MADE IN AMERICA

 

Rather than writing a new post, I designed this graphic to call out the elephant in the room (the missing point). Please credit Forth Position Design when sharing it. Possible hashtags: #WeaponsIndustry #ArmsDealers #WarProfiteers #ConflictNarrative #AmericaFirst #GunControl #2ndAmendment #NRA #ThoughtsAndPrayers #LasVegasShooting #MadeInAmerica

Two earlier pieces that are sadly just as relevant now as when I wrote them several years ago: PAYING FOR WAR and Are we courageous enough to face the why?

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Related:

“They Don’t Care Who the Guns Go To”: Experts Warn Trump Admin. Plans to Widen U.S. Weapons Exports – Democracy Now!

Intercepted Podcast: Guns Before Country – The Intercept

Chemical weapons don’t kill people...

The gun lobby (weapons industry) has pushed the phrase “guns don’t kill people - people do” so hard that it has become a common axiom in American culture, shifting responsibility away from those that manufacture and sell weapons to those who use them. Talking with friends and neighbors, I find many folks are disturbed by the prospect of standing by while a leader gasses his own people. But when I ask them the simple question “who manufactured the chemical weapons in question (and who has manufactured chemical weapons in the past)?” they have no answer. If I take this line of questioning a bit further asking “how are chemical weapons acquired?” I find they don’t seem to have much information beyond that which has been provided to them by the Obama administration (and the media) as justification for a military strike. My third question will not seem unfamiliar to those who read my blog with any frequency - “who stands to profit from (the continuation and escalation of) the crisis?” I asked this question repeatedly in the run-up to the Iraq War, hoping that Americans would be outraged by the prospect of an administration filled with those who stood to profit from the war seizing the power to go to war (unconstitutionally and unilaterally). I have written a number of posts of late pointing out similar failings with referencing the gun lobby, weapons industry, and the politicians that represent those interests as separate entities. In the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting, many people questioned how the outcome might have been different if Zimmerman did not have a gun, the choice to use a gun limited by whether one has a gun to use. The Geneva Protocol prohibits the use of chemical weapons, but it does not address their production, storage, or transfer. The Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits the development, production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons. Syria is a signatory of the Geneva Protocol, but not the CWC. The United States and Russia (and other countries) continue to have stockpiles of these weapons despite being signatories of the CWC. When John Kerry condemns the use of chemical weapons as “moral obscenity” is he also condemning their production, storage, and transfer (sale)? Would such a blanket condemnation point fingers at other players outside of Syria? Is this developing into a US vs Russian national interests proxy war? If that is the case, are we concerned about “our” leaders capitalizing on the crisis in Syria at the expense of the innocents they claim to want to protect? Perhaps we should take a few steps back to focus on how and why proliferation of chemical weapons occurs rather than relying on our standard conditioned response - using weapons to destroy weapons to make sure that weapons don’t fall into the wrong hands.

Photo by Michele Equality Kaplan

If there was a gang war going on in your neighborhood, putting your family in danger, and the police suggested that the only way to stop the violence was to attack the gangs and rid them of their weapons - would you go along with their plan? What if you found out that the police were supplying weapons to the gangs, making a profit at both ends of the pipeline collecting tax dollars to pay for weapons to battle the gangs they themselves had armed?

Can we really afford to discount the possibility that the events we see unfolding in the media have been specifically designed to influence our course of action? Even if the events themselves are real, the narrative concerning those events may be fabricated. The most persuasive lies always have some truth embedded in them...
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Related articles:
Dennis J. Kucinich - Top 10 Unproven Claims for War Against Syria
David Kashi - Syria Chemical Weapons Program Helped By Western Companies Selling Precursor Nerve Agents
David E. Sanger, Andre W. Lehren and Rick Gladstone - With the World Watching, Syria Amassed Nerve Gas
Josh Lederman and Seth Borenstein - In U.S. Arsenal, Lessons For Syria Chemical Weapons

PAYING FOR WAR

When I wrote Are we courageous enough to face the why? I was responding to how we categorize those who take actions we find unfathomable as “crazy,” their actions as “senseless.” In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy I have read, and responded to article after article that simplify the larger issue of violence in our society (and the world) to a singular conflict over “gun control.” Each side of the conflict seems quite content to call out the opposition as “extremist,” “out of touch,” etc. Despite the enormous amount of attention dedicated to the issue, I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen the weapons industry and gun manufacturers referenced in connection to the NRA and other gun advocacy groups. Instead the emphasis has been on the outrageous “polarizing” comments of individuals, and the “fringe” interests they represent. The rhetoric on both sides seems to have so many common terms it’s becoming progressively unclear to me just who owns this conflict narrative. There are, however, several things that do seem clear to me. Presenting the narrative as a conflict ultimately serves to reinforce the perception that gun owners are under attack, and strengthens any defensive argument the gun lobby makes. The righteous indignation that follows serves as validation of what I believe is essentially a coldly calculated business decision. Seen from this perspective the “extremism” is actually quite sensible: the more guns on the streets - the more violence we see - the greater our fear - the more weapons are sold. Any regulation of guns amounts to a restriction of gun sales, and less guns sold means less weapons industry profit. I am not implying that this business decision is an ethical one, but it is a rational one, and our insistence on categorizing it as extreme, crazy, senseless is only providing cover for an industry acting in its own best interest.

The other conflict dominating the news? Proposed Social Security and Medicare cuts to stem the deficit “crisis.” Similarly here, “extreme” positions mask the underlying dynamics. I do hear some talk about the deficit being a function of lost tax revenue due to massive cuts for the rich (and straight up tax evasion) coupled with high unemployment (of folks who would otherwise be paying taxes on their income). What I rarely hear is a critique of the wholesale looting of the treasury that has been pulled off by private “defense” contractors and... you guessed it... the weapons industry. Possibly a passing reference to the costly execution of two wars, the waste and mismanagement (“incompetence”), but never an actual indictment of war profiteers themselves. In Money Out of Politics, I brought up the specter of corporate leadership buying into office and then legislating for their own profit. Borrowing from the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for the Iraq War and then sounding the alarm on program insolvency should raise a little skepticism over the sincerity of those who are clearly looking to cash in on these programs through privatization. Like “gun control” the issue will be tethered to the big government/small government (no government) narrative, but again this is only to inspire outrage and provide cover. The actual objective is to funnel government money, and ultimately the resources of our people, into the coffers of a select few. Until we free ourselves from the illusion of separation between the corporate elite and “our” government leaders, the prevailing idea that politicians are merely influenced by lobbyists and not directly connected to the corporations themselves, we will continue to be trapped inside their scripted narrative. As I wrote in Visions of Peace, “As weapons dealer to the world and our own best customer, is it any wonder that American cultural promotion of war (violence, conflict, competition) is second to none?”

Tax day. How much are you paying for war?
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Take Action - Global Day of Action on Military Spending
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Related articles:
The Atlantic - Paying the Costs of Iraq, for Decades to Come
Reuters - Iraq war costs U.S. more than $2 trillion: study
Tom Engelhardt - The Enemy-Industrial Complex