WNC Veterans for Peace have stood vigil against our many wars for over 17 years, but we moved the vigil online in order to follow the “stay at home” orders. I have been told by the Mountain Xpress that our country’s foreign policies and many wars are “not a local issue.” I think they are very much a local issue. We are all impacted by the decisions made by the clowns in D.C. to fund weapons, bombers, drones and other instruments of war instead of providing universal health care, hospital beds, protective equipment and ventilators for our own population. This is a local issue that is having a local impact right now.
The USA is leading the world in aggressive action against poor brown and black people on the other side of the world (none of whom have ever hurt anyone on U.S. soil) just like we are leading the world in the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. The USA is exceptional all right, like in exceptionally bad for its citizens and the rest of the world. We are destroying and poisoning parts of the planet with these wars. Our wars have caused many refugee camps. These camps are going to be breeding grounds for the novel coronavirus. They are going to be devastating for the people trapped in those camps, but they are going to impact us, too.
As a matter of fact, this pandemic is going to hit our many military bases and military ships pretty hard, too. That is what happens when you put a lot of people in one place and you have an easily transmittable virus going around the world. It spreads.
But the truly infuriating part is that all these trillions of dollars spent on useless and evil activities could have been used to help people here at home. And locally, we are going to pay for that now and well into the future.
And once the stay-at-home orders are lifted, local Veterans for Peace will vigil at Vance Monument at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday once again. It looks like we will be doing it for another 17 years.
— Susan Oehler
Asheville
Because pimping out your town to transplants, tourism, and real estate fat cats, making sure that all taxes are redirected towards their needs and benefits, and blaming someone 1000 miles away makes real sense. All the while gentrifying the area and evicting people out of their homes because they simply can’t afford to live here.
Pimping out your town to transplants is a perfect description of Aville! How bout bumper stickers …I’ll order 10 outta the gate!
If anyone has ever taken the bus or been to downtown Asheville, and have seen the many faces of veterans in poverty, then you have seen the true human consequences of our bellicose and greed-driven foreign policies. This idea that the problems caused by real estate and tourism oligarchs and the effects of war on society are separate things simply isn’t true. Injustices feed on other injustices and a society that prioritizes its profit-driven war machine over human life will be one that neglects its population during a pandemic. The time to rethink and rebuild society is now, and scaling back our bloated and wasteful military should be one of those steps. Because the harsh reality is that the vast majority of those resources do not go to support veterans or their families. It only goes to the military-industrial complex that gains its profits from unjust wars and the bloodshed of innocents.