the u.s. should take a lesson from the chapter in the psychology-on-friendships textbook -- particularly that one on buying your friends. the lesson? it never works.
seriously, everybody has known someone like this: the kid with money who didn't know how to develop real relationships (he/she wasn't taught) and so gained admiration and made "friends" with his/her parents' big house and collection of flashy new things. coming from a small town where swimming pools (particularly the in-ground variety) were such a rarity, i always felt especially bad for the kids who had them -- the influx of friends in the summer and the rather lonely months that followed must've been tough to handle... this is, of course, not to say that all kids with pools are socially awkward or emotionally underdeveloped and wander through life forging only shallow, meaningless relationships. that is not my point at all.
what i'm getting at is
the u.s.'s most recent plan to sell arms to saudi arabia and "five other oil-rich Persian Gulf states as well as new 10-year military aid packages to Israel and Egypt" -- all in an effort to gain allies should iran decide it wants to pick a fight. what's most awesome about this is that we've tried it before, and it backfired -- literally. take, for example,
the iran-contra affair.
shit, you mean we sold weapons to IRAN a mere 20 years ago, the very enemy we may be up against next? and how about
those weapons sales to iraq in the 80's?
wait, that country -- iraq -- that sounds familiar. i feel like i've heard of that place recently... there were also the billions of dollars of arms sold to afghanistan in the 80's, which, according to
this report from the u.s. arms trade resource center "ended up empowering Islamic fundamentalist fighters across the globe." just in case you don't follow the link, i'm gonna paste the most illuminating quote here:
"Perhaps no single policy is more at odds with President Bush's pledge to 'end tyranny in our world' than the United States' role as the world's leading arms exporting nation... Although arms sales are often justified on the basis of their purported benefits, from securing access to overseas military facilities to rewarding coalition partners, these alleged benefits often come at a high price."
if that doesn't outline the large-scale failure of arms deals, i don't know what does.
what the u.s. should consider is billion-dollar deals of medical and educational aid -- or something else real and meaningful -- with the countries we want to make friends with. i mean, think about it. had we supplied afghanistan with truckloads of medicine and books in the 1980's, the early 2000's might have turned out a lot differently.
scene: the oval office. the president sits at his desk, stacks of official documents piled high. an aide bursts through the door, his hair a mess, sweat dripping down his temple, his tie loosened and top shirt button undone. he's clutching a thick, rolled up report in his left hand. he shakes it as he speaks: "mr. president! mr. president! i've got some bad news... al-qaeda's gotten ahold of the penicillin. and goddammit, we think they might know how to use it!!"
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