Reflection on Lord of war

On Wednesday, our world politics class watched the film Lord of War a film with Nicholas Cage playing a historic arms dealer who sold many illegal arms to African and Middle Eastern countries. In the final portion of the film, the dealer was captured but released by the federal government because the US was force to lie on the covert supplying of arms to pro-American forces in Africa. This form of military supplying is a new act of international support by the US who would originally supply open arms trade with their neighbors. After the successful covert operations during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which involved the US military sending aid and weapons to the mujaheddin through the Pakistani government, the US grew to belief that supplying pro-American forces through the black market and arms dealers would conceal the US from foreign accusations of active military intervention in war-torn countries. This would also keep the US from being held accountable for supllying pro democratic groups that carry out acts of mass murder.

Another part of the film I found interesting was that the corruption and militarism in African nations greatly exceeded that of any other country (even Lebanon). This is not due to political rivalry or the influence of the black market but due to ethnic pride. Even without the arms trade in Africa, ethnic tensions would still occur and would create the same amount of destruction and slaughter (the militias in Rwanda relied more on machetes to incite terror than they relied on guns). Since the African continent is made up of different ethnic groups and nationalities, the post imperailst period created tensions over the proper represetation of these various groups. The lack of compromise and historical conflicts between certain African tribes, created a wave of what I call ethnic supremacy. This term is meant to convey how the combination of social darwinism, tribalism and ancestral conflicts caused African ethnic groups to engage in wars with each other. Northhern Africa was spared from this movement due to the political and social influence Islamic law. Unfortunately, the region of Sudan whose tribal groups accused the Islamic groups of invading their lands, refused to coexist with the arab populations and indoing so engaged in a series of conflicts which seem to have no end. If Africa wishes to progress without resulting in more bloodshed, they would have to educate their civilians to obey governmental law and to ignore their tribal roots. Since Africa did not understand the meaning of self-rule until they were granted independence, they were unaffected by any sense of nationalism, which serves to keep the population from engaging in ethnic strife.