November 25, 2007; by Larry Jones
A native Hawaiian activist in May described the U.S. military in Hawai”I as “a monstrous he”e (octopus), its head represented by the Pacific Command Headquarters, its eyes and ears the mountaintop telescopes, radar facilities, and underwater sensors, and its brain and nervous system the supercomputers and fiber optic networks that crisscross the islands. The tentacles of the he”e stretch from the west coast of North America to the east coast of Africa, from Alaska to Antarctica.”
When the United States illegally annexed Hawai”I in 1898, it seized 1.8 million acres of land that was supposed to be for native Hawaiians. The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 the Navy took over the entire island of Kaho”olawe, the smallest of the eight major islands., for live bombing practice. This island is sacred to native Hawaiians and is seen as a physical form of the god of the sea Kanaloa. It contains many rich cultural sites. Beginning in 1976 a group of Hawaiian activist began a series of non-violent civil disobedience actions, sailed to the island and occupied it. After a number of arrests and one death, plus lawsuits and many demonstrations on various islands, the bombing was finally stopped by order of the first President Bush and $400 million dollars was allocated for the Navy to clean the island of unexploded ordnance and restoration of cultural sites. But the Navy depleted the money without completing this mission. Currently only 10% is safe for human use.
Today the combined military branches have 161 military installations in Hawai”i. The military controls 236,303 acres in Hawai”i, or 5.7% of the total land area. On O”ahu, the most densely populated island, the military controls 22.4% of the island. It also controls vast stretches of ocean, including off the west shore of Kaua”I where the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) is located.
PMRF was originally part of President Reagan’s Star Wars program. You have seen it on the news whenever the U.S. either from a ship of from Kwajalein shoots down a missile launched from this Kaua”i site. In the early 1990s, native Hawaiians and environmental groups mobilized to block these missile launches from PMRF. Their concerns were sacred burial sites, endangered species and contamination and accidents from the missiles. Thirty-five protesters were arrested for civil disobedience during the first two missile launches. (An excellent summary of these and other events can be found in the Haleakala Times of Maui, May 8, 2007, http://www.haleakalatimes.com/news/story2527.aspx.)
Now the Navy is seeking approval for a far reaching expansion from the present approximate 2,000 acres it controls at the Pacific Missile Range. In its Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Hawaii Range Complex (HRC) the Navy plans to control 235,000 nautical square miles of ocean above and around all the Hawaiian islands and Johnson Atol as well as a 2.1 million nautical mile “temporary operating area” of sea and air space.
It should be noted here that the military command center in Honolulu at Camp Smith (U.S. Pacific Command) is the headquarters for all U.S. air, ground and maritime military forces in the Asia-Pacific region. It encompasses 43 countries bordered by two oceans, covering more than 100 million square miles from the west coast of the United States to the east coast of Africa.
Some people on Kaua”I favor the presence of PMRF because it increases jobs and spending. Many others, however, have a more long range view and fear not only the extremely deleterious impact on the environment, but also oppose the militarization of space which is an enormous danger for the world, but also turns Kaua”i into a certain target for attack by other countries and forces antagonistic to the U.S.
In 2000, Donald Rumsfeld, now clearly a war criminal, headed a commission to assess the management of space by the United States. At that time Rumsfeld stated: “We know from history that every medium – air, land and sea – has seen conflict. Reality indicates that space will be no different. Given this virtual certainty, the U.S. must develop the means both to deter and to defend against hostile acts in and from space – and ensure continuing superiority.
A Trojan horse? Stan Cox in AlterNet quotes Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space who believes the Rumsfeld Commission report is just that, a Trojan horse. He says: “Missile defense brings in the money but the real story is offensive, preemptive attack technologies for global strike. That’s where the real action is.”
There’s much more that could be written about the war machine in Hawai”I, including its link to the secret military research center at the University of Hawaii and the military uses by the new and very controversial “Superferry ,” and the destructiveness of the Army’s Stryker Brigade’s tank-like vehicles, and perhaps we will in the future.
Suffice it to say now that the expectation of economic benefits from more and more military dollars in Hawai”i is a dangerous ruse. Kyle Kajihiro of the American Friends Service Committee of Hawaii says that this is like an athlete on steroids. It may enhance performance for a while, “but it’s killing your heart, and ultimately your health is going to fail.” (Quoted in Honolulu Weekly for October 31 to November 6, 2007,)
It has already been horrendous for Hawai”I, but in addition to the billions spent there, the hundreds of billions more spent to maintain the U.S. empire around the world is like a vampire on steroids which simply will not stop sucking blood from whomever it can dominate.