What ties together government budget cuts, the health care debate, & college fee hikes? The Wars

[Ken Burch]

In addition to the immorality and futility of the Iraq and Afghan conflicts, the crime committed by those wars is the same one committed by the Anti-Communist Wars(Korea, Vietnam, Central America)and the unrelenting nuclear arms buildup that extended for decades after 1945:

Theft from the needs of life in order to feed an addiction to killing. Theft from the good of all to pay for the privileges of a few.

Without the wars of the past, we could have rebuilt our cities, ended or at least sharply and permanently reduced unemployment and poverty, funded everyone's right to learn and create, and assured that our planet would remain survivable.

This is why, in the midst of everything else, we need to ramp up the antiwar movement, mobilize the anti-massacre majority, and create a culture of supportive resistance: support for the clear program of change the people solidly approved in 2008(a program that was NOT, at heart, moderate and timid);resistance against all those who are trying to destroy or incapacitate this administration and undo the results of the last election.

Some of these forces work from the outside, and we know who they are: The Media/Industrial Complex of Faux News, Hate Radio and the corporate newspaper chains that are in a "Holy" Alliance with all the leaders of the corporate power structure, a structure that will settle for nothing less than the defeat of all health care change, the destruction of what remains of the social service net, and a Market Jihad against the rest of the world in foreign policy.

And some work from within the administration, and within the ranks of what is supposedly OUR party in Congress. All those who call themselves "pro-business" Democrats are allied with them and allied against the people of this country.

We need a massive effort, across this country, with tactics still to be devised and alliances to be built, to resist these forces and defend the victory we had the right to believe we had won.

It isn't just about any one issue: It's about life or death. We can now see clearly that the few are ready to sacrifice all of us. Don't let them throw us, the majority of the American people under the bus.

We MUST stop these wars if we are to live. And we must stop them if OUR president is to avoid being consigned to the ash heap of history.

Stop The Wars: Save The Country!

[msongs]

1. wasting the fruits of our labor supporting the military in the current way nt

[dionysus]

2. excellent post.

:thumbsup:

[patrice]

3. Think of the carbon-footprint of War.

How different the environment would be without War compared to what War does to the environment - Shocking! And we have had 3 of them since Gulf I.

Not only is the DOD by far the biggest oil consumer, higher "wealth" also requires more of EVERYTHING, including more airports, more highways, more transportation, more oil.

War is a curse on us.

[chill_wind]

4. I know I flog the website in my sig-line often, but I honestly believe

that if people were confronted much, much more with the realities of the trade-offs made for these wars in real, meaningful numbers as they impact each of our own cities and communities and states, there would be so much more waking anger.

So many of us just can't get our heads around the abstract "billions and trillions" in war spending, but when I see in concrete numbers what the money spent would have bought for my community and the lives around me instead, in actual numbers of health care for the uninsured, numbers of teachers and schools/improvements, head start programs, help for housing etc-- it's real, and it makes me sick and angry and forever will. And all of that pales to the true human cost in death and mayhem to all the war-torn and war-dead, but they've ESPECIALLY made sure we don't see that cost in terms of too many disturbing images- of that kind of reality- on the nightly news.

[boppers]

5. Nice post.

Sometimes your perspectives rile me in a bad way, but this one is spot on.