed on with First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting in November 2005. Working as general foreman, he would be overseeing an army of workers building the largest, most expensive and heavily fortified US embassy in the world. Scheduled to open in 2007, the sprawling complex near the Tigris River will equal Vatican City in size.

Then seven months into the job, he quit.

Not one of the five different US embassy sites he had worked on around the world compared to the mess he describes. Armenia, Bulgaria, Angola, Cameroon and Cambodia all had their share of dictators, violence and economic disruption, but the companies building the embassies were always fair and professional, he says. The Kuwait-based company building the $592-million Baghdad project is the exception. Brutal and inhumane, he says “I’ve never seen a project more fucked up. Every US labor law was broken.”

<snip>

No Questions Asked

By March 2006, First Kuwaiti’s operation began looking even sketchier to Owens as he boarded a nondescript white jet on his way back to Baghdad following some R&R in Kuwait city. He remembers being surrounded by about 50 First Kuwaiti laborers freshly hired from the Philippines and India. Everyone was holding boarding passes to Dubai – not to Baghdad.

“I thought there was some sort of mix up and I was getting on the wrong plane,” says the 48-year-old Floridian who once worked as a fisherman with his father before moving into the construction business.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14173

From the above link

On April 4, 2006, the Pentagon issued a new contracting directive following a secret investigation that officially confirms what many South Asian laborers have been complaining about ever since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Some contractors, many working as subcontractors to Halliburton/KBR in Iraq, were found to be using deceptive, bait-and-switch hiring practices and charging recruiting fees that indebted low-paid migrant workers for many months or even years to their employers. Contractors were also accused of providing substandard, crowded sleeping quarters, serving poor food, and circumventing Iraqi immigration procedures.

Our private defense contractors subcontract out to Saudi & Kuwait contractors who already do this. 70% of Kuwaits' population are foreign workers, Qatar has a pretty sizable foreign labor population as well (search "Qatar world cup slaves&quot so the system is already set-up & it helps shield them from accountability.

It is like oil in that region is the barrier to democracy. When Iran kicked out BP then came the "1954 Iran coup" but most of the time we sanction countries who privatize their oil production which we've done since 1979 but not just that, really went hard core 2010-2012 but they have a much more labor friendly economy then our allies which includes Saudi Arabia which is one of the "worst of the worst" of human rights violators.

The problem is we picked the wrong country to have their backs

For instance, a Wikileaks cable clearly quotes then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying "donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide." She continues: "More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups." And it's not just the Saudis: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are also implicated in the memo. Other cables released by Wikileaks outline how Saudi front companies are also used to fund terrorism abroad.

Evidently, the situation has not improved since Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. Late last year, Vice President Biden caused a stir by undiplomatically speaking the truth at an event at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, saying:

"Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria. The Turks were great friends... [and] the Saudis, the Emirates, etcetera. What were they doing?.... They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad -- except that the people who were being supplied, [they] were al-Nusra, and al-Qaeda, and the extremist elements of jihadis who were coming from other parts of the world."

<snip>

The money goes to constructing and operating mosques and madrassas that preach radical Wahhabism. The money also goes to training imams; media outreach and publishing; distribution of Wahhabi textbooks, and endowments to universities and cultural centers. A cable released by Wikileaks explains, regarding just one region of Pakistan:

Government and non-governmental sources claimed that financial support estimated at nearly 100 million USD annually was making its way to Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith clerics in the region from "missionary" and "Islamic charitable" organizations in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates ostensibly with the direct support of those governments.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-yousaf-butt-/saudi-wahhabism-islam-terrorism_b_6501916.html

I need to do some research on Pakistan, particularly their ISI which formally organized & branded the "Taliban", the loosely banded "freedom fighters" came before. I think 1994 was the year it was official. They also had probably the largest international nuclear material black market trafficker -- Abdul Qadeer Khan

The interesting part is the Pakistan mention as they play a role in the Bahrain uprisings sending foreign agents "mercenaries" to crackdown on protestors -- I recommend looking up the 2011- Bahrain uprisings as well.

Yemen, Afghanistan, & Iraq are in the top 5 as most corrupt countries in the world. Even the pentagon admitted responsibility to the corruption problems with the CIA teaming up with drug traffickers & war lords not to mention the bribery & corruption from our private defense contractors. US may be a top 20 least corrupt country but their foreign policy is very corrupt -- there are uprisings & revolutions going on all over which we choose to ignore. One was a national focus but now forgotten with rebels fighting the government in South Sudan.

I'm glad someone tries to imagine living under as I do all-the-time & there is a lot the US could be doing, enormous powers which they could use for humanitarian reasons but seem to be going in the direction of turning the world into a forced labor camp. That is who it appears to be that we are backing.

suspected but not known. There are no "good guys" in the governments of these countries. Or at least that is how it seems.

