Ezra Silk’s article, “Raytheon profits, despite controversies,” is a useful contribution to the blooming campus dialogue on Wesleyan’s investments in weapons contractors. The fact that Raytheon “makes 90 percent of its profits from defense contracts” and has faced “accusations and charges of spying, theft of government documents and fraud” are of obvious relevance to members of the Wesleyan community considering whether investment in Raytheon is socially responsible.
Also relevant is the company’s description, as quoted by Silk, of the AIM-9X missile system’s “first-shot, first-kill dominance,” its “fifth-generation seeker and thrust vectoring control,” providing “unprecedented performance.”
What human reality lies at the end of the trajectory of this breathless, sexualized jargon? Consider the opening sentences of a news report from early in the Iraq war (Independent of London, 4/02/2003): “An American missile, identified from the remains of its serial number, was pinpointed yesterday as the cause of the explosion at a Baghdad market on Friday night that killed at least 62 Iraqis. The codes on the foot-long shrapnel shard, seen by the Independent correspondent Robert Fisk at the scene of the bombing in the Shu’ale district, came from a weapon manufactured in Texas by Raytheon, the world’s biggest producer of ‘smart’ armaments.”
Using a database maintained by the Department of Defense, the Independent identified the missile as a laser-guided Paveway III, “among its [Raytheon’s] most accurate weaponry.” The killing of these 62 civilians in the Shu’ale marketplace is horrendous but not unique. Such carnage is the consistent and predictable result of bombings and the use of military force generally. No hawk should think otherwise, and neither should anyone supporting the ongoing use of the U.S. military’s death machines in Iraq.
Seen in this light, Wesleyan’s willingness to profit from investment in military contractors like Raytheon is hardly a neutral, apolitical stance. It is a token of this community’s complicity in the prosecution of an illegal, immoral war of aggression and occupation in Iraq, a war that has been disastrous for virtually everyone involved—with some exceptions, among them companies like Raytheon, and, by extension, the Wesleyan endowment.
Wesleyan’s investment in Raytheon and other weapons contractors is a statement that the financial gain to be made from the slaughter of innocents is acceptable as a means for making our education possible. It is a statement that we can live with the fact that our privilege to learn, study, and party, to make friends, make art, make knowledge, and make love at Wesleyan is partially thanks to horrendous events like the slaughter of innocents in the Shu’ale market. This seems to be a rather strong political and moral statement after all.
Will Wesleyan keep on making it?
The answer to that question will say a great deal about the humanity of this institution. We may never all agree on a precise definition of socially responsible investment, but we ought to agree that certain investments are morally indefensible no matter how lucrative. There are a myriad of investment choices that are less socially irresponsible than Raytheon. Divesting from war contractors (which would hardly spell the financial ruin of the school) would give us the opportunity to imagine how we want the endowment to be invested to promote what we believe in.
At 3 p.m. this Friday the community is invited to an anti-war, pro-divestment demonstration outside North College. Come one, come all!
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