Immediately, after the conclusion of the Presidential town hall, a barrage of comments caused me great concern. Some were labeled with attacks on religious beliefs as other took aim at the Iraq war. One party asked, “Why does McCain associate winning a dishonorable war with honor?” This question was immediately followed with this response: “What exactly is so dishonorable about overthrowing a terrorist supporting, chemical weapon spreading and murderer like Saddam Hussein? And, yes he did support terrorists. He was known for paying the families of Palestinian terrorists for their 'martyrdom'.”
As a military veteran and concerned citizen, I found this to be very alarming. I began to wonder how individuals, who share this perspective, feel about the atrocities that are occurring in Darfur, Somalia, the Congo, or liberated countries that formerly belonged to the Soviet Union. It is important that we remember we enter Iraq on false pretenses and fictional intelligence when the real battle is in Afghanistan; where the Taliban and al-Qaeda were the targets. How did we go from funding these organizations to attacking them? The same occurred with Saddam Hussein, as we funded and trained their military to assist with Iraqis defense against Iran. By the way, where were the weapons of mass destruction and chemical weapons? It is naive of our government to invoke Democracy to the Middle East, with certain political and capital desires, that resulted to the deaths of thousands of U.S. servicemen and women.
What have the American citizens gained from this war? Is it the honor we feel seeing the Iraqi economy flourish to a surplus of over 70 trillion dollars while we gain a growing recession? How about the benefit of the anti-American sentiments to increase terrorist activities and minimize our ability to positively project prosperity to the rest of the world. Maybe, it is to give momentum to terrorism to gain a stronger foothold in the world; or perhaps so that we can be indebted to foreign nations who are lending our government the money to fund this unnecessary war. I don’t see how this benefits me or my neighbor; not even the citizens of tomorrow. As a matter of fact, I am longing for understanding why Americans had to endure at all? If our concerned government wanted to borrow money to fund a venture they could have spent that $10 billion per month domestically to fund health care, provide better services and support for veterans / their families, the create more jobs, a stronger infrastructure, education, to put in place the oversight to prevent the issues that caused our economy to tank, alternative energy, or better yet to compensate this so called “Bail Out” which causes the tax payers additional heartache.
Yes, I understand that we don’t want to end the war in dishonor; however where is the honor, for our service people, to return to an economic, energy, and housing crisis after fighting to liberate a country, providing it with a strong economy that doesn’t possess profit sharing. I guess there are some American entities that are benefiting from this war, such as private companies like Halliburton.
Our elected representatives, regardless of affiliation, are projecting their positions and using pundits / surrogates to dictate our perspectives; have they forgotten it is we, the people, who hired / elected them to serve our greatest and highest interest? I seems as though they have! It is time for us to stop depending on government to solve our issues and focus on removing the growing divide between social, economic, belief, and gender groups; as this is the true crisis surfacing in our country. These disparities shall continue to disavow the concept of freedom for all, while releasing our power to greedy corporate heads and government officials. If we gained anything from the Iraq War, it is a disdain to the way we have allowed things to be and a hunger for change.
As a military veteran and concerned citizen, I found this to be very alarming. I began to wonder how individuals, who share this perspective, feel about the atrocities that are occurring in Darfur, Somalia, the Congo, or liberated countries that formerly belonged to the Soviet Union. It is important that we remember we enter Iraq on false pretenses and fictional intelligence when the real battle is in Afghanistan; where the Taliban and al-Qaeda were the targets. How did we go from funding these organizations to attacking them? The same occurred with Saddam Hussein, as we funded and trained their military to assist with Iraqis defense against Iran. By the way, where were the weapons of mass destruction and chemical weapons? It is naive of our government to invoke Democracy to the Middle East, with certain political and capital desires, that resulted to the deaths of thousands of U.S. servicemen and women.
What have the American citizens gained from this war? Is it the honor we feel seeing the Iraqi economy flourish to a surplus of over 70 trillion dollars while we gain a growing recession? How about the benefit of the anti-American sentiments to increase terrorist activities and minimize our ability to positively project prosperity to the rest of the world. Maybe, it is to give momentum to terrorism to gain a stronger foothold in the world; or perhaps so that we can be indebted to foreign nations who are lending our government the money to fund this unnecessary war. I don’t see how this benefits me or my neighbor; not even the citizens of tomorrow. As a matter of fact, I am longing for understanding why Americans had to endure at all? If our concerned government wanted to borrow money to fund a venture they could have spent that $10 billion per month domestically to fund health care, provide better services and support for veterans / their families, the create more jobs, a stronger infrastructure, education, to put in place the oversight to prevent the issues that caused our economy to tank, alternative energy, or better yet to compensate this so called “Bail Out” which causes the tax payers additional heartache.
Yes, I understand that we don’t want to end the war in dishonor; however where is the honor, for our service people, to return to an economic, energy, and housing crisis after fighting to liberate a country, providing it with a strong economy that doesn’t possess profit sharing. I guess there are some American entities that are benefiting from this war, such as private companies like Halliburton.
Our elected representatives, regardless of affiliation, are projecting their positions and using pundits / surrogates to dictate our perspectives; have they forgotten it is we, the people, who hired / elected them to serve our greatest and highest interest? I seems as though they have! It is time for us to stop depending on government to solve our issues and focus on removing the growing divide between social, economic, belief, and gender groups; as this is the true crisis surfacing in our country. These disparities shall continue to disavow the concept of freedom for all, while releasing our power to greedy corporate heads and government officials. If we gained anything from the Iraq War, it is a disdain to the way we have allowed things to be and a hunger for change.
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1 comment:
SAMEON, This is very well written and quite thoughtful. It was great to talk to you today. Hang in there!
Suzann
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