As a way off the topic comment, those articles made me ask myself, where would the US be if we had not grown out of the time of the Enlightenment?

It was disappointing that Egyptians, after claiming the right to self-government through democratic rule chose to impose upon themselves yet another fanatical religious, probably backward and harsh government rather than a government based on reason and respect for individual rights.

But then, our respect for human rights with all its limitations, grew out of the Enlightenment and the struggle to imagine a world in which religion and the concept of God and values in the world had to be rational and based on human experience as opposed to some sort of magic based on terror of a vengeful God.

Most of the world's populations, most countries, have not experienced a period like the Enlightenment. What to do about that?

arms to these countries what would happen? Simple, Russia and China would. In fact, the buildup of arms in the ME has much more to do with sales from China and Russia than anyone in the west. The US wouldn't sell missiles to Saudi Arabia, so as not to give it an advantage over its neighbors. China did. (Which made all of its neighbors want similar protection) Much of the world wouldn't sell arms or NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) weapons to Iran post-revolution, China did. Most of the world wouldn't sell the Assad regime weapons due to their human-rights abuses and other concerns, Russia did. (In part to keep their warm water port open).
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Weapons of war don't exist because the US produces them, nor does it have anything to do with capitalism. Weapons of war will always be produced by nation-states. Many of them will be sold not for profit but for geopolitical and geographical concerns. China sold weapons to Iran to get foreign currency and access to their oil. The US sold Taiwan some defensive missiles a couple of years ago and I'm sure China retaliated by selling weapons to one of our enemies.

The US is the leader in arms exports dollar wise, but it accounts for a much lower portion of our GDP. Russia is number 2 and China just replaced Germany as number 3. China's arms exports have tripled in the last 4 years. (The Stockholm initiative does the report every 4 years).

Russia is the number one arms exporter by GDP with about 10 times the exports as the US as a percentage of GDP. The former countries of the USSR make up 5 of the top 10 countries in arms exports by GDP. Both Russia and China need the foreign currency that results from arms sales. Russia is now even more dependent on arms sales due to the decline in the price of oil. China, by contrast, needs access to natural resources for their continued growth and often sell arms to countries who can provide that. (much of sub-Sarahan Africa).

Before the rise of China in the arms industry, the US & Russia did a fairly decent job of keeping arms out of the hands of rogue states. China has complicated that. They are even selling arms to South Sudan, presumably for their oil.

Here is a map of arms exports:
http://www.businessinsider.com/where-the-world-buys-its-weapons-2015-3

The increase in arms exports from the period of 2005-2009 and 2010-2014 (they report every 4 years)

US 23%
Russia 37%
China 143% (China has tripled their exports since 2000)

http://www.sipri.org/media/pressreleases/2015/at-march-2015

One of the many concerns with al-Maliki's government in Iraq was that it would become a proxy for Iran. When the US wouldn't sell al-Maliki weapons who did? Iran. Where did Iran get the weapons? Probably China. Who else did? Russia. Russia and China are also known for not holding up parts and support once the items are sold. Had al-Maliki attacked the Kurds, for instance, the US probably would have held up spare parts. The US & USSR policy of trying to keep arms balanced within regions or out of the hands of bad actors doesn't work anymore. And when we can force China or Russia to agree, it costs us quite a bit in terms of political capital.

The US isn't the problem when it comes to arms exports.

We are our own worst enemies. We have taught China a lot of our technology and imported so much from them and they are pretty indiscriminate with regard to selling arms to irresponsible governments.

technology" and say that China has stolen equally as much. China has also bought a lot of our technology by buying up some of our companies.

We buy so much stuff from China because its cheaper. Not only can we not compete with the low wages, they don't have the environmental or safety regulations that we do. Not to mention their blatant disregard for copyright and intellectual property rights. In addition to all those factors, you have a country that is manipulating currency to keep their prices artificially low. What a lot of people don't understand (or are unwilling to) is that the TPP is designed to create a bloc of countries who are committing to the labor, environment and IP/copyright laws that we abide by. In doing so, we're trying to force China and other violators to raise their standards or be cut out of a good deal of trade. There are two ways to compete with China in manufacturing. Lower our standards to theirs, so our costs are similar, or raise their standards to ours. If that happens, the cost of transporting goods will give imported goods a higher cost and people will start buying more domestic goods.

I don't know the big picture reason why we've aligned ourselves so much with China. Much of the trade is corporate and probably couldn't be avoided. I know the US had to find cheaper places to produce goods because the American consumer was having difficulty paying for goods that were domestically produced.

