Profound nonsense 

Contrary to the opinion of comedian Al Fonzi, the challenge to America in 2018 is not to build more nuclear missiles and enlarge our "military industrial complex," ("The coming challenge: part I," Jan. 4). We were all warned against this more than 60 years ago by President Dwight Eisenhower.

The U.S. military already spends more than the next largest seven armies combined. We manufacture and sell 70 percent of the world's weapons and armaments. We have more than 800 bases around the world, and our drones are in 130 countries. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the U.S. is "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world."

No sir, one of the biggest challenges we have is to expose the myth that "our military is decrepit and woefully unprepared," and that the Democrats pose any legitimate opposition to the Republicans on our war budget. It is simply not possible to divert so many trillions and trazillions of tax dollars away from the American people without the collusion of both political parties.

It should not be surprising that a military intelligence officer in both Vietnam and Iraq should have missed the admission by then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, that the war in Vietnam was a "terrible mistake," or that President George Bush has admitted that Iraq had "no weapons of mass destruction." Nor should it surprise us that South Korean generals have no say about the U.S. missile systems installed in their country. What should surprise us is that the leaders of a so-called free and "Christian nation" should be so violently opposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Jack Artusio

San Luis Obispo