Nexus of Evil

Dear Mr. President,

An $85 billion global market for weapons and we’ve got 79% of it, ($66.3 billion in 2011), up from a 44% share ($21.4 billion) in 2010. Great news for the trade deficit. We pretty much squeezed everybody else out: Russia’s share dropped from 24% to just 6% last year and China’s down to 3%. Imagine, we’re beating China for a change! We’re arming the world! The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service reported all this yesterday in their annual study. Last year’s jump, they said, was the biggest in the history of U.S. arms sales, mostly because of sales of big-ticket items like F-15s and Apache helicopters and Black Hawks and missile defense shields and early warning radar systems. You’ve got all our Arab allies nervous about Iran so our friends in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman (where the heck is Oman, anyway?) are snapping this stuff up like hotcakes. Fair trade, right, Mr. President? We buy your oil, you buy our weapons. All this war talk about Iran developing nuclear bombs and missiles has scared the bejesus out of everybody over there so the people at Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon and all the other merchants of death are making out like bandits, business is booming and bonuses are better than ever. Like I been saying, war is good business (even those rural Afghan woodcutters and shopkeepers I quoted in yesterday’s letter understand that). You’ve been doing yoeman’s work, stirring the pot, raising the scare flag on Iran, arming rebels in Libya and Syria, drone strikes and Hellfire missiles everywhere, exporting violence to Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and probably every other country in Central America with your ramped-up drug wars, training and arming all those countries in Africa (new markets for our killing machines!) and then, right here at home, the border wars and now cops playing wild wild west on the streets of New York City, guns blazing, shooting innocent bystanders and pedestrians, the chickens coming home to roost. I think you’re not only the Commander-in-Chief, Mr. President, you’re the Marketer-in-Chief for the arms industry. Come to think of it, you’re a job creator! Yes sir, The business of America is business. Actually, we should update that to, The business of America is War! Oh, by the way, I think G.W. got it wrong, THEY’RE not the Evil Empire, WE are. We’re the Nexus of Evil with our killing machines and killing mentality spreading death and destruction all over the globe.