I think one of the big picture concepts is that if we tie our economy to Chinas, they won't risk harming us because it would do equal damage to their own economy. And that much is true. One of the reasons China loaned us money at low interest rates is because they needed the US to purchase their goods. They didn't want our economy to tank because it would have tanked theirs. Did we create a monster? Who knows. Did we have another alternative? Who knows.

be less apt to want to sell weapons to oppressive regimes?

I ask the same question about our government?

Some view the TPP and our trade with China as a way of improving working conditions in those countries. I see those trade arrangements as lowering the working standards in those countries. That is the way it has worked so far. And I also see those trade arrangements as lower the working standards in our country.

As for the environmental damage, we shifted our smokestacks to China. It was the corporations' way around the EPA and our other workplace and environmental laws. There is no OSHA apparently in China or in Bangladesh or in any of the countries from which we buy most of our exports.

The theory behind "free" trade sounds wonderful. The reality is horrible.

It really is a race to the bottom. We are a big enough country that we do not have to depend on China for so many imports. The more we import, the less leverage we have to change the Chinese attitudes and behavior.

And now we are planning to extend the kind of dependent relationship we have with China and its cheap exports to other countries in that region. It is not a solid policy. We should enter into one-on-one trade agreements. We should develop clean energy and clean manufacturing and set the example for the world rather than eat and buy the garbage that they are manufacturing at high environmental and human cost.

Yes. We created a monster. Or rather, the corporations that chose to destroy our economy in order to destroy our labor and environmental standards created a monster.

Profit. We make a lot of it and profit trumps everything. That's what makes America great!

Don't these people give just a little thought? How will they spend all that money if the world eventually goes nuclear?

“We had a great opportunity to engage with the Houthis on this, but we gave in to the Saudis,” Horton said, “and frankly, they cannot begin to manage this. They have all the toys but few people who know how to effectively use them. Their NCO and officer corps are largely untested, and their enlisted men are drawn from the lowest rungs of Saudi society. If they get bogged down in Yemen, I wonder about the loyalty of many of the soldiers and NCOs. The Egyptians will not fare much better.”

But that’s not the view of McCain and other hawkish senators around him. They see Iran’s fingerprints all over whatever goes wrong in the region — a view that alarms Horton. “This is a guy who complained that we were Iran’s air force in Iraq,” he said. “Well, guess what? Now we’re Al-Qaeda’s air force in Yemen.”

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/4/17/us-generals-think-saudi-strikes-in-yemen-a-bad-idea.html

The US would go bankrupt without wars and the profit that goes with it. One of these years, there will be Blowback. How? Don't have a clue, but it will. Karma/The Golden Rule are laws far beyond our puny actions.

GDP. Arms exports are not a major factor in our GDP. That is not true for Russia who is number two in arms exports but number one in terms of GDP. Arms exports is a 10 times greater part of Russia's economy than ours. If we were truly driven by profit in the arms industry you couldn't begin to imagine who all would have weapons.

The problem with our approach to selling arms is that it no longer works. We wouldn't sell al-Maliki's gov't in Iraq certain weapons so they turned around and bought them from China. We wouldn't sell Saudi Arabis certain missiles because we didn't want them to have too big of an advantage over their neighbors (trying to force them to play nice, basically) so they bought them from China.

Your comment is beyond absurd. Not only do we have a pretty good human rights records compared to other countries, we don't sell arms to rogue states. Russia and China do (although Russia is much more restrained than China).

The US doesn't need the foreign currency or profit that comes from arms exports. Perhaps you should investigate which countries do.

about the entire culture that feeds off of it. Take a look at the graph as to our DOD expenses, I think it's over 50% now, what it costs to Police the world, 800 military bases. Good lord, we out spend the rest of the "civilized/European" world.

Ah, yes. the Rogue States...aka those who don't play nice with us or elect the people we like. Indeed. we sanction them and by default send them to Russia and China.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to check some things out...we extradite our Human Rights problems to those places whose public isn't so squeamish. Then, want to talk about Guantanamo?

So I ask, if we aren't number one in all of these things, how did we get to be the World Policeman? Does Boeing, GD, Halliburton and their counterparts and subsidiaries not comprise a sizeable portion of our economy?

I truly don't understand the controversy here.

definition of a rogue state is someone who doesn't play nice with us? Do you really think that N Korea, Iran, Sudan and Milosevic's Yugoslavia were sanctioned because they wouldn't play nice with us? Do you dismiss (or not really care about) the human suffering that is created under those regimes. I actually know the answer to that question. When someone dismisses outright what the residents of a rogue state go through, I know that they aren't a true liberal. Just anti-American.

We do not escape responsibility just because they're out of our control. We put them there.

- If we don't stop these fucking monsters, who the fuck will?

K&R

The survivors have sent thousands of Thank-you cards and bankrupting themselves buying bouquets to give us....or decorating the graves.