Street art in Oakland of soldiers and businessmen.
Today is the 5-year anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq.
Let’s take a moment to remember the nearly 4,000 US soldiers who have given their lives in this war– and the uncounted thousands of Iraqis.
Let’s take a moment to think of the families whose loved ones have been deployed and re-deployed to Iraq, while the rest of us fight terrorism by going to the mall.
Let’s take a moment to consider the ways 5 trillion dollars could have been used instead: health care, education, repair of a crumbling infrastructure, retirement security.
Let’s take a moment to take responsiblity for our complacency in the face the US’s use of extraordinary rendition, waterboarding, and other forms of torture.
Let’s take a moment to remind ourselves of the America we learned about in school, where our votes count, our speech is free, where any man –or woman–could become president (not commander-in-chief), and vow to work to make it so again, for the first time.
[Note from Sarah-Hope: I’m still in DC. Meissa wrote this yesterday, then left the choice of publishing it up to me. Given where I am, both physically and in my heart, I wanted to make it public. There’s more I would like to say, but I am limited to fifteen minutes on this hotel computer, and the words don’t come easily. To put it overly simply, I don’t think the war money is five trillion we could have spent on healthcare or education. As a nation we’re willing to run ourselves deeply into debt to pay for war, but we wouldn’t do the same to heal the sick or feed the hungry. It’s too hard for Halibuton et al to profit off of that.]
I no longer can stand to hear any of them talk, or read what they write. I know it’s lies and that they laugh about it all in their insulated bubbles of power. I’ll email you ..
Stay safe, both of you. This is really just the beginning of our chance to take back our democracy so that those who died for it won’t have died in vain.