War, Military, Police, Jailers, Public Works

War, Military, Prisons, Police, and “Public Works” 

In response to a query, I wrote the following:

I haven't given much thought to returning Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans,
other than to sympathize with the horrible experience that they must have
had/been having. I have even more sympathy for the aggressed upon people of
Iraq and Afghanistan. Then there is the wounded on both sides of the
"wars".

War results in a very high cost of health care, and outrageous physical
suffering, in addition to the emotional suffering of families and unwounded
citizens, the deprivations of being in a war zone, and of course the direct
costs associated with feeding the military industrial complex and the
costs of arming the "terrorist" resistors. All these are HUGE opportunity
costs for the peaceful development of equitable, sustainable, modest
communities.

Ideally, I'd like to eventually abolish the military. Other than the
unpopularity among reactionary Americans, there would be issues of
transition of employment for military and other types of "security"
personnel like police and jailers. Then there is the issue that people go
into these positions because of a lack of other economic opportunities.

Fidel Castro said that we are all policeman, meaning that we should all
follow moral code in all aspects of life and help straighten others out who
are acting immorally or amorally. I have given a lot of thought to the
prison industrial complex and the unfairness of such system. The ideal
would be zero incarceration. I suggest employment transition planning for
the guards and policemen and citizen review boards for prisoners because I am sure that
many have been unfairly prosecuted since, especially for the poor, there
are never any or very little in the way of investigations on the behalf of
their defense.

With regards to public works, I think that public and private monies should
be allocated to rebuilding our neighborhoods and facilitating the
transitions that I have talked about in this note and previously, and other
matters that I have not yet addressed (such as agriculture, pollution,
fisheries, and energy which I have only mentioned under the terms
sustainability and environmental/public health).

I'm a work kin for peace and cooperation,

Mike Morin

www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com