While Anastasiya Spytsya’s column, “What would life be without you?” (yesterday) may have brought warm fuzzies to the hearts and minds of many students, she fails to address the true purpose of the military and police within our society.

Spytsya notes, “some think that policemen exist only to give out tickets and make arrests for underage drinking.” This is not the only reason though. The real reason the police exist is to impose a system of inequality that punishes the poor and minorities. One needs only review incarceration and execution statistics for the poor and minorities within the U.S. to gain insight about the purpose of our criminal “injustice” system.

Additionally, Spytsya states, “No one is above the law.” However, one can see examples of this every day when police officers are acquitted for police brutality or a military personnel officer isn’t charged for acts of torture. Spytsya cites democracy as one of the reasons why the U.S. is currently occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. civilians were never given a vote on whether or not to declare a war on “terror.”

Furthermore, the reason the U.S. invaded the Middle East has nothing to do with protecting our freedoms, but is actually an imperialist attempt at gaining a stronghold within the region. Spytsya complains that protesting against the military and police “won’t help.” But if it weren’t for civilians, war resisters, anti-war veterans and other victims of the system standing up against the military and police, we would probably all be living in a police state.

We don’t need more nationalistic propaganda thanking the military and police for our “freedom.” We need a movement that prevents the military and police from taking advantage of a system based on exploitation.

Jacquelyn Bleak is a senior applied conflict management and political science major.