Press Statement: More Pentagon Spending Won't Make Us Safer
Washington, D.C. — February 26, 2017 — In response to reports that President Trump’s budget proposal will ask for “sharp increases in Defense Department spending,” and major cuts to other departments like the EPA, Jon Rainwater, executive director of the United States’ largest grassroots peace organization, Peace Action, released the following statement:
“More Pentagon spending won’t make Americans safer, particularly when it comes at the expense of departments like the EPA that are working to address the dangers of climate change. The U.S. military budget is already larger than the next seven countries’ military budgets combined. Pie charts of our discretionary budget look like Pac-Man because the Pentagon is gobbling up over 50% of the pie. Education, healthcare, and a host of other critical investments are left with the scraps.
“Wherever you look, Trump is leading our country in the wrong direction. When people wonder why they can’t afford to put their kids through college, or why they can’t afford to pay their medical bills, the bloated Pentagon budget should be the first thing on their minds.”
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Founded in 1957, Peace Action (formerly SANE/Freeze), the United States’ largest peace and disarmament organization, with over 100,000 paid members and nearly 100 chapters in 36 states, works to abolish nuclear weapons, promote government spending priorities that support human needs, encourage real security through international cooperation and human rights and support nonmilitary solutions to international conflicts. The public may learn more and take action at http://www.Peace-Action.org.
Reblogged this on AGR Daily News Service.
Yes. The EPA is working to “address the dangers of climate change,” which our military considers a huge security issue. There is an inconsistency here.
In addition to not having the ‘public megaphone’ that sets the boundaries for debate and discussion, peace people and peace orgs are faced with the dilemma of how to even approach the issue of the “10 percent defense increase.” It is necessary to dispute the logic of the increase, to tear it to shreds, in fact. But that does not seem to address the seeming mindlessness of always more and more of the same dead end policies. These seem to have no influence over disastrous and calcifying policies of same old same old.
It isn’t necessarily so difficult to see what the psychological/sociological profile of what drives things is, but how to link up with a body politic long enthrall to these forces is a question that needs to be considered in some new way. It is not enough to consider issues with simple statements that present the opposing view or even to wonkishly parse matters since that has obviously not led to hopeful change whatsoever.
I think this is a task that falls to peace orgs like Peace Action especially. I have no insight about how to do this, but it is clear to see that the kinds of efforts to rouse people to the aid of the democratic party and its ostensibly leftward leanings has had no impact in this realm of the polis and I believe this reform minded approach to creating more and better “democrats” is bankrupt.