I used to love the television show Kung Fu. Every week I would watch the peace loving, wisdom quoting monk get drawn into yet another fight. I don’t know whether I loved the quotes about peace or the actual fighting better. In the same way, I have watched our own peace loving nation be drawn into one fight after another. More to the point, we continue to be the number one user and distributer of weapons of mass destruction even as we speak to the world of peace.
The US has long been the leader in arming the world but last year saw an explosion of business so that the United States has now cornered the three forths of the world market for arms. As the NY Times article linked below says:
“Overseas weapons sales by the United States totaled $66.3 billion last year, or more than three-quarters of the global arms market, valued at $85.3 billion in 2011. Russia was a distant second, with $4.8 billion in deals.”
Looking back, I realize I would have been disappointed if a Kung Fu episode had not ended in a fight. Like our own peace seeking, bomb selling nation, all the pretty talk about peace was mere foreplay leading to the violence.