Military Strikes Not the Answer in Syria

On Aug. 28, 2013, AFSC and 24 other diverse groups sent a letter to President Obama, urging him to reject military action in Syria and instead intensify diplomacy to stop the bloodshed.

Dear President Obama,

We, the undersigned organizations, are writing to express our grave concerns with your reported plans to intervene militarily in Syria. While we unequivocally condemn any use of chemical weapons along with continued indiscriminate killing of civilians and other violations of international humanitarian law, military strikes are not the answer. Rather than bringing an end to the violence that has already cost more than 100,000 lives, they threaten to widen the vicious civil war in Syria and undermine prospects to de-escalate the conflict and eventually reach a negotiated settlement.

In the course of more than 2 years of war, much of Syria has been destroyed and nearly 2 million people—half of them children—have been forced to flee to neighboring countries. We thank you for the generous humanitarian assistance the U.S. has provided to support the nearly 1 in 3 Syrians—8 million people—in need of aid. But such assistance is not enough.

As the U.S. government itself has recognized, there is no solution to the crisis other than a political one. Instead of pursuing military strikes and arming parties to the conflict, we urge your administration to intensify diplomatic efforts to stop the bloodshed, before Syria is destroyed and the region further destabilized.

Sincerely,

American Friends Service Committee
Church of the Brethren
Code Pink
CREDO Action
Democrats.com
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Friends Committee on National Legislation
Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Historians Against the War
Just Foreign Policy
New Internationalism Project, Institute for Policy Studies
Oxfam America
Peace Action
Peace Education Fund
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Presbyterian Church, USA
Progressive Democrats of America
RootsAction.org
Shomer Shalom Network for Jewish Nonviolence
United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society
USAction
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Veterans for Peace
Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Women’s Action for New Directions

Letter To The President

Dear President Obama: Move the Money from the Military

By R. Aura Kanegis and Tim Franzen

Dear Mr. President,

As you begin your second term in office next week, we hope you will let the U.S. public in on one of Washington’s best-kept open secrets:  We’re not broke. 

Of course, you – along with many on Capitol Hill – know full well that the dire warnings of disaster if we do not drastically cut safety net programs, enforcement of environmental protections, or job creation and training initiatives are patently false. We are a wealthy nation with the means to secure the common good for generations to come.  But like a family blowing our money on luxury vehicles – such as the $610 million-per-plane F-35 – while failing to keep a roof over our head, we urgently need to reexamine our priorities. 

Our federal budget should reflect the things that make us a thriving, sustainable, secure society. Instead, nearly 60 percent of the discretionary budget is now directed toward an incredibly narrow definition of security—the Pentagon budget and other military-related spending.  This grossly disproportionate national “security” spending is making us deeply insecure.

In fact, many within the defense community share this viewpoint.  Among others, Brig. General John Johns and Lt. General Robert Gard recently stated that, “Cutting Pentagon spending recognizes that national security is more than military power. The U.S. is stronger with a strong economy, sustainable jobs, investment in education, renewal of our infrastructure and a sensible energy strategy.  Continuing to waste money when our nation should have other priorities is bad policy and bad for security.”

Think about the $610 million spent on just one F-35 plane—how far would that go to address the 10,000 homeless people who sleep outside in Atlanta every night?   Instead foreclosed homes crumble in southwest Atlanta while the homeless population has grown so large it’s now a large economic class of Atlantans. What could one or two F-35’s do for the 55% of Atlanta’s homeowners who are, on average, $66,496 underwater on their mortgages?

Mr. President, we appreciate that you have begun to publicly question the double standards so often applied to Pentagon spending.  Now the time has come for you to help the U.S. public understand the fiscal and human toll this double standard has wrought.

The end of the 1990s is remembered fondly as an economic heyday, a time when we saw budget surpluses and a thriving economy.  What is given less attention is that at that point, military spending amounted to less than half of what we spend now in inflation-adjusted dollars.  We could afford to invest in job creation, a sound safety net, education programs, and other priorities that built our nation’s most fundamental security needs. 

