Editor’s Note: This is a Letter to the Editor from a Ground Zero member. It was published on May 27, 2022 in the Kitsap Sun newspaper.
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Nuclear weapons aren’t an investment
‘New subs will bring new investments'( Kitsap Sun, May 24) seems like a deal with the devil. An investment in instruments of mass destruction and the infrastructure with which to maintain them strikes me as unsound, immoral, and illegal under international law and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
We, the taxpayers of the United States, are being told to spend $1.2 trillion, desperately needed for things that would make our lives better like housing, health care, education, green energy and transportation, arts and communication and which could vastly improve the lives of suffering people around the world, on the faulty premise of nuclear deterrence. The war in Ukraine makes it clear to me that nuclear weapons do not deter war, but rather make war terrifyingly more risky.
The Navy is dangling a carrot at the people of Kitsap County implying that we will benefit financially from construction associated with these instruments of death and destruction. Nuclear weapons threaten the future of the planet and it is a cruel promise to tout them as an investment in the future. We can and must do better.
Mary Gleysteen, Kingston
Click here to read this Letter at the Kitsap Sun website.
