This is the age for everyone to freak out over the idea that North Korea and Iran may have "the bomb" and other scary "mushroom cloud" induced nightmares, and frankly, I'd be really happy if Democrats began reversing that and started instead talking about actual serious threats to American and global security. I put this one under "Homeland Insecurity" because it's only logical to understand that in the end, this depressing trend will someday come back and bite us in the ass. There are several reasons why this is true. The primary one is the two-pronged nightmare that Bush has created for us: an increase in the amount of terrorism around the globe as a result of his two failed wars of choice; and a decrease in actual "homeland" security as organizations like DHS are staffed with cronies and our money for it is spent on hookers and limos for their johns. I think shit like this is why Clemons is so up in arms against Bolton:

Washington's desire to maintain the status quo was on display at a meeting at the United Nations on Oct. 26, when a UN panel voted to study whether a new treaty might be possible to regulate the sale of conventional arms. The United States was the only country out of 166 to vote no, though China and Russia were among a handful of countries to abstain.

It's a simple matter, in truth. You know the drill:

"The US would be significantly affected if there was an arms treaty that took into account human rights abuses and conflict areas," added William Hartung , director of the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute in New York. "The US government still wants to be able to do covert and semi-covert arms transfers. And a certain amount of it is simply keeping factories running in certain congressional districts."

The amount of money we're talking about isn't trivial, and it's growing in this age of unchecked conflict-nurturing and future war-seeding. But the reality (and dammit, the Dems need to face that) is that having a world filled with highly armed groups only means less security for us. I'm being totally selfish and America-centered here, not because I don't care about the millions of children who lose limbs to unexploded land mines or the societies destroyed in the wake of US-supported militarism and aggression, but because I fear that's the only way in which a change in our whorish behavior with respect to the arms trade will happen.

But it is the United States that by far remains the top purveyor of high-tech arms to areas where analysts believe the likelihood of armed conflict remains highest. A study last year by the progressive World Policy Institute found that the United States transferred weaponry to 18 of the 25 countries involved in an ongoing war.
"From Angola, Chad, and Ethiopia, to Colombia, Pakistan, and the Philippines, transfers through the two largest US arms sales programs [Foreign Military sales and Commercial Sales] to these conflict nations totaled nearly $1 billion in 2003," the report found.
Meanwhile, more than half of the countries buying US arms -- 13 of the 25 -- were defined as undemocratic by the State Department's annual Human Rights Report, including top recipients Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan.

Being as coldly realpolitik as I can be, the Democrats who actually care about improving security in American and abroad can frame it this way: we're selling arms to scary brown Islamofascists, all the better to enrich Republican cronies here. They will turn against us and use our wholesome American weapons on us, and bring us mushroom clouds in Peoria.

Does that fit into the simplistic, racist, fearmongering narrative well enough for you, Dem leadership? I didn't mention Israel at all, you'll notice.

The sad fact is that it will take a generation of progressive leadership to begin to unravel the incestuous relationships between policy makers, elected officials, and the arms dealers. Progressive can make a long list of reasons why this should be done, and no one will listen. So instead, I propose that part of the "new" policy on the Hill that Democrats will bring be one that attempts to begin to address the explosion of the arms trade, filtered through what the Republicans have spent the last 12 years building. For once, we can use the narrative of fear to our advantage, and in truth, this should be no "way down on the list" priority. Our borders really aren't that secure, there really is a growing list of people out there who hate us and would love to pull of another 911, and it really is time we started addressing that.

Update 1: Fox gives Gaza terror/kidnapping groups 2million to buy weapons.

Update 2: Don't get giddy about Baker/Gates just yet.

Currently, Carlyle manages more than $44 billion in 42 different investment funds, which is an interesting fact in and of itself: Carlyle could lay claim to only a meager $12 billion in funds in December of 2001. Thanks to their ownership of United Defense Industries, a major military contractor that sells a whole galaxy of weapons systems to the Pentagon, Carlyle's profits skyrocketed after the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Some notable present and former employees of Carlyle include former president George H.W. Bush, who resigned in 2003; James Baker III, Bush Sr.'s secretary of state and king fixer; and George W. Bush, who served on Carlyle's board of directors until his run for the Texas governorship. One notable former client of Carlyle was the Saudi BinLaden Group, which sold its investment back to the firm a month after the September 11 attacks. Until the October 2001 sellout, Osama bin Laden himself had a financial interest in the same firm that employed the two presidents Bush.

How has Carlyle managed to acquire the White House? The newest edition of Newsweek begins to tell the tale in a story titled "The Rescue Squad": "Bush Senior has been relegated to watching all those political talk shows his son refuses to watch, wincing each time he hears his son's name being mocked or criticized. George H.W. Bush has been, in effect, sidelined by nepotism. He has repeatedly told close friends that he does not believe it is appropriate or wise to second-guess his son, or even offer advice beyond loving support. This time, however, was different. A source who declined to be identified discussing presidential confidences told NEWSWEEK that Bush 41 left 'fingerprints' on the Rumsfeld-Gates decision, though the father's exact role remains shrouded in speculation."

There is much more to this than Big George simply trying to shove Little George in a different direction, because Big George never travels alone. All of a sudden, two of the elder's main men - James Baker III and Robert Gates - are back in the saddle. Baker has spent the last weeks riding herd over the Iraq Study Group, a collection of old foreign policy hands tasked to come up with a solution to the Iraq debacle. Gates was a member of this group until he was tapped to replace Don Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. The Iraq Study Group is slated to produce some tablets of wisdom come December.