WAR MACHINE RATTLES ON

My letter was finally published in our local paper yesterday. I like the headline they gave it. Nice ring it has.

Dear Editor:

Your headline “War is over” on Dec. 15 was just a tad misleading.

We’ve still got the war in Afghanistan going costing taxpayers $12 billion every month. It appears that we are getting ready to attack Syria — and maybe Iran — and President Obama recently returned from his Asia- Pacific trip where he announced a couple thousand U.S. troops will be deployed in Australia.

Why Australia? Good question.

Maybe most readers didn’t hear we are now surrounding China with U.S. military base expansion in Japan, South Korea, Guam, Australia and Aegis destroyers being deployed just off their coast. Obama also has been expanding weapons sales to Taiwan.

Pentagon spending is now well over $ 660 billion a year, but when you add in the military expenditures from “off-budget” departments like the NRO, NSA, DoE, NASA and the secret “black budget,” the true figure reaches $1 trillion a year. The U.S. spends more on the military than the rest of the world combined.

Our two senators from Maine say that China is our new enemy. China holds our enormous debt and we are their best customer. Are they likely to want a war with us? I seriously doubt it.

Here in Maine, and across the nation, we see growing efforts to destroy social progress with more cuts in health care, education and infrastructure. The 1 percent, who now control Congress, continue to reaccumulate capital while transferring jobs overseas where they can maximize their profits and shelter their taxes.

At the same time they continue to ask the 99 percent of us to sacrifice even more and have our children die on foreign lands so that the corporations can control the declining stocks of natural resources on our fragile Mother Earth.

Former President Eisenhower was right when he warned the nation to “beware of the military industrial complex” that has gained unwarranted influence in the halls of Congress.

The people are suffering as the war machine expands. It’s time for us to rattle our chains while we still can.

Bruce K. Gagnon,
Coordinator,
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
Bath