Dear members of the Peace Community,
I was disturbed to open my e-mail and find that the Student Senate is hearing a resolution to create a military science minor. This is an expansion of the ROTC program; it represents a stand to increase the military influence on young persons’ lives at the educational level. While the school has a major program, a minor would expand military influence at the University. This is a frightening expansion, given the nature of the military, whose de facto practices amount to killing and destroying.
The Senate decided last year to support an environmental resolution, which declared the need for action at the federal and local level. There is an inherent contradiction between these messages, as one seeks to preserve the environment and the other has continually destroyed regions and obliterated landscapes, with tools like firebombing (used in Tokyo during World War II), Agent Orange (a defoliant used in Vietnam), depleted uranium (Iraq, Afghanistan) and of course the enormous arsenal of nuclear and hydrogen weaponry, to name a few.
I intend to gather signatures in opposition to this unconscionable program.
Let there be no mistake, I support the individual’s sacrifice and appreciate the necessity for defense. Yet the military has time and time again been used as a weapon of offense and antagonism. Our nation must defend itself, yes, but that cannot come at the cost of foreign military entanglements. “The military is a racket,” said Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, who, at the time of his death, was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. And as long as it remains so I cannot support it or its subsidiaries.
Please stand with me against this program expansion and what it stands for at the ASUO Senate meeting.
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