Pentagon – Page 3 – Engaging Peace

Morality and taxes

Posted on March 28, 2011April 18, 2021 by kathiemm

"Tax Dollars" poster — Poster by Eric Gulliver, 2011

With April 15 (Tax Day in the U.S.) looming, I consider myself to have three moral obligations:

Pay taxes that can provide funding for many vital programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, public transportation, human services, education, environmental protections, and veterans’ benefits.
Protest tax policies that further entrench the rich and powerful while robbing the poor, depleting the middle class, and killing innocent people in the names of profit and national security.
Protest policies allowing huge corporations like General Electric to make billions of dollars in profits from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while paying NO federal taxes.

To find out where your tax payments go, check out the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). According to their analysis, out of each dollar paid in federal income taxes in 2010, 39 cents went to fund current and past wars. This is probably an underestimate.

The federal budget deficit has been growing alarmingly since 2001, and it makes sense to look for ways to trim expenditures. But ask yourself, is it moral, is it just, and in the long run is it wise to cut the budgets for programs such as Social Security, job training, and Head Start, while keeping the Pentagon budget “off the table” and maintaining enormous tax breaks for the wealthy (e.g., through recent tax cuts on millionaires’ estates).

For a detailed breakdown of how social programs could be saved if some of the tax breaks for the rich were reduced, see the Center for American Progress.

In last year’s “weak economy,” hundreds of new billionaires emerged in this country while more and more people were losing their jobs and homes and falling below the poverty line. Is this what you want your taxes and current tax policies to support?

Finally, I have some suggestions:

Go to the FCNL page to learn more about how your taxes are spent and to retrieve a toolkit that will give you some ideas about how you can get involved
Participate in Global Day of Action on Military Spending, April 12, 2011.

To get some idea about what a cutback in military spending could accomplish, watch this video:

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

The federal budget: Invasions, yes! Peace, no!

Posted on February 24, 2011July 6, 2011 by kathiemm

At least that’s what the politicos are telling us.

By now, everyone must have heard something about the debates about the new U.S. budget. You may know that to address the deficits that have accrued since former President Bill Clinton created a budget surplus, powerful forces in Congress seek, among other things, to

Gut the Environmental Protection Agency
Block spending for health care
Cut food and other assistance programs for children, the elderly, and the disabled

U.S. Institute of Peace building — U.S. Institute of Peace, Washington, D.C.

But did you know that while declaring funding for the Pentagon off-limits for budget considerations, a majority in the House of Representatives also voted to eliminate funding for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP)?

The USIP, established by Congress in 1984, conducts research and training designed to prevent and end wars and to promote international peace, stability, and development. In recent years it has engaged in mediation and conflict resolution activities in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Colombia, Iraq, Kashmir, Liberia, the Korean Peninsula, Nepal, Pakistan, the Palestinian Territories, Nigeria, Sudan, and Uganda.

Despite the fact that the U.S. spends as much on what is euphemistically called “defense” as the rest of the world combined, Congress wants to end this independent nonpartisan organization with a budget that is only one tenth of one percent of the State Department budget.

The previous budget for USIP was minuscule compared to the spending in Iraq and Afghanistan (approximately $42.7 million every 142 minutes according to Congressman Dennis Kucinich).

What message is Congress sending to the American public? To the rest of the world? Why is there so much more commitment to the arms industry than to peace?

Please send us your answers—and consider becoming an activist on behalf of peace and justice.

For inspiration, check out this BBC video and consider how we are all one people and if we want to survive in all our commonalities and all our uniqueness, we need to support efforts for peace.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Why vote?

Posted on October 25, 2010July 6, 2011 by kathiemm

All registered voters in the U.S. can vote without being subjected to torture and death—a fact that is largely taken for granted. This freedom, although not perfect, compares well with what is happening in many other nations.

To name just a few of the countries where elections in 2010 were preceded by torture of anti-government protesters:

In Rwanda, the ruling regime ordered arrest and torture of opposition candidates.
In Zimbabwe, torture camps reappeared to insure that Mugabe retained power.
In the Philippines, torture is a frequent tool of the Arroyo regime, conducted under the guise of support for the U.S. “war on terrorism.”
In Iran, three anti-government protesters were tortured to death in prison.

Although in many countries people risk their lives to gain the right to vote in democratic elections, in the U.S., where that right is well-established, the majority of the population often fails to vote. For example, only about 37% of the voting age population vote in mid-term elections, which can determine the well-being of not just Americans but people around the world for years to come.

Accept your responsibility as a citizen of a democracy. Get out and vote, and get out the vote. Exercising your democratic right to vote is a way to demonstrate proactive moral agency (see Engaging Peace post on October 14).

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is….make peace not war a campaign issue.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation has some suggestions about how to do this:

Contact candidates running for Congress and ask their views on issues such as nuclear disarmament, global warming, auditing the Pentagon, and ending the war in Afghanistan
Write a letter to the editor of your newspaper or online news site, responding to its coverage of the election.

We have additional suggestions:

Educate yourself. Have facts ready to support your arguments.
Find out who the anti-war candidates are.
Join together with others in the anti-war, pro-peace movement. Make your voices heard.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology