Defense contractors employees: Do they contribute to death and destruction?

[Jara sang]

Should civilian workers for the defense industry giants be held accountable for the death of innocent people? I don't think anybody will argue that the death of countless innocent people throughout the world due to the United States' aspirations for empire is a horrible tragedy. However, shouldn't we hold those people, namely employees of defense contractors such as, Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse, General Electric, Boeing, Grumman Northrop, Raytheon, Halliburton, et al. accountable for propping up these giant global death machines? I don't see how anybody with a conscience could work for such a company. Sure, people need to feed their families, but at the peril of a family on the other side of the world?

[BlueEyedSon]

1. yup, if no one made the bombs there wouldnt be any

[leftofthedial]

2. yes

[zipplewrath]

3. Nope

No. I understand the concern, but peace does not come from an inability to wage war. Peace comes from despite having the ability, choosing not to anyway. Just because some one creates arms which soldiers can use against attacks, doesn't make them responsible for the foreign policy of warmongers. If this equipment was something that wasn't even made until the policy was in place, there might be some connection. But the industry starts years before any war that is fought designing and engineering the equipment that will be used in the next war.

When do you want to start the design of an M-16? Years before when it can be perfected? When the enemies start their sabre rattling? How about after the fighting starts? Or should we wait until it's your child's neck the enemy has their hands around?

To a great degree we shouldn't blame the soldier or the "arms merchant" for the wars. Wars existed before guns.

To some extent the problem isn't that these people exist, it is that pacifists are not as well organized and don't have their own infrastructure continuously in place. We have our West Points and other acadamies, but where is the academy of Foreign Service (from which Bolton would never have had a prayer)? Why cannot a pacifist make the same kind of committment to service that the warrior can? Where is the "pacifist industrial complex" churning out solutions to drought, energy consumption, disease, natural disasters, and mass civil disorder? Where are the aircraft carrier sized mobile hospitals and disaster relief vessels capable of housing thousands of
displaced peoples? Where is the contract for the "C-5A starvation alleviation vehicle"?

The Peace Corp was suppose to be a beginning, as was the UN, not a period on the last sentence in the book of pacifism.