It’s totally absurd that student opinion at Wesleyan is represented by a bunch of ambitious conservative sycophants with no concept of right and wrong. Wesleyan got an official opinion from the Argus’ editor, proclaiming his strong feelings that we should continue to invest in arms makers Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Tyco.* The WSA voted 20-1 against divestment, and the Argus is now presenting an overtly biased three-part series explaining the virtues of our military investments, and complementing the stories with a glance at the companies’ least important faults. Is everyone with a conscience too busy doing something interesting to serve on the WSA or work for the Argus? Seriously, what the hell?
Iraq war aside (and that’s a big aside), it is these companies that build most of the world’s weaponry. Half of U.S. arms exports go to poor countries; U.S. weapons were sent to 18 of the world’s 25 “active conflicts” (civil wars) last year… to help kill people; 80% of the countries we sent arms to were labeled “undemocratic” or “major human rights abusers” by our own State Department. Why the hell is Wesleyan investing in Angolan and Indonesian state repression? And who built those weapons last summer, the ones that made a brief stop in Israel before falling on Lebanon? It is hardly Wesleyan’s moral imperative to keep the Israeli army well-stocked with helicopter gun-ships and mines… like the Gator mines currently manufactured by Raytheon with the help of our endowment money.
In the 1980’s, General Dynamics sold several thousand Stinger missiles to anti-Soviet Mujahedeen rebel fighters in Afghanistan. It generated a handsome profit at the time, maybe even some for our endowment. Hundreds of them landed on the black market, bought up by groups like Al-Qaida, Hamas, and the Taliban, and subsequently used for terrorism (and against U.S. forces, among others). In fact, American-made weapons have been used against U.S. soldiers in many of our most recent military endeavors—Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Panama. So Wesleyan gets to invest not only in poor countries’ civil wars and American-made international instability, but also the weapons used against our own soldiers? Nice.
Last December, the UN voted 153 to 1 on an Arms Trade Treaty (the campaign was led by Oxfam International and Amnesty International to stop the spread of small arms). What one nation voted against? America! And why? Because of the millions of dollars politicians get from the arms industry! Or maybe it was the U.S. Government’s good conscience that made us the only country not to oppose the global proliferation of cheap, mass-produced AK-47’s (like the ones they use in Darfur!) So Wesleyan gives our money to arms-builders, who offer “campaign support” to politicians, who then oppose the peace efforts that the entire rest of the world favors? That makes sense.
Okay, so what it comes down to is not U.S. national defense. The Argus and WSA support these companies because “they support America’s safety.” But, unfortunately, that viewpoint is thick-skulled, short-sighted, and painfully naïve. The Argus is reporting these corporations’ cute and harmless histories, for example how Raytheon invented the microwave. Now recall that Nazis invented diesel fuel… does that paint an accurate and complete picture of Nazis? Obviously, no. The logical connections these students are making are asinine. The WSA voted 20-1 against divestment because they’re all a bunch of resume-padders who don’t give a rat’s ass about the world.
Weapons are going to be made no matter what, and there are plenty more investments available to Wesleyan that would earn us just as much money. But I don’t think the machine-guns-for-peace people comprehend that we have a vast menu of investment options available, options outside of the killing-humans sector.
If you can’t see this logic, what the fuck are you doing going to school here?
Leave a Reply