Thursday, December 20, 2007

Are we a peacekeeping nation?

i have been in hiatus for awhile, so i have probably lost all of my reader. lol. so i will post this for myself and it will help me process. as some of you may know from previous blogs that i am reading the new brian mclaren book, "everything must change". it has been a slower read than some of his other books, because it takes me down many roads i have never been in regards to thinking about the greatest issues of the world. i really probably need to be processing all of this with someone who either is reading the book or understands some of these issues and world affairs better than myself. this post will be a few statements from the book in regards to the US's role in providing arms to other countries.

"... after the vietnam war era: mcnamara concluded that is would be rational to limit the armament costs by producing larger runs of each weapon and selling them abroad. the us also happened to be running a three billion dollar general trade deficit. foreign arm sales would be a way to balance the situation."

"my country (the us) can boast that we produce 53.4 percent of the world's weapons." jimmy carter said, "we cannot have it both ways. we can't be both the world's champion of peace and the worlds leading supplier of small arms."

"80% of the top buyers of us weapons were countries that our own stae department labeled undemocratic or countries known for their failure to uphold human rights, such as egypt and saudi arabia."

"it is estimated that every year small arms kill more people than the atomic bombs dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki put together."

i read these quotes and have so many emotions and thoughts. i am not sure what to think but somehow it does not all make sense. we get pissed off at all of these other countries but do not even police ourselves. we definitely as a country serve money over god. we may say that we are for peace with our mouths, but it seems our actions say something so different.