Editorial
Robert Brindle

Seems every month or so now the Terran Confederation has a new "toy" they unveil under the guise of protecting the public. First it was the Vesuvius class carrier, the carrier to end all others. Next it was the Midway, a super carrier that was just about self-sufficient. Now it is the Cerberus, a vessel shrouded in secrecy and classified, "Go no further" press releases. How many of these "ultimate weapons" are enough?

Now I'm not a citizen who doesn't appreciate the strides the Confederation has taken to protect the well being of all humans and allied races in the known galaxy, I just think we need to begin examining the need for constant military development. A drain on resources for many years time, the latest batch of corporate/confederation joint ventures seem to be pushing the envelope for subsidization of private enterprise for military purposes.

Let's face it folks, the Kilrathi war was great for business. Millions died and thousands became extremely wealthy. With the end of that war due to the heroic actions of the now departed Colonel Christopher Blair, the Confederation was faced with a budget designed for warfare. Hurston Dynamics, Bartok Industries, and the Guinterin Combine all owe their powerful place in intersystem commerce to the work strife generates.

Let me reiterate that I am not attacking them for this. If it were not for the radical advances in engineering and production that came from these concerns we might not have won the war. However, we must now begin to focus our efforts at stabilizing the distribution of resources from the military to the developing worlds at the fringes of Terran influence. Our quest for resources to sustain the production of war machines, be it the {mineral} mines of {system} or any of a thousand asteroid fields in the {mineral} rich system of {system} is a familiar scene. It harkens back to a time when sections of Earth were strip-mined to exhaustion in order to fuel the military/corporate alliances that almost destroyed the developing nations at the fringes of a developed first world (Need I mention the W.E.C.). The toxicity of the once fertile system of Palan is not unlike the destruction of the island once known as Java due to gold strip-mining practices.

Although my words are not the first written about the subject, and far less eloquent, allow me to provide this one cautionary note during our revelry over the recent victory versus the alien menace. We must examine, explode, and expand our current notions of interstellar expansion. Although we may face a threat as great as the Kilrathi again, or as flash-fire fast as the mysterious alien strike against our interests, we must never lose sight of what we are fighting for. Otherwise we may be fighting for the sake of fighting, and celebrate our protection of systems devastated by our presence.

Let us not become that, which we despise, let us crush the real enemy: apathetic acceptance of an antiquated system of priorities.