US Military Occupation of Hawaii - 24K

Hawaii is the most heavily militarized island in the world, and the U. S. Army wants to bring more weapons, tanks, and soldiers to the islands that will destroy the land and culture unless we take action now to "Stop the Strykers" and "Start the Peace." That begins with exposing the SuperLie, the idea that we have to go to war to keep the peace. The fact is, wars are bankrupting our world.

Bringing the war machine to invade Hawai’i will not keep the peace. The U. S. Army wants to permanently station heavy tanks known as Strykers in Hawaii and expand its 133,000 military base to include live-fire practice that may spread radioactivity around the islands. Hawaiian locals, tourists, and pro-peace activists everywhere are encouraged to send an e-mail requesting "STOP THE STRYKER. START THE PEACE IN HAWAII" to:  PublicComments@aec.apgea.army.mil

War does not just fall out of the sky.
War is planned for. War propaganda has brainwashed people into believing we have to go to war to keep the peace.
bringing the war machine to invade Hawai’I will not keep the peace. Planning to bring the Stryker Combat Brigade to train in Hawaii is acting in a way that would bring war to our doorstep and should be stopped immediately. Isn’t this one of the reasons the war machine sent to Iraq – they would keep war in a far away place and protect our own American streets from war and terror?
But that logic was wrong. Wars have spread further and cost more in human lives and dollars than at any time in history. Albert Einstein said, “You cannot simultaneously prepare for war and create peace.” That’s because war breeds war.
The mass build-up of weapons of mass destruction and training our youth to use them is a gross misjudgment of the human enterprise. It has created a religion of money based on human sacrifice for corporate greed, using the mystique of patriotism to carry out the war machine’s murderous deeds.
War is an international criminal conspiracy which takes away peace in the streets and peace in the mind by threatening you with external attack. War propaganda uses ads, newscasts, and school books to entrain people with the emotional fervor of patriots, recounting the wars and heroes, and tricks children into carrying out imperial goals.
The SuperLie is that we have to go to war to keep the peace. The fact is, wars are bankrupting our world. This week, Congress has asked for another $190 billion to further Pentagon goals in the Middle East. For almost half that, $100 billion, we could provide health care to every man, woman and child in the U. S.
What do we choose: the cost of nine months of war, or health care for everyone inside our borders?
What would two years of funding for war “transform” into, in a peace economy? Health care for everyone in the world?
Think about this and how war propaganda clouds our thinking.
Like Hitler’s Third Reich, the U. S. war machine practices genocide, but instead of concentration camps, the U. S. uses the blind force of nuclear weapons, all the while chanting the SuperLie that we must make war to keep the peace.
This juggernaut of a contradiction must be held up for all to see.
“America does not start fights,” said Ronald Reagan, just before he ordered the invasion of Grenada.
“We want nothing for ourselves,” said Lyndon Johnson, before he pushed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
“We will defeat the enemies of freedom,” our leaders say, and then proceed to defeat freedom itself, at the point of a bayonet.
This breathtaking, illogical notion can only be supported by a propaganda machine that clouds the mind with misguided patriotism until enough people wake up, like we have in Hawaii, and say, “No more war. We choose peace.”
Examine the Army’s new advertising slogan: “The Army – At War and Transforming!” What do you think will happen if they transform Hawaii? We could become, not the Honeymoon Heaven inspired by the Breath of Ha! and Hula Magic, beloved by all the world, but a Haunted Glow-in-the-Dark Ghost Town. Transformed? You bet. Post-war and deformed would be more like it.
As soon as the U. S. brought hundreds of 19-ton eight-wheel tanks and several thousand troops to Oahu and on to Pohakuloa Training Base on the Big Island for live-fire practice, our island would change quickly.
As the Environmental Impact Statement says, we’ve already changed. According to Hawaii Public Health cancer maps, the entire Kona Coast, to Naalehu, has the highest cancer rate in the state. Cancers, thyroid problems, and diabetes in residents downwind of Pohakuloa have increased with no polluting industry that would account for it, except live-fire training with depleted uranium and other poisons.
Residents are angry and afraid. Local hunters have found sheep and goats with tumors, and huge numbers of dead birds near the perimeters of Pohakuloa. The Honolulu Advertiser reports an epidemic of sick, feral cats with leukemia and auto immune system diseases on the west side of the proposed Stryker training range. All are markers for radiation poisoning.