But since that time, U.S. military spending has doubled—beginning well before the events of September 11, 2001. In fact, the Pentagon routinely struggles to spend all the money it is allocated, and ended FY12 with $100 billion in unused funding sitting in its bank accounts waiting to be spent.  Yet the Pentagon remains the only part of the federal budget not subject to audit, with documented levels of waste that far outpace the entire budgets of critical human needs programs. 

Let’s cut what we don’t need so that we can protect the things we do, Mr. President.

If the sequestration deal is left intact, it still will only return Pentagon spending to 2007 levels -- a time when the U.S. was at war in two countries. That is an inadequate reset in the runaway Pentagon spending we have seen, extravagant spending that has ballooned the salaries of the top five defense contractor CEOs to an average $21.5 million apiece annually while millions of children in the U.S. aren’t sure where their next meal is coming from.

As you develop your FY14 budget, seize this moment to lead us toward real budget reforms.  Let’s bring our Pentagon spending back to the pre-war levels of 2002 and make needed investments in job creation, education, healthcare, and the environment.

Mr. President, this is your year.  You have all the hard-won experience of your first term under your belt, an experienced staff, and the momentum of a clear mandate from the November election.  It’s time to be bold and lead this nation toward new priorities—because there is no more room in the budget for what we don’t need.  What we do need is real  security: good jobs and schools, affordable health care, environmental protections to keep us safe from disastrous changes in climate, accountable institutions upholding justice for all.

We’re not broke – but this nation will become increasingly broken if we don’t change our budget priorities.

R. Aura Kanegis serves as director of the Office of Public Policy and Advocacy of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Tim Franzen is the Georgia Peace and Conflict Resolution program director for the American Friends Service Committee.

  

Military Spending Is Killing Us: Set the Record Straight.

While the Obama administration’s new Defense Guidance document has been portrayed as moving to significant cuts in the Pentagon budget, the President himself tells a starkly different story. At last week’s rollout, he said:

“Over the past ten years, since 9/11, our defense budget grew at an extraordinary pace. Over the next ten years, the growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this—it will still grow... In fact, the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush Administration.”

What does that mean? We will continue to spend $2.1 million every minute of every day on the military – an unethical and unsustainable policy. Yet lawmakers are already clamoring to oppose the proposal, suggesting it would hobble US defense, cripple innovation, and cost jobs.

Please write your local paper to set the record straight: Slowing the growth of the military budget is not a cut in a budget that already has doubled since 9/11 and consequently has devastated spending on human needs.

Nearly every other area of federal spending - investing in jobs, health care, affordable housing, and education – has been cut, putting real security more at risk.

Investment in people and communities, increased reliance on diplomacy, and supporting sustainable human security by meeting human needs at home and abroad is what will ultimately make our world more safe and stable.

The Obama administration’s new strategy remains ominously more of the same.

It plans to focus more resources on naval and air power in the Strait of Hormuz to contain Iran and in Asia to manage China’s rise. It envisions the use of more drones and more covert operations with Special Forces. It calls for increased investment in cyber and space war capabilities. It affirms that the United States will continue to be the world’s leader in deadly arms sales and transfers.

After agreeing to increase spending on nuclear weapons by $85 billion, the Guidance document calls for unspecified reductions on this project. It seeks to pass troop burdens to allies, particularly those in Europe.

It envisions fewer wars like Iraq, and more wars like Afghanistan, where coordination between the Pentagon and the CIA is the model. For more on the insidious linkages between the two agencies, see our resources from our Afghanistan 101 blog and the audio from the Legacies of War in Iraq discussion.

Your voice is needed to change the course ahead. Write your local newspaper to remind everyone real security lies not in more military spending, but in more investment in our communities and the next generation.

Wage Peace,

Peter Lems and Mary Zerkel
American Friends Service Committee