Perpetuating war

Jim Camden’s front-page Fairchild/tanker story documents a shell game Spokane can’t get enough of. The subsequent Sunday editorial demonstrates that The Spokesman-Review, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Sen. Patty Murray play the game supporting the Pentagon narrative that Fairchild is essential to national defense and the local economy.

In fact, Fairchild’s mission is to stimulate public and political support in the Northwest for lavish military spending and corporation-approved perpetual war. The tanker controversy is a distraction to keep us from noticing that the military has no positive accomplishments in decades, and is now resuming the most costly, counterproductive and suicidal military program in history - “improving” nuclear weapons.

You may have noticed Democrats and Republicans running for president aren’t worried about nukes, civilian-killing drones, military suicides or the F-35 flying garbage can, never mind a few billion dollars worth of obsolete, aerial filling stations.

Not that it has anything to do with the economy my Veterans for Peace colleagues and I live in, but Fairchild boosters can take heart. Even if we get no new tankers, with our progress in defense matters, we may have another chance to host rail-based MX nuclear missiles.

Rusty Nelson

Rockford