Manufacturing war as civilian jobs vanish

guardian.co.uk

Terry Jones makes the link between the arms industry's need for wars and its influence over the politicians who regularly provide them (War drums are beating for Iran. But who's playing them?), 7 December. This relationship is all the more exposed as venal when the same politicians shrug as civilian manufacturing jobs disappear. Our ferries, trains and buses are built abroad so we have to make and sell more warships, fighters and guns. You published Jones's piece on the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. This too had its origin in the arms trade. Less than 40 years earlier Japan's British-built warships had annihilated Russia's far eastern fleets. The newly empowered Japan went on to enslave Korea and devastate much of China, and those ships were then used against those who built them. When Galtieri used his British-, US- and French-sourced weapons to attack the Falklands, he did so to distract his population from economic and social woes. It is time our politicians learned the obvious lessons of history that selling arms makes war, and war makes more war. It is time to work as hard for peace as we so energetically work and expensively prepare for war.
Robert Straughton
Preparing for Peace Project, Swarthmore Quakers

• Seumas Milne's chilling warning of the escalating US/Israeli stealth war is timely (War on Iran has begun. Act before it threatens all of us, 8 December). In view of Tony Blair's Iraq debacle, even-handed initiatives are urgently needed if disaster is to be avoided. The "dodgy dossier" on Iran's weapons programme is even flimsier this time, so the obvious starting point should be a UN inspection of Iran's nuclear facilities and a comparison with Israel's arsenal of warheads. A proposal to inspect both programmes simultaneously might mollify Ahmadinejad.
Gerry Abbott
Manchester