August 11, 2012

LETTER OF THE WEEK: Our military used to further corporate interests

Morning Sentinel Staff

In the past, when our government sought to enter foreign theaters of war, it sold war bonds to finance military actions.

War bonds were available to citizens to purchase and helped control inflation in an overstimulated economy by removing money from circulation until the war's conclusion.

After the war, the bonds were liquidated and served as a stimulus to encourage consumer spending as the economy transitioned to peacetime.

Originally, the cost of war was supported by corporate interests, but this gave large companies control over the direction of war. Bonds gave control to the people; those who did not support the war did not purchase bonds.

In modern America, however, the enormous amount of money used for the military industrial complex to exercise foreign invasion is not raised through the sale of bonds, but is seized from the citizens.

Our government today has unequaled access to our money, simply taking what it wants.

Although politicians try to convince us that we are fighting wars based upon moral or ethical considerations, one need only look at a globe to see where our military is sent and why.

Have we sent military to Northern Ireland? An intervention force to Mexico? Rwanda? Sierra Leone? North Korea?

Of all the areas of political unrest, genocide, infanticide, slavery and oppression, why are the most strife-filled areas ignored by a government seeking to bring democracy to the world?

The answer: American corporations have no interest in expanding into these areas. They are too poor. There is insufficient wealth to sustain corporate expansion. Instead, we send our military to resource-rich countries. And so it would seem that the military occupations of today have returned once again to the control of corporations and banks. Our military is used, far too often, to further corporate interests overseas.

Dr. W. Sumner Davis, Oakland

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