Guns for Peace

According to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, selling arms in the Gulf will help counter terrorism and "bolster forces of moderation." No, really. I'm not even making this up. Look at this:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12349890

Now I'm not one of those pro-gun-regulation liberals. In fact, it's one of the big areas where I disagree with the "blanket liberal agenda." I believe I should be able to buy, own, and carry a gun if I damn well please. Sure, the government may be the arm of my protection, but what if we need to protect ourselves from our government? But I digress.

My government is trying to tell me (and the rest of the world) that handing out guns, depression-era soup-line style, to a bunch of war-tired countries that don't agree on very much, is going to bring peace in the Middle East. I really can't think of one instance where pointing weapons at an enemy has lead to peaceful co-existence.

The new sales to Arab countries, notably Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, will be balanced with a more than 25 percent increase in military aid to Israel over the next 10 years. This will enable the Jewish state to keep its qualitative military edge over neighbors with which it has no peace deal.

It sounds to me like our plan is to let them kill each other until no one is left. I suppose that's one way to maintain a superpower. And it's not as though weapon sales have ever come back to haunt us.

It must take a bureaucracy the size of the United States government to create a plan so complicated that giving away guns will produce peace.