Dear Editor:

Killing for peace is an oxymoron, but a powerful justification for violating the 5th commandment – you shall not kill. The 1958 launch of Sputnik opened the military complex doors for unlimited expenditures. For the average American, Sputnik promised an exciting future of space travel and new worlds to discover. What most of us did not know was in addition to the birth of NASA, ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) — later dubbed DARPA — changed this country’s balance between a strong national defense and diplomacy.

Annie Jacobsen’s book, “The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA,” has opened a window on America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency whose annual budget is $3 billion dollars as a designer of never ending wars. Its first failure was the harmful results from ARPA’s Agent Orange defoliant sprayed over the land and people — Vietnamese adults, children, and U.S. soldiers making them research test subjects. Due to the top-secret nature of ARPA, it took 10 years, many suicides, before the VA acknowledged a growing list of 14 illnesses plus birth defects caused by inhaling and physical contact with the chemicals. Today, veterans or injured soldiers are test subjects for “brain-neural interfaces” implanted in their brains for use in “future wars.”

DARPA continues to drive future wars in spite of Dwight Eisenhower’s warning that “we must be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of scientific-technology. This military 5-star general, in his farewell speech, put citizens in charge of obtaining and keeping “peace, security and liberty” by being vigilant in monitoring the military-industrial complex. To his successors he expected them to continually “strike a balance between a strong national defense and diplomacy.” In conclusion he stated, “You and I — my fellow citizens — need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.”

Have we failed our former military general, our president Dwight Eisenhower, who saw dangers and provided a vision where “all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.”? Who drives us towards peace today?

Jarryl Larson

Edgecomb