Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Washington State's Deep Political and Economic Alliance With the Pentagon

Disheartening, disturbing, dangerous. And very important to know. Molly

When one thinks of Washington State in the Pacific Northwest, visions of lush temperate Olympic rainforests or glacial glad mountains of North Cascades National Park might come to mind.
Instead, what if you learned Washington State was allocating millions of dollars of its taxpayers' money to fund an institution set up to do nothing more than lobby for a larger military presence?
Additionally, what if you found out that one of your elected representatives, who you were led to believe was a liberal Democrat, had positioned herself atop said institution, and had actively sponsored a bill aimed at allowing the military free reign to do what it wants -- wherever it wants to do it -- within the state, with little or no recourse for the citizens it could impact?
In supposedly "blue" Washington State, this is exactly what is happening.
The taxpayer-funded institution set up to lobby for military expansion is the Washington Military Alliance (WMA). The politician is Washington Rep. Kristine Reeves, a Democrat who also happens to be the executive director of the WMA. The bill she sponsored, HB 2341 (SB 6456 in the state senate), would have essentially handed United States military commanders control of the state's land use powers.
"Kristine Reeves is double dipping, although it might be legal, [by] being the executive director for the Washington Military Alliance while proposing laws that advance the objectives of the WMA as a Washington State legislator," Glen Milner, a researcher with the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, told Truthout.
"In addition, the Washington Military Alliance gets its grants from the DOD," added Milner, who has been tracking the expanding militarism across Washington State for decades. "I suppose this is just corruption at work."
While Reeves might be progressive on many issues, she's clearly doing the military's bidding, according to Milner.
And while HB 2341 failed, for now, to make it out of committee -- thanks to committed grassroots efforts by citizens concerned about their state becoming a wider-scale military training area -- Reeves' efforts run far deeper than just that bill.
"Washington State residents should be concerned because the WMA sees at least some parts of the state as a 'power projection platform' for the military," Milner warned Truthout.   
In fact, "power projection platform" are not Milner's words, they are Rep. Reeves' words. The lawmaker used the exact same phrase in an email to members of Washington State's Department of Commerce. In the January 2016 email obtained by Truthout, Rep. Reeves discussed her efforts to help generate a graphic for the deputy chief of staff at Joint Base Lewis-McCord (JBLM) in Washington, a massive military installation south of Tacoma, to show "the value of the strategic placement of JBLM and its dependence on the 'outside the fence' infrastructure that creates the designation of power projection platform."
Her rough graphic shows four arrows emanating from Washington State and pointing across the Pacific toward North Korea and other locations. 
A "power projection platform," a term used by both the military and the WMA, is a hub for the combined elements of national power -- political, economic, informational and military -- that facilitates a country's ability to rapidly and effectively deploy and sustain forces around the world.  

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