The USS Sterett comes to Baltimore
War is Nothing to Celebrate!

August 7, 2008 - The USS Sterett - a ship that is capable of shooting guided missiles from its deck into towns and villages over 1000 miles away - is being commissioned in Baltimore on August 9, 2008. This ship is the 54 th of a total of 62 Arleigh Burke class Aegis Destroyers. All are built to withstand ABC - a tomic, b iological and c hemical - warfare

The USS Sterett is armed with weapons including
- 90 cells of a vertical launch system that carry a variety of missiles that include Tomahawk cruise missiles (that fly at 550 mph and are like flying ovens incinerating whatever is beneath them when they land. These missiles can carry nuclear warheads.), Harpoon Missiles and Surface to Air (SAM) Ballistic missiles;
- Phalanx Close-in Weapons System that resembles a cannon and fires at incoming "enemy" missiles);
- Torpedoes
- 2 helicopters
- Gatling guns which use depleted uranium munitions.

The ship cost 1.3 billion dollars to build. In these economically hard days, 1.3 billion could pay 21,000 teachers for a year, or convert 33,000 houses to solar or wind energy, or buy food for 154,761 families for a year (family of four).

The decision to commission this ship on August 9 is an outrage; August 9 is a day on which people of conscience repent our nation's use of nuclear weapons in Nagasaki in 1945. That our military chooses this day to multiply the atrocities of nuclear weapons is a source of deep grief for us.

Adding insult to injury, docked next to the Sterett at Locust Point, are two of Military Sealift Command's Roll-on/Roll-off Ships - the Cape Washington and the Cape Wrath. They ferry combat equipment and supplies around the world. The ships belong to the government, but are staffed by civilians. A peaceful people would fill these ships with food and medicines to help others, instead of bombs and gear used to murder them.

The USS Sterett is already built—but it could be converted to a hospital ship. We pray for the conversion of weapons and hearts so that each person on this earth is thought of as precious and sacred.

We ask Cmdr. Brian Eckerle , the first commanding officer of the USS Sterett, and his crew of 276 officers and enlisted personnel to refuse to kill, refuse to fight, and to use their skills and talents to nurture and save life.

"Forever Dauntless" is this ship's motto - would that we were resolute, determined, dauntless in undoing the threat of nuclear weapons in our world. Our continued idolatry of weapons and warmaking is the antithesis of peacemaking.

The Atlantic Life Community
Contact us at Jonah House, 410-233-6238 www.jonahhouse.org or, Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, 202-882-9649

Shadow on the Rock
by Dan Berrigan

At Hiroshima there's a museum
and outside that museum there's a rock
and on that rock there's a shadow.
That shadow is all that remains
of the human being
who stood there on August 6, 1945
when the nuclear age began.
In the most real sense of the word,
that is the choice before us.
We shall either have end war
and the nuclear arms race
now in this generation,
or we will become
shadows on the rock.