Friends,
Some of us watched a powerful film last night called “Shadow World.” While it did not provide us with an outlook and understanding we did not already share, it demonstrated graphically the enormous power of multinational military corporations, the financial hold these corporations have on virtually every country in the Global North and Global South, the deeply embedded idea most cultures share of “the inevitability of war” and the evils of “human nature,” and the profoundly negative consequences the war system have had on literally billions of people in terms of death, destruction, and every day pain and suffering.
The article linked above does a very good job of analyzing
the military/industrial complex today and how US preparedness for war and
national security bears no relationship to twenty-first century reality. While
the tasks are daunting, it is clear that the peace movement, at the local
level, even more than nationally, must insist that all politicians say “no” to
military spending. This vision (and program) must guide work for all
presidential and other candidates for state and national office as well. The
connections between the war system and virtually every other human problem must
be made clear again and again. And, the peace movement must be cognizant of the
fact that a war system that has been under construction since the end of the
nineteenth century (or even earlier as the Europeans conquered the lands
already occupied and slave owners disciplined peoples from Africa) will not be
abolished overnight. But Another World is Possible.
