Letter: We don’t need Raytheon plant

Posted on by Letters
Graphic by Lori Deaton

Everyone has likely heard about the new Pratt & Whitney/Raytheon plant going up in South Asheville. I have many concerns about this, the most important being that they are going to build parts for engines for F-35s, which will end up being sold to countries like Israel, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. President Trump has recently said that the U.S. will be selling F-35s to UAE. These planes will be used for more bombing of Yemen and other places. We are already selling lots of weapons and weapon systems to Saudi Arabia to use on Yemen.

Yemen is an unholy mess. So is Libya. Both these wars were started under Obama and continued under Trump. These wars do not serve or help regular people in our country at all. They are causing mass deaths and mass misery in both Yemen and Libya. These wars certainly do keep the profits up in the industries that sell military equipment and weapons and bombs. These wars and human misery do not show up on our TV screens, so they are ignored.

[A] major export for manufactured goods from the U.S. is from the military-industrial complex. These jobs pay well, so Americans do not seem to care that these weapons end up hurting ordinary people and destroying the environment in foreign countries. Our politicians certainly do not care. We currently have local Democrats who are cheering on the building of this MIC plant in South Asheville and thereby furthering Trump’s agenda. And you can be sure it will be on Biden’s agenda, too.

We really do not need this in our backyard. We are better than this. And we sure do not need to spend tax dollars to subsidize this Raytheon plant.

— Susan Oehler
Asheville

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4 thoughts on “Letter: We don’t need Raytheon plant”

  2. james

    You obviously already have a cushy job. I hope no audiology equipment is made by manufacturers with a morally mixed history.

  3. Lou

    The saddest part about trump, and notice I don’t call him president because he never has been and never will be, is that he started a war here in our very own country. Regarding the plant, I agree that it is immoral and unethical to build it here or anywhere for that matter.

  4. Chess

    Raytheon is within the ITAR industry .
    Weapons are not going to be manufactured by Pratt and Whitney and technically for war related manufacturing , this would require security clearances to TS-Poly, top secret, secret, confidential all of which are not going to be implemented into the new manufacturing facility and highly unlikely Asheville would be an area for clearance DoD related projects. Plus it’s Pratt and Whitney .
    It’s air foil and since the airport is there, there is business.
    It’s owned by Raytheon.
    I would understand if a facility was being made like the one in Tucson, that’s weapons and technology based forefront sciences.
    The facility in AVL is not going to be a place like Lockheed or Ball either …
    there’s no industry for making weapons in Asheville

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