Weapons, weapons everywhere

What is a "Gordian Knot?" It represents a very difficult problem, seemingly unsolvable, "intractable," according to gordiansolutions.com.

I must admit that I have a morbid fascination with "things military." I am, as I write, listening to a C-SPAN hearing of the Commission on the Guard and Reserves. Rows of uniforms fill the audience and the witness table. The subject is where to scrape up and equip more armed forces.

The war in Iraq is seriously draining personnel and weapons from Homeland Security. (To date we have had 2937 military fatalities in the Iraq coalition, as well as 22,057 wounded.) We have it upside down. In the past 6 years utilization of weapons was chosen over diplomacy, and sending armed Guard and Reserve members abroad over keeping where they are needed at home.

Weapons proliferation represents a very knotty problem. In each article we learn how arms are varied, widespread, and too often the first choice in a conflict. Violence or threats of violence in foreign lands characterize far too many of today's stories from foreign newspapers:

• FT - The Financial Times reports that 1) a suicide car bomber killed 60 people in Baghdad on Dec. 7 (VE Day). 2) Israel confuses the world about their nulear weapon intentions. 3) The situation of increasing widespread violence in Darfur causes the U.K. and U.S. to look at military options; Sudan dismissed the threats.


• Aljazeera - And thousands are fleeing violence in Sri Lanka; hospital admissions were for artillary and mortar shells, according to Aljazeera.net.


• BBC - And the Pentagon will share Air Force fighter technology with Great Britain, according to the BBC. The BBC News also carried a story about Hatian gunmen seizing dozens today in Baghdad, , and fake police kidnapped dozens today in Baghdad.

One of many classes of proliferation -
A Google search on the innocuous little abbreviation "AK-47" produced 3,160,ooo items for my glazing eyes. Newsweek covered a chilling wrinkle about gang violence with this:

Crime: 'Netbangers,' Beware Street gangs are going online to compare notes
and pick fights.

WMD - Larry Kahaner, writing for the Washington Post, labeled the AK-47as a "Weapon of Mass Destruction." To quote,

The AK-47 has become the world's most prolific and effective combat weapon, a device so cheap and simple that it can be bought in many countries for less than the cost of a live chicken. Depicted on the flag and currency of several countries, waved by guerrillas and rebels everywhere, the AK is responsible for about a quarter-million deaths every year. It is the firearm of choice for at least 50 legitimate standing armies and countless fighting forces from Africa and the Middle East to Central America and Los Angeles. It has become a cultural icon, its signature form -- that banana-shaped magazine -- defining in our consciousness the contours of a deadly weapon.
. . . The AK has pierced through popular culture, too. In 2004, Playboy magazine dubbed it one of the "50 Products That Changed the World," ranking it behind the Apple Macintosh desktop, the birth-control pill and the Sony Betamax video machine. Rappers Ice Cube and Eminem mention AKs in their lyrics. And in the movie "Jackie Brown," actor Samuel L. Jackson captures the weapon's global cachet: "AK-47. The very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every [expletive] in the room."

Amnesty International headlined: "The AK-47: the world's favourite killing machine." I have no answers to the Gordian Knot of how to separate people from their weapons. I am only left with the news items - every day peppered with weapons stories. I am turning on the NASA channel to watch the Discovery/International Space Station story!

Technorati tags: iraq war iraq articles current affairs news news and politics weapons

My "creative post" today at Southwest Blogger is about my childhood Christmases.