The Author said:

heinous weapons that kill and maim primarily children.

OUTRIGHT LIE. Wars are fought between Armies, where armies are attacked, and killed and maimed. Children, God forbid, are sometimes casualties. Wars do NOT 'PRIMARILY' target or kill or maime children.

Coolthrop says:"Building more bombs is not the answer"

Err...Cooly..what the heck is the QUESTION ?

Demented, retarded, and historically challenged and possibly malicious articles like the one we are commenting on are very dangerous to a naive West! By the way.. those adjectives are not personal insults to the author, they are accurate descriptors of the content of the article.

1/ DEMENTED.

Aware of things happening, but no clue as to their connection with other events.

2/ RETARDED.

Clearly lacking in insight about how life, tribes, nations work, thus leading to false conclusions which ignore certain HARSH realites of life.

3/ HISTORICALLY CHALLENGED

Also manifesting a lack of awareness of the movements of nations, and powers and empires throughout history, and naively thinking that because we have had a few decades without being directly in a major world conflict that 'all is sweet'... err.. no..it aint !
He also fails to recognize TRENDS as they are quite clear, and leading to outcomes totally contrary to his suggestion that laying down arms will suddenly bring in Utopia.

4/ POSSIBLY MALICIOUS

In the face of undeniable and growing military/terrorism threats, any call to 'disarm' and be a good example is VERY close to a fifth column action.

OUR PEACE...is based on the outcome of WAR...is maintained by brute power, and contains the seeds of the next war.
Make no mistake about that ! (signed Joh)

Boaz, for such a harsh critique of the article, you don't say all that much about its content.

Do you think the US is justified in spending half the world's defence budget? Should this be such a high priority?

Can you not envision other non-violent means of achieving these ends, given that there is such a vast amount of resources available?

Are we not just a client state of the US? Do we really have any choice?
Eisenhower said:"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together..."

In fact, now does the US government of whatever stripe, have any actual influence over the plutocrats of "the huge industrial & military machinery" which currently exists, or am I unduly pessimistic?

I can only agree again with BOAZ_DAVID in his assessment of this article. There are several brutal facts of life which many in the west seem determined to ignore. These are:

1. That when the world is about to run short of a resource (in this case oil), you don't give a rationed supply to all, you have a little war to see who gets it all and who gets nothing.

2. You must have a vision for the future. My vision is that if I had to pick a country today that shows what most of the third world will be like in 25 years time, I would pick Iraq.

3. Nothing will be done to solve any of these problems, because it remains a strict taboo to even mention the main underlying cause of most of the world's troubles. This underlying cause is, of course, the burgeoning population of the third world.

4. With declining oil resources and burgeoning third world population, we are in for a very interesting century, in which having the lion lie down with the lamb and beating swords into ploughshares are both definitely off the agenda.

5. Our military spending is essential to our survival in a world where it will not be too many more years until our navy will be using refugee boats for target practice.

I have always had the most immense admiration for pacifists and conscientious objectors in time of war. Their moral courage in standing up for their beliefs when their friends and colleagues are off fighting the enemy is monumental.

However, this stance is actually far more difficult to justify in what is loosely described as peacetime.

That may sound perverse, but being vocally anti-war when there is no immediate threat is self-indulgent and dangerously complacent.

It is a simple and observable fact that not every country or faction is as civilized and balanced as we are. There are many, many countries that have a substantially lower standard of living, and who might one day decide that they are sufficiently envious of our (or one of our equally well off allies') prosperity that they pluck up the courage to engage us in hostilities.

Whether we like it or not, it is vitally important to our future that we maintain sufficient deterrence, in the form of our military capability and self-confidence, to prevent this scenario from coming to pass either for ourselves or for a future generation.

Nor is it a matter of blindly following the US. Although it has to be said that the amount of money that their population is willing to subscribe to weaponry is of direct benefit to us, so long as we remain pretty much on the same side.

TRTL asks:

>>Can you not envision other non-violent means of achieving these ends, given that there is such a vast amount of resources available?<<

Sorry, nope.

Hi, Sir Vivor --

To answer your questions about cluster munitions, go to the Australian Parliament House website and you'll be able to access the Peace Organisation of Australia's submission to the Senate inquiry into the Cluster Munitions (Prohibition) Bill 2006. This has details about previous Australian stockpiles. For information about the government's decision to acquire cluster munitions, see the Defence Department's submission to the same inquiry.

Regards
Tim