"On April 1, I will retire after more than 37 years of active duty service. Over that time the nation's space capabilities have become integral to our economic livelihood and central to our defense structure.”

Gen. Lance W. Lord, USAF, Santa Maria Times, Sunday Feb. 26

With these words, Gen. Lord began a commentary recently published in the Times. Gen. Lord continued his piece promoting our country's strategy of “space acquisition” while warning us not to be paralyzed by past mistakes but to look to the positive achievements in our space program.

It is imperative for us, as citizens of the most powerful nation in history and as neighbors of Vandenberg Air Force Base - a vital link in the flexing of that power - that we receive the opinion of Gen. Lord with a critical eye.

In our culture, we have the potential to accept without questioning the position of someone who states at the outset that he has significant experience, as does Gen. Lord, with 37 years of active duty service. But experience and knowledge, both of which Gen. Lord undoubtedly has, do not automatically ensure that his ideology or values are something we want to incorporate as a nation.

We don't have to have the technical knowledge, the access to intelligence, or the years of commitment to the military to say that domination, oppression and the robbing of other's resources for ourselves is a value for which we are willing to devote over $400 billion a year as we do now in our defense budget.

Gen. Lord speaks the truth when he says that “space capabilities have become integral to our economic livelihood.” I would agree and add that the majority of our foreign policy has become integral to our “economic livelihood,” and that the military, with its almost incomprehensible weapons of mass destruction, its unilateral domination of space, and its massive budget are at the service, not so much of our defense, but of our economic dominance of the world.

Gen. Lord's contention, however, that space capabilities have “become central to our defense structure” is only partly true. Yes, surveillance is important for our defense but it is also a major component of our aggression, and our government has a long and sordid history of aggression, which is the cause of most of the hatred we see leveled against us from other countries.

We used our surveillance and intelligence to aid both Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran in the 1980s and to aid Iran against Iraq in the same war. We have used our surveillance to aid death squads in El Salvador and paramilitary troops in Columbia. We've used our surveillance and space targeting capabilities to destroy entire cities as we did in Fallujah and to guide drone planes to bomb innocent civilians in the hope that we might also kill a terrorist in the process.

I would contend that, in fact, our space capabilities have been used far more for aggression than for defense. Our government in its drive to maintain our “economic livelihood” has become the greatest aggressor in history, and the strategy of space acquisition is designed to perpetuate that dominance. The U.S. Space Command has published a document (www.fas.org/spp/military/docops/usspac/visbook.pdf) entitled “Vision for 2020” that outlines our plans for “full spectrum dominance,” and clearly states our intention to militarize space for the purpose of controlling the planet and outer space. It would be well for all of us to understand our nation's stated goal for space acquisition before we accept Gen. Lord's promotion of it.

Gen. Lord's ideology and values, as a self-ascribed “war fighter,” allow for domination, aggression and the enormous amount of money needed to finance that effort - mine do not.

I do not accept that we, as a nation, need to spend over $400 billion a year for our Department of Defense while our educational system, our health care system, and our environment are in decline for lack of funds and attention. I do not accept that somehow we require more money for our defense than all of our allies combined and seven times that of all our enemies combined. And I do not accept that someone who has spent 37 years in service to that ideology is necessarily in service to the people of this nation.

Defending this country against aggressors is not the same as defending our exorbitant lifestyle. The former has the potential for honor, the latter is just greed.

Dennis Apel is a member of the Catholic Worker in Guadalupe and can be reached at jdapel@yahoo.com. Looking Forward runs every Friday, providing a progressive viewpoint on local issues.