• Rest of the story behind PMRF Rest of the story behind PMRF Your article (“We’re part of the community,” TGI, May 1) about PMRF as a bee and seal friendly sanctuary doesn’t say anything about the real reason it exists.
• Rest of the story behind PMRF
Rest of the story behind PMRF
Your article (“We’re part of the community,” TGI, May 1) about PMRF as a bee and seal friendly sanctuary doesn’t say anything about the real reason it exists.
The U.S. military’s doctrine is to maintain “full spectrum dominance” over every other military and nation. PMRF is fundamental to that purpose. As the article says, it claims operations authority over 2.1 million square miles of the Earth’s surface. Moreover, it is where Lockheed Martin and other weapons corporations develop the Aegis missile’s launch capability.
In pentagon = speak, “missile” and “defense” are always conjoined; i.e. “Aegis missile defense.” Independent military strategists, though, regard it as a component of first strike nuclear capability; deliver the first strike, then the Aegis “defense” missiles attempt to target retaliatory missiles. Certainly the Russians and Chinese view it this way. They have protested the encirclement of their countries by Aegis and other missile batteries and have taken defensive measures. It adds up to an incipient new arms race.
The military gets 54 percent of the federal discretionary budget, education gets 6 percent. On Kauai’s Westside, that disparity is reflected in the difference between that portion of an $8.2 billion missile outlay that is spent at PMRF and the allocation of education funds for Waimea High School. It’s reported it may be too little to keep the school open. Parents would have to pay for private schooling or the students would be bused to Lihue.
PMRF Commander Hay says in the article that PMRF defends freedom and that he regards the Westside community as his ohana.
No direct causal effect can be drawn between PMRF and Waimea High. It just seems to me that, to fund the war machine that PMRF enables, the young people in that ohana pay a price; their freedom to be secure in the knowledge that the adults are guaranteeing a quality education for them.
Kip Goodwin
Kapaa
