Let’s face it ….

Bushit’s Amerika is a proud nation of firsts.

Among them:

First in oil consumption:

Amerika burns up 20.7 million barrels per day, the equivalent of the combined oil consumption of China, Japan, Germany, Russia & India.

First in carbon dioxide emissions:

Each year, world polluters pump 24,126,416,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the environment. The United States & its territories are responsible for 5.8 billion metric tons of this, more than China (3.3 billion), Russia (1.4 billion) & India (1.2 billion) combined.

First in external debt:

Amerika owes $10.040 trillion, nearly a quarter of the global debt total of $44 trillion.

First in military expenditures:

The serial corporate rape of the Amerikan Treasury continues, with Bushit requesting US$481 billion for the Department of Defence for 2008. But this huge figure does not come close to representing total Amerikan military expenditures projected for the coming year.

To get a sense of the resources allocated to the military, the costs of the global war on terrorism, of the building, refurbishing, or maintaining of the US nuclear arsenal & other expenses also need to be factored in. Military analyst Winslow Wheeler did the math recently: "Add US$142 billion to cover the anticipated costs of the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan; add $17 billion requested for nuclear weapons costs in the Department of Energy; add another $5 billion for miscellaneous defence costs in other agencies ... & you get a grand total of $647 billion for 2008."

Taking another approach to the use of US resources, Columbia University economist, Joseph Stiglitz, & Harvard Business School lecturer, Linda Bilmes, added to known costs of the war in Iraq invisible costs like its impact on global oil prices as well as the long-term cost of healthcare for wounded veterans & came up with a price tag of between US$1 trillion & US$2.2 trillion.

If we turned what Amerika will spend on the military in 2008 into small bills, we could give each one of the world's more than 1 billion teenagers & young adults an Xbox 360 with wireless controller (power supply in remote rural areas not included) & two video games to play: maybe Gears of War & Command and Conquer would be appropriate.

But if we're committed to fighting obesity, maybe Dance Dance Revolution would be a better bet. Amerika alone spends what the rest of the world combined devotes to military expenditures.

First in weapons sales:

Since 2001, US global military sales have normally totalled between US$10 & US$13 billion. That's a lot of weapons, but in fiscal year 2006, the Pentagon broke its own recent record, inking arms sales agreements worth US$21 billion. It almost goes without saying that this is significantly more than any other nation in the world.

In this gold-medal tally of firsts, there can be no question that things that go bang in the night are our proudest products. No one makes more of them or sells them more effectively than we do. When it comes to the sorts of firsts that once went with a classic civilian manufacturing base, however, gold medals are in short supply. To take an example:

Not first in automobiles:

Once, Chrysler, General Motors & Ford ruled the domestic & global roost, setting the standard for the automotive industry. Not any more. In 2006, the United States imported almost $150 billion more in vehicles & auto parts than it sent abroad. Automotive analyst Joe Barker told the Boston Globe, "It's a very tough environment" for the so-called Detroit Three. "In times of softening demand, consumers typically will look to brands that they trust & rely on. Consumers trust & rely on Japanese brands."

Not even first in bulk goods:

The Department of Commerce recently announced total March exports of US$126.2 billion & total imports of US$190.1 billion, resulting in a trade deficit of US$63.9 billion. This is a US$6 billion increase over February.

But why be gloomy? Stick with arms sales & it's dawn in America every day of the year. Sometimes, the weapons industry pretends that it's like any other trade -- especially when it's pushing congressional representatives (as it always does) for fewer restrictions & regulations. But don't be fooled. Arms aren't automobiles or refrigerators. They're sui generis; they are the way the United States can always be No. 1 - & everyone wants them. The odds that, in your lifetime, there will ever be a US$128 billion trade deficit in weapons are essentially nil. Arms are Amerika’s real gold-medal event.

First in sales of surface-to-air missiles:

Between 2001 & 2005, Amerika delivered 2,099 surface-to-air missiles to nations in the developing world, 20 percent more than Russia, the next-largest supplier.

First in sales of military ships:

During that same period, the United States sent 10 "major surface combatants" like aircraft carriers & destroyers to developing nations. Collectively, the four major European weapons producers shipped 13 (& Amerika was first in the anti-ship missiles that go along with such ships, with nearly double [338] the exports of the next largest supplier Russia [180]).

First in military training:

A thoughtful empire knows that it is not enough to send weapons; you have to teach people how to use them. The Pentagon plans on training the militaries of 138 nations in 2008 at a cost of nearly $90 million. No other nation comes close.

