What can we do to stop the Iraq war?
by DICK KAZAN
- Visit Dick Kazan New Website -Ramblings of a Sane Man-, peace writings and other random thoughts
9/18/2006
Picture a 5-year-old little boy with soft brown eyes and a gentle smile proudly holding some children's books in his tiny arms. He is Montez Cleveland, and last year at a fair for homeless families, the Union Rescue Mission gave him these books.
Thank goodness our society can do something to help little Montez and his family. Our regret is that we are not doing more.
But the world has changed. Today, our society lives in a climate of fear. Osama bin Laden threatens, George W. Bush threatens back and there's no dialogue. Just war. And more threats and more death and destruction.
Talk is cheap but war is not. The Iraq war has cost us more than $400 billion, and that cost is rising like a rocket into space. Our government is borrowing the money from all over the world. And committing us to pay it back with interest charges.
As we sink ever deeper into debt, for homeless people like cute little Montez, it means in the future there may not be much money available to help him.
For you and me, it means this money isn't invested to strengthen Medicare or provide medical coverage to all our citizens, nor upgrade our medical facilities nor educate our students. It isn't used to protect our Social Security nor maintain our highways.
Despite President Bush's claim the war on terrorism is "The calling of our generation" (Daily Breeze, Sept. 12) and despite Osama bin Laden's jihad and threats, eventually we will all go to the bargaining table, which is how conflicts are settled. The biggest question is how great will be the loss of life in the meantime.
You may recall we used to fear "Godless communism" and its threats to take over the world. We came to the brink of nuclear war with Russia, we fought the Vietnam War and in Korea, we fought the "Red Chinese" over our fears.
Today, Russia is our ally and China (still communist) is one of our biggest suppliers of manufactured goods and, after Japan, the biggest financier of our deficits. Vietnam is a trade partner.
What can we do to stop the Iraq war? We can make our voices heard in the media and at the ballot box. If we don't act, years from now after emotions have cooled, people will ask why it was fought, why so many people died and why we wasted so much money.
-- DICK KAZAN - Visit Dick Kazan New Website -Ramblings of a Sane Man-, peace writings and other random thoughts
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