Those of us who have never refused illegal orders and faced that risk of prison cannot ask anyone to take that step, but we can applaud those who do. Similarly, we have no right to ask someone to give up a job, uncertain of where the next one lies, but I must say I would applaud as loudly as I could and assist in any way I knew how anyone who quit a job manufacturing weapons for the slaughter of Iraqis and Iranians. And I'd pay more to have my clothes and furniture and toys and silverware manufactured in a shutdown weapons factory in Tennessee than what it costs me to buy the products of Chinese slave labor.
Aerojet Ordnance states on its website: "We stress a strong ethical workplace, both in relation to the work we do and the sense of fairness that is extended to all employees, regardless of background."
An ethical workplace? An ethical workplace manufacturing weapons used in an illegal and aggressive war that has killed nearly 4,000 US service men and women and over 1 million Iraqis? An ethical workplace?
An ethical workplace making weapons with Depleted Uranium, which the United Nations Human Rights Commission listed 10 years ago as a weapon of mass destruction? Yes, there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after all, but they are produced in Tennessee.
Congressman Davis's website says of Aerojet that "making armor-piercing 'one-shot one-kill' munitions for the military is the company's bread and butter." An ethical workplace?
Davis' website says "there's an armament-producing line worker behind every American soldier." But are those workers informed about possible risks? Will there be 4,000 workers following 4,000 American soldiers into the ground?
This is not about defense, but wars of aggression that endanger us all. If you want safety, make peace.
This is not about jobs, but the military industrial complex against which Eisenhower warned. If you want jobs, end NAFTA.
This is not about justice, but about whether we will sit by as fascism slowly comes to the land of the free and the home of the brave. If you want justice, impeach Dick Cheney and George W. Bush.
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