The cost of being world's policeman

In an otherwise question-begging letter, reader B. Gustafson (May 3) raises an issue of enormous importance that is too often forgotten these days.

"Our country," she says, "is the policeman for the world," and indeed, our government does maintain military bases all over the world and interferes in the politics of practically every other nation, very much in the fashion of the old Roman Empire.

The result, not surprisingly, is endless war, "enemies" everywhere and a constant stream of crippled soldiers coming back from the battlefronts.

It also means an enormously deformed economy crippled by gigantic war debt and massive, unproductive spending on weapons.

It has also produced a cancer on our democracy, encouraging fascism in Washington and handing over the control of government to Pentagon warmongers and corporate/financial CEO-emperors.

This has split the country into two classes: a small class of rich who own practically everything and the great mass of working people who are, frankly, poor, exploited and for all practical purposes, disenfranchised.

This world policeman business has been a terrible choice of policy and will eventually destroy us if we don't get out from under it.

Anthony Nelson

Rolling Meadows