First in private military personnel:

According to bestselling author Jeremy Scahill, there are at least 126,000 private military personnel deployed alongside uniformed military personnel in Iraq alone. Of the more than 60 major companies that supply such personnel worldwide, more than 40 are US-based.

Rest assured, governments around the world, often at each others' throats, will want Amerikan weapons long after their people have turned up their noses at a range of once dominant American consumer goods.

Just a few days ago, for instance, the "trade" publication Defense News reported that Turkey & the United States signed a US$1.78 billion deal for Lockheed Martin's F-16 fighter planes. As it happens, these planes are already ubiquitous - Israel flies them, so does the United Arab Emirates, Poland, South Korea, Venezuela, Oman & Portugal, not to forget most other modern air forces.

In many ways, the F-16 is not just a high-tech fighter jet, it's also a symbol of U.S. backing & friendship. Buying our weaponry is one of the few ways you can actually join the American imperial project!

In order to remain No. 1 in the competitive jet field, Lockheed Martin, for example, does far more than just sell airplanes. TAI, Turkey's aerospace corporation, will receive a boost with this sale, because Lockheed Martin is handing over responsibility for parts of production, assembly & testing to Turkish workers.

The Turkish air force already has 215 F-16 fighter planes & also plans to buy 100 of Lockheed Martin's new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter over the next 15 years in a deal estimated at US$10.7 billion. That's US$10.7 billion on fighter planes for a country that ranks 94th on the United Nations' Human Development Index, below Lebanon, Colombia & Grenada, & far below all the European nations that Ankara is courting as it seeks to join the European Union. Now that's a real American sales job for you!

Here's the strange thing, though: this genuine, gold-medal manufacturing & sales job on weapons simply never gets the attention it deserves. As a result, most Americans have no idea how proud they should be of our weapons manufacturers & the Pentagon - essentially our global sales force - which makes sure our weapons travel the planet & regularly demonstrates their value in small wars from Latin America to Central Asia.

Of course, there's tons of data on the weapons trade, but who knows about any of it? There are a dozen or so sober annual (or semiannual) reports quantifying the business of war making, including the Arms Trade Resource Center report "U.S. Weapons at War: Fueling Conflict or Promoting Freedom?" These reports get desultory, obligatory press attention, but only once in a blue moon do they get the sort of full-court press treatment that befits our No. 1 product line.

Dense collections of facts, percentages & comparisons don't seem to fit particularly well into the usual patchwork of front page stories. And yet the mainstream press is a glory ride, compared to the TV news, which hardly acknowledges most of the time that the weapons business even exists.

In any case, that inside-the-fold, fact-heavy, wonky news story on the arms trade, however useful, can't possibly convey the gold-medal feel of a business that has always preferred the shadows to the sun. No reader checking out such a piece is going to feel much, except maybe overwhelmed by facts.

The connection between the factory that makes a weapons system & the community where that weapon "does its duty" is invariably missing in action, as are the relationships among the companies making the weapons & the generals (on-duty & retired) & politicians making the deals, or raking in their own cut of the profits for themselves &/or their constituencies. In other words, Amerika’s most successful (& most deadly) export remains our most invisible one.

Maybe the only way to break through this paralysis of analysis would be to stop talking about weapons exports as a trade at all. Maybe Amerika shouldn't be using economic language to describe it. Yes, the weapons industry has associations, lobby groups & trade shows.

They have the same tri-fold exhibits, scale models & picked-over buffets as any other industry; still, maybe we have to stop thinking about the export of fighter planes & precision-guided missiles as if they were so many widgets & start thinking about them in another language entirely - the language of drugs.

After all, what does a drug dealer do? He creates a need & then fills it. He encourages an appetite or (even more lucratively) an addiction & then feeds it.

Arms dealers do the same thing. They suggest to foreign officials that their military just might need a slight upgrade. After all, they'll point out, haven't you noticed that your neighbour just upgraded in jets, submarines & tanks? And didn't you guys fight a war a few years back? Doesn't that make you feel insecure? And why feel insecure for another moment when, for just a few billion bucks, we'll get you suited up with the latest model military, even better than what we sold them, or you, the last time around.

Why does Turkey, which already has 215 fighter planes, need 100 extras in an even higher-tech version? It doesn't, but Lockheed Martin, working the Pentagon, made them think they did.

The world doesn't need stronger arms control laws; it needs a global sobriety coach - & some kind of 12-step program for the crooked dealer nation as well.