• Guided missiles, misguided men Guided missiles, misguided men We anticipate with some trepidation President Obama’s first State of the Union address. Given the depth of the financial crisis, social issues of health care, housing and unemployment as well as
• Guided missiles, misguided men
Guided missiles, misguided men
We anticipate with some trepidation President Obama’s first State of the Union address. Given the depth of the financial crisis, social issues of health care, housing and unemployment as well as the international political climate, it would take a “Hawaiian Supaman” to give us the “change” he promised. While the Pentagon fans out around the globe, the quality of our lives is diminishing.
Here on Kaua‘i, the governor intends to take our share of the transient accommodations tax to offset state revenue shortfalls, which, like in every other state, are projected to worsen in 2010.
Consequently, social services like child protective services, are being scaled back. Our children are on forced school furloughs. School bus service is slated to end in April.
For the last seven years, when the federal budget grew about 28 percent, funding for states and local communities grew at only 14 percent while military expenditure grew 41 percent. That’s almost three times faster. In fact, the military budget is bigger than the revenues of all 50 states combined.
Now Obama is requesting another $33 billion “emergency” war funding after promising in early 2009 he would never request another supplement again. We urge him to shift away from excessive military spending to the funding of human needs in our communities.
Kaua‘i, like the other Hawaiian Islands, imports fuel oil to provide about 90 percent of our electricity generation. Everyone agrees that this is not sustainable.
In 2009, according to National Priorities Project, U.S. taxpayers spent $103.5 billion on military resources used to secure access to oil in foreign countries. If the Iraq war is included, that figure is $215 billion. Compare this hidden cost of oil to only $1.26 billion we invested in renewable energy. This alarming disparity must be addressed.
The Kaua‘i Energy Sustainability Project has proposed a fuel tax of 50 cents per gallon — an example of desperate measures local governments will need to take to counter continued reliance on hostile foreign nations for oil.
Nationally, 7,000 homes are foreclosed on every day, leaving many of our families homeless. Compare this to new military housing on Guam, where a single housing unit is projected at $750,000 as part of the planned $10 billion U.S. military expansion. It is outrageous!
On Kaua‘i, as elsewhere, health care insurance is unavailable to many and affordable policies prove inadequate when the need arises. Our politicians tell us we can’t afford universal coverage like that of so many countries with similar or even lower per capita incomes.
They seem oblivious that military spending, on an annual basis, is seven to 10 times more than the Obamacare proposal even when it included a public option. They certainly didn’t share with us that the 2010 War Funding Act provides universal health care for Iraqi and Afghan citizens.
Helping out the citizens of countries we’re occupying is laudable but surely you can appreciate how backward this policy is when reflecting on the true meaning of “safety” and “security” for Americans.
Here in Hawai‘i, we have the greatest concentration of military infrastructure and personnel of any state except Virginia, where the Pentagon is. Many see this as a benefit but relatively few jobs go to local people. However, according to National Priorities Project, a publication which explains the federal budget for the public, investing public dollars in health care, education, mass transit, weatherization and infrastructure all create more jobs than investing the same amount in the military.
For example, spending on education generates more than twice the number of jobs as military spending and these jobs pay better. Not only that, but these non-military investments generate higher return on government funds than middle class tax cuts.
In 2010 the Pentagon will act on an agreement signed in October to acquire unrestricted use of seven military bases in Colombia and another agreement in December allowing deployment of U.S. troops and missile batteries to Poland.
In the last seven years American soldiers have been deployed in the hundreds of thousands to new bases and conflict and post conflict zones from Albania to Mali to the Philippines.
With the exception of Guam and Vicenza in Italy, where the Pentagon is massively expanding existing installations, most of the new facilities are in nations where the U.S. military has never before penetrated. Even on tiny Kaua‘i, the Pacific Missile Range Facility has expanded to the west side of Ni‘ihau.
Priorities need to be re-established: Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness translate to health, education, housing and jobs!
We see a distinction between reasonable measures to keep American people safe and a military-industrial complex, supported by the lobbyists and Congress that is driving a ruinously expensive militant foreign policy. American Manifest Destiny, dating from the late 1800s when the governments of foreign nations like Hawai‘i were overthrown, still ripples around the world today.
We believe this approach will become ever more destructive as the U.S., now a debtor nation, confronts the backlash from a world of nations striving for a better life for their own people.
World War II hero and former President Dwight Eisenhower said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, whose birthday we celebrate this week, said, “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
Many of us still believe in the “Audacity of Hope.” Whatever the spiritual beliefs of our widely disparate citizens, we will continue to pray for peace and to speak out for truth.
Kip and Sharon Goodwin, Larry and Joan Heller, Sandy Herndon, Ben Nihi, Ray Catania, Katy Rose, Jimmy Trujillo, Janos Samu, Puanani Rogers, Fred Dente, Koohan Paik, Janet Ashkenazy, John L. Zappala
The Kaua‘i Alliance for Peace and Social Justice
