Submitted by Gregg Blomberg
We are being asked this month to comment on the navy’s EIS about doubling the number of Growler aircraft to be stationed at Naval Air Station (NAS) Whidbey Island. I’d like to say the Navy asking us to approve this move is a joke. The joke is on us, all of us who would imagine the navy gives a damn what we say. Here are a few examples why I feel this is so.
Navy Seals are conducting cloak and dagger exercises at our waterfront state parks.
They are also taking over Olympic National Park for electronic warfare training. What could be a better enhancement to a few days camping and climbing in the Olympics? Was that what the National Parks were intended for? Where is the enemy? Are we going to use electronic warfare to fight the Taliban, guys running around with rifles? Are we so desperate we need to sacrifice our parks for Navy war game playgrounds?
They already blast Northwest Washington with awful jet noise, which often goes on all day and into the night. What happens after they import their new jets, will they not want to double the number again? (If you have ever been to Norfolk Va. you know there’s absolutely no limit to what they expect people to put up with).
The Navy has no regard for sea mammals and the oceans; sonar testing subjects underwater life to outrageous noise levels. Is there nothing sacred, nothing we wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice for so-called defense? The navy’s own documents reveal that it plans to dump 20,000 tons of heavy metals and other toxic compounds into the oceans.
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The navy is ridiculously funded and yet there is simply no modern example of ways in which spending more money on “defense” makes America safer. President Bush started two wars, one on totally false pretenses neither of which has ended and in fact they have inspired warfare throughout the mid-east. These and other actions have made more enemy’s then we can kill and has made it unsafe for Americans to travel in much of the world.
Other delights about “defense” spending are; The US has 10 aircraft carriers with two under construction, the rest of the world has 9. Russia, India, China, Thailand, Brazil, etc. have one each. Only Russia and China are potential enemies all the rest belong to allies. This year the US will spend $597.5 billion on our military, as much as the next 12 countries combined. In 2017 we will spend $1,850 for every man, woman, child and unemployed person in America (Wikipedia statistics).
Well, none of this impresses the Navy or our anchors away congressman Rick Larson, they want it all, even though they already have it. World domination, please. Ya sure, you betcha.
A couple quotes from H.L. Mencken, that seem applicable to the US today;
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
“As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron,” wrote Mencken in the Baltimore Evening Sun on July 26, 1920.