Transformed, indeed. The romance of the beach at Waikiki, deep-sea adventures, and volcanic tours on the Big Island melt into scenes of barbed wire, fiery street battles, and splotches of black toast where human bodies used to be. Survivors wandering around in “mop suits,” which can’t actually protect against ballistic depleted uranium. Its radioactive, birth-defect-causing dust travels everywhere.
A far cry from the spirit of Aloha, the Hula, grass skirts, and ukulele we love about Hawaii, isn’t it?
Are we willing to give up what’s Hawaii about Hawaii, to accommodate the claws of the war machine?
Because we live in the United States of Amnesia, we often don’t remember our history. If it didn’t happen since Monday, we don’t claim the brain storage capacity for it. Gore Vidal says this explains why we’ve allowed the beast with deadly claws, an IMPERIAL AMERICA, to be constructed over the last five or six decades.
Let’s put our memory caps on and our weapons aside. Let’s remember this: We are lovers of freedom. We want to help and protect the world, but our violent means have made us slaves to the SuperLie.
The enemy is not the U. S. Military or Al Queda. The real enemy is the SuperLie that fuels the war machine.
When we use our energies for destruction, the very rivers of creation run dry. We, the people of Hawaii, choose creation. We choose peace.
We said, “Stop,” in 2004. Many people said, “Stop,” long before that in 1893, and again in 1941. At this juncture, residents of Hawaii refuse your offer to base in Hawaii. We want none of your weapons, training, toxic substances, increased cancer rates, bombing practices, birth defects, depleted uranium, or mobile gun systems.
The U. S. Military threat to our islands is a microcosm of the threat of the war machine to our nation, and to our planet. General Eisenhower was the first to warn us so eloquently in his farewell Presidential address in 1951 that, “Military weapons take food from the hungry, shelter from the homeless. This is not a way of life at all,” he said.
Our Uncle Sam is like an aging, used-to-be-rich over-protective, patronizing relative. Uncle Sam wants to protect the people of Hawaii, the mainland, the world – at a profit, of course. Instead of showing real care, Uncle strangles us with chemicals, toxins, and radioactive dust, killing the very people he says he wants to save.
Hawaii offers one of the clearest views of the stars in the world. Is that what makes Hawaii, Hawaii? Is it the spirit of Aloha, the laid-back well-being that welcomes the visitor and grounds the local? Is it that Hawaii means “breath of life,” a state of peace, a land of paradise?
I prefer to live in a center for Aloha rather than a center for war.
Here’s the best solution to the Stryker problem: Declare Hawaii a Peace Zone. Take the organized effort of creating war and turn it in the direction of peace. Hawaii is already the state of Aloha. In the global mind, when 70% of people picture their paradise, they most often imagine Hawaii as the place, the picture for their experience of peace of mind.
“The Army – At War and Transforming,” with its $1.9 billion recruitment budgets and fire-power popping advertising campaigns, is a totally different picture. Were the Strykers to move here, Hawaii would become ground-zero for future war machine objectives. Think Fallujah, with explosions underneath palm trees, residents injured, the land eroded, the water supply tarnished. And what would happen to more sustainable industries – tourism, agriculture, and healthy lfestyles?
In the United States, public thinking has become clouded by the litany of lies which Bush, Blackwater, Halliburton, and Company have been telling the American public. They told us we would feel better about being attacked on 911 if we followed bin Laden to Iraq, where he wasn’t. We were told it was essential to make a pre-emptive, Shock-and-Awe-like attack to rid the land of weapons of mass destruction. They didn’t tell us we were the ones using the weapons of mass destruction, the depleted uranium-carrying missiles and bullets, clearly outlawed by the Hague and Geneva Conventions. They said Shiites and shopkeepers would welcome us with flowers and desert soup. All lies.

The only people who feel better about the post-911 decision to invade Iraq are those who hold stock in the war machine itself, the Military Industrial Complex.
People are waking up and seeing that war does not fall from the sky. War is planned with guns produced by an international criminal conspiracy which has brainwashed people with the SuperLie, believing we have to go to war to keep the peace.
In our hearts and with our intelligence we see a few people are making huge profits and not considering the human situation. Planetary life thrives on cooperation, not competition. Planetary life thrives on peace, not war.
We must do what we can to foster clear thinking and patience.
The first step is to Stop the Strykers from coming to Hawaii.
The second step is to stop our Congress from funding another $190 billion for the war in Iraq.
The third step is to keep taking steps one after the next, toward the Peace Zone. And in the meantime, be the Peace Zone. Take peaceful steps. Peace is ultimately more important than profit.
I want to close with something an Australian Koori once said, “What will happen when you have poisoned the land and spoiled the water, killed the animals and fouled the air? Do you think you can eat your money?”
~ Please null and void this EIS as it is an incomplete without a No Action Alternative consideration which is required by law.
~ Please cease all munitions, live-fire training, and bombing practice in Hawaii.
~ Please test for and clean up all depleted uranium on all ranges everywhere, detoxify the 800 toxic waste sites, including battlefields where radioactive debris and unexploded ordnance have been left behind.
~ Provide medical care for children born to our veterans, residents, and in areas where we have made war, and help reverse the effects of the U. S. Military’s use of radioactive and nuclear weapons. This is not something we in the United States or Hawaii will stand for. We stand for peace.
Stop the Strykers. Clean-Up, Not Build-Up. Hawaii, the Peace Zone!
Sincerely,

Marya Mann
Kailua-Kona, Hawai’i
In solidarity with www.protecthawaii.ws and www.malu-aina.org
Please visit www.maryamann.com

Please help us protect Hawai’i by writing to the U.S. Army before October 30.
Email to:  PublicComments@aec.apgea.army.mil
No Stryker Brigade in Hawai’i!

e-mail:: drmaryam@aol.com homepage:: http://www.maryamann.com

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