Billions (More) for Bombs (Page 2 of 2)

This alone should raise a question or two. But even more disturbing is the “What if?”

What if we had spent $6 trillion dollars over the last 50 years pursuing a different kind of security—better education for our children, health care for everyone, a program to build the kinds of self-sufficiency that would truly defeat poverty and all its attendant ills?

What if we were spending our common treasury today on these things that reflect our common values? One year’s Bomb spending would build a million Habitat for Humanity houses. Habitat homes not only provide shelter, they usher households across the border from “scraping by” to full participation in economic life: paying taxes, developing an investment base, achieving “respectability.” This is an investment for bootstrap conservatives and liberal do-gooders alike.

Or how about this: One year’s spending at the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge alone would feed every hungry child in Tennessee three meals a day for a year. One year’s Bomb production budget would fully fund Head Start, the early childhood program that has been proven to reduce social costs in the long run—another great program for conservatives and liberals alike.

But of course, our money is not funding these programs. Instead, we are buying bombs, refurbishing our old ones and, incredibly, at the same time we are threatening to attack Iran for enriching uranium, we are investing $25 million to design a new U.S. nuke—the Reliable Replacement Warhead—with talk in Congress right now of doubling or tripling that amount. That should give some sense of comfort and reassurance to Iran and North Korea, shouldn’t it?

Ike was right about this, and Walter Stark is right.

We cannot afford nuclear weapons—not the new bomb plant planned for Oak Ridge, not the new weapons complex announced by President Bush, not the Reliable Replacement Warhead.

Today the Bomb costs us the respect of the world; our new bombs violate our solemn treaty obligations. The Bomb also costs us our security; our growing arsenal compels other nations to protect themselves with weapons of mass destruction. The Bomb costs us our children’s future; it costs us environmentally; it costs workers their health. No balance sheet in the world can justify the Bomb.

Our current Federal deficit has passed the $1 trillion mark. It is legacy debt—one we leave our children and their children. Which brings me to a final warning from Eisenhower: “We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.” This may be the greatest expense of all.

Ralph Hutchison is spokesman for the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, a non-profit organization working for peace, justice, and an end to nuclear weapons production at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge (www.stopthebombs.org).