the United States Army is introducing a new gun. It's supposed to be smarter than a person.
Our politicians are smart too; that's because they don't make any profit from extending unemployment insurance, but anybody that's got their fingers in this pork pie is going to make a nice profit.
Here is where our money goes. I've been told that on this site, we're more concerned with electing "Democratic politicians" than with stopping the ridiculous spending on the military, and its attendant payoffs to the politicians concerned, Democratic and Republican, good patriots all.
Follow me below the fold to find out why I'm kind of disgusted. I've been told "there's not many pacifists on this site". Maybe this is the straw that will break the camel's back, and if it even motivates one person towards peace I will be satisfied. Partially satisfied, that is.
The Pentagon recently announced the deployment of the XM-25, a new "smart gun" designed for the U.S. Army's counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan.
The XM-25 is said to be the first of its kind. As reported by the BBC, the weapon "uses a laser guidance system and specially developed 25mm high explosive rounds which can be programmed to detonate over a target."
A single XM-25 carries a price tag of as much as $30,000. In 2011 Pentagon plans to purchase 12,500 of these weapons, AFP reports.
For those of you who are fond of mathematics, that's a mere $3,750,000000. That's Three billion and change. and that's not counting what is the cost to train people to use this thing, what it's going to cost when this thing fails in the field and they have to bring up a bunch of geeks to fix it, what it's going to cost for whatever so-called "enemy du jour" we happen to be fighting at the time, in short, what it's going to cost the world.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, a whole armored column with more firepower than a World War II division is pinned down by two guys with World War I weapons. That's not world war two; I'm talking about patched-together World War I rifles.
These guys spent a total of $300 on their two rifles, including having them put in shape, and about $20 on ammunition. The price of the armored column is well up into the tens of millions. That's money out of our pockets, yours and mine, but do you care, non-pacifists? Does anybody care? Does anybody even know the numbers? Because if people knew the numbers, they wouldn't wonder any more about why we can't seem to extend unemployment insurance, why it's "too expensive".
You see, it's the waste of lives first of all; the kid from Oklahoma who wanted to be a veterinarian, and will still be one, because he only got his legs blown off, and he's ambitious. He will live in pain for the rest of his life, but that's not going to dull his idealism.
His friend wasn't so lucky; the shell fragment in his brain has turned him into a vegetable who will live in an Army hospital for the next 60 years, a truly horrible existence paid for by you and me, and we have to care, in fact we are forced to care, because our taxes pay for his care. The politicians who take the kickbacks from the arms industries and their lobbies just don't care. the bankers and weapons industries that make these weapons that do nothing to keep us safe don't care. "It's the bottom line, man."
I've been told several times that "there's not very many pacifists on this site. Well, there should be.
There should be pacifists on the site because it should be a democratic ideal; but that's been forgotten in the rush for the bottom line. The people in Washington just don't care, Democratic or Republican.
Back in the 60s, when I had just gotten out of the Army, I immediately joined the peace movement. There was a peace movement then, and it was effective; so effective, in fact, that it was the cause of the Case-Church amendment being passed.
The Case-Church Amendment was legislation approved by the U.S. Congress in 1973 that prohibited further U.S. military activity in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. This ended direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War, although the U.S. continued to provide military equipment and economic support to the South Vietnamese government. It is named for its principal co-sponsors, Senators Clifford P. Case (R-NJ) and Frank Church (D-ID). The Amendment was defeated 48-42 in the U.S. Senate in August 1972, but revived after the 1972 election. It was reintroduced on January 26, 1973 and approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 13.[1] When it became apparent that the Amendment would pass, President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger lobbied frantically to have the deadline extended.[2] It passed the United States Congress in June by a margin of 278-124 in the House, and 64-26 in the Senate.
We don't have the energy to stop this waste of blood and of money. Or at least, the people on this site don't seem to. I do; I still wear my peace symbol pin every day, I write letters to the editor, I try to get people together to take action, but there's a lack of passion, just like on this site.
And it's really a lack of vision; if people here knew that more than half of the GDP of the United States is going to the military and its support, and that that money is coming out of their pockets, and that it's much more than they are told, enough to fund every social program and every infrastructure program in the world, maybe they would do something. If people realized that when you put all the costs of war together it comes to almost 1,000,000,000,000 a year, if not more, they would bring it to a screaming halt today.
I'm not about to write a GBCW diary; I'm not going away. You're going to be subjected to my rants for as long as I'm around. And I don't care, truly, list or no list, whether you want to see the truth or not, I don't care that much, because I know that eventually people with consciousness will stop the endless wars. Probably they will both be Republican and Democrat, and they'll all be tired of the waste.
I know I am.