July 5th, 2005
The really scary part is if you click on the link you can see how massive the cost of the war is compared to such things as Education (wasn’t Bush supposed to be the Education President?) and public housing and children’s health or how the same amount of money could help the AIDS epidemic, world hunger, and world immunization.And when politicians across this country talk about needing more money to run the country or talk about reducing the budget, they’re always talking about reducing the budget for social and community services. They’re talking about reducing the budget for our police, schools and firemen. They’re talking about cutting Medicare and Veteran’s benefits and closing down V.A. hospitals and military bases that will cost communities income and jobs and a way to survive. They want all of the Eastern Seaboard to be protected from airbases out of Florida — unbelievably after what happened in New York on September 11, 2001.But they keep asking for more money for Iraq.And while I agree we made the mess and we need to clean it up, I don’t understand why anyone who care more about the people in another country than their own children and neighbors and relatives and seniors. Why is it no one seems to care that we’re sending our young people to war all the while providing less and less for those who’ve already served honorably? Why doesn’t anyone care that the crime rates are up but we’re cutting the budget on law enforcement?I mean, I care about the Iraqis. I agree that Sahdaam was an evil man. I’m not sorry he’s not in power anymore, but I still resent the way we went about it and the lies we were told. I resent that Americans died and I resent that the government talks about how many schools we are building and how many hospitals we’re openning over there, but we are being denied most of the story. No one seems to recall that under Sadaam, they had schools where both boys and girls could attend and under Sadaam, they had hospitals and under Sadaam, they had electricity and Iraqis weren’t murdering each other in the street over religious differences and women weren’t being arrested for not dressing in appropriate muslim attire.
Again, I don’t think Sadaam as leader was a good thing, but I wonder what it is that we gave the Iraqis that makes things better. Of course, Bush and his cronies will tell you that we gave them freedom, but is it really? We’ve got our noses in their business telling them what kind of government to run and how to run it. We have our soldiers over their and yet, every day on the news, there’s more people dead and injured. Every morning, there’s another horror story.
We went in to protect the world from terrorism and yet, we’ve made Iraq the best training ground for terrorists they’ve had in decades and we’ve made our own soldiers their exercise dummies and real life targets.
It’s more than just tax dollars we’re spending over there. It’s lives — American and Iraqi and more.
I don’t know what the answer is anymore. I just know that it keeps getting worse with no end in sight.
And it breaks my heart and makes me angry and depressed and hopeless.
tags: politics, Iraq
Leave a comment
You must be logged
in to post a comment.
