By Lee Webber
After reading the story in the Guam Post on June 14 regarding the proposed 30-day missile defense agency window for discussion of the missile defense tracking and testing plan, it left me scratching my head and red eyed.
The reading of the plan should take any educated person a few days’ maximum to read and another few days to arrive at the questions they may have. People have had the plan available since June 3, when the 30-day period began.
What is the purpose of a 60-day extension beyond the current 30-days other than to pander for votes prior to an election and further delay the progress of the implementation of a badly needed defense system for Guam?
You would think that the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the legislature cared more about the entire island as a whole than a few minor tests that are required and impact only a relative handful of people, if that.
We are talking about the potential for a few days’ impact on a handful of people as opposed to the establishment and implementation of a system to protect the entire island.
Why not simply get an invitation from the military for those directly impacted to participate in the testing process enabling them to question and have the ability to see it live?
These intentional delay actions only serve to further prolong the actual implementation of a defensive system for the island. It is nothing more than political vote pandering while at the same time further placing the vast majority of the island at further risk longer term.
We have dealt with the ignorant and manipulative Washington politicians long enough on this issue. Why are politicians locally behaving the same way?
Oh, that’s right. They’re politicians!
Given the ongoing and further escalating conditions in the Indo-Pacific region and the balance of the world one would think that people calling themselves – so-called leaders – would have the wisdom and insight to want to move this forward as rapidly as possible for the other 99.9% of the people of Guam.
Anyone who has taken the time to read world history and looks at the timeframe from the mid-1920’s through the start of WWII that crippled much of Europe and the western Pacific can recognize the same type of tyrannical behavior being exhibited today.
Behavior that actually began a good 30 years ago and is only now coming to a pinnacle.
From this writer’s perspective the sound of outgoing missiles is far more soothing than that of those that would be incoming.
And having spent a significant amount of time in my life being impacted by incoming rockets, mortars and artillery I believe I can speak with much more educated and experienced viewpoint.
It is time that those people elected to office really begin to take their jobs working for the people of Guam much, much more seriously.
We can easily look around and see the horribly negative results of their intelligence and hard work in the actual conditions of our hospital, schools, police department, our roads, power and water systems.
There is really no need for them to try their hand at tinkering with the ability of our military and the Missile Defense Agency to finally get in a proper position to protect us all.
If they really feel the need to fix or control something why not start with [Guam Homeland Security/Office of Civil Defense] that they have managed to foul up financially?
Let’s make Guam Great Again.
Esta.
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Lee P. Webber is a businessman and civic advocate, the former publisher of the Pacific Daily News, a former president and publisher of the Honolulu Advertiser, and a former director of operations for USA Today International/Asia
