Watching America
Jang, Pakistan
Obama: Nobel Peace Prize-Winning War Addict
By Asad Mufti
The United States is making other countries addicted to warfare and nuclear weapons, just as it has itself been for a long time.
Translated By Zain Jamshaid
7 July 2011
Edited by Mark DeLucas
Pakistan - Jang - Original Article (Urdu)
A recent Wall Street Journal article sheds light on the reality that the United States is a country addicted to war. Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, has ironically set an all-time U.S. record for selling weapons to other countries. There was a 4.7 percent increase in the country’s supply of weapons last year. These deals weigh heavily on America’s politics: A significant number of the weapons were sold to Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008, the United States made $36.4 billion through selling weapons to foreign countries. It made a profit of $30.3 billion in 2007 and an outrageous profit of $45.6 billion last year. In 2010, the UAE was provided with $7.9 billion worth of weapons, Afghanistan $5.4 billion worth and Saudi Arabia $3.3 billion in weapons. Other sales were made to Taiwan ($1.6 billion), NATO ($924 million), Israel ($818 million) and South Korea ($717 million).
The U.S. also sells a large amount of weapons each year to India and Pakistan. Though these sales generally increased under the Bush administration, they have escalated rapidly under Obama’s presidency. The United States should seriously reflect on all its sales. There are grave dangers associated with all of them, many of which affect universal human rights. It should be aware of the risks in providing relatively poor countries with weapons. The United States sells Saudi Arabia and Iran weapons by making the countries afraid of Israel. Noted American scholar Noam Chomsky has also pointed out this fact in his recent lecture in Amsterdam. The United States is making other countries addicted to warfare and nuclear weapons just as it has itself been for a long time. 200,000 U.S. soldiers are fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while 80,000 are present in Europe. They launched 36 drone attacks in our country in 2008 and 153 in 2009 and 2010. And do not forget that war-addicted America spends $500 billion on its own defense every year. Their public lives in ignorance as they do not inform their people of all these facts.
Under Richard Nixon’s administration, the public was kept in the dark regarding the Watergate scandal. Similarly, the actor Reagan did not let Congress and his public know of all the steps that he took against the Soviet Union. All his official statements were blatant lies. Their lies remind me of a famous poem which goes like this:
When they ask you
why are you killing us,
tell them
it’s because your fathers lied.
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