The following is a comment I wrote on the European Parliament’s Facebook page in response to the question Europe’s defence industries create thousands of jobs in the EU and arms exports produce valuable income for the economy. Arms sales are subject to strict national controls in all EU countries, but should the EU itself get involved in where the weapons go?
The “defense” industry is a toxic industry that needs to be eliminated. It is more accurately called the death or war industry, because that is what it is. We have seen consistently how these so called “defense” corporations lobby/bribe poli…ticians into using military power, to the detriment of humanity, for the sake of profit. This is a disgusting, inhuman and toxic industry, that deserves nothing else but to be expropriated, for the purpose of being eliminated.
OK, some people might say, what about the jobs? OK, we do not need armies to fight enemies that do not exist, we need transcontinental rail links, we need to boost our renewable energy output by multitudes, we need better roads, bridges, hospitals and infrastructure for our fellow citizens in Eastern Europe, there is so much stuff, that is better to do than arms.
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. … Is there no other way the world may live?”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower