For us, the death of Osama Bin Laden is a time of profound reflection. With his death, we remember and mourn all the lives lost on September 11. We remember and mourn all the lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. We remember and mourn the death of our soldiers. <strong>And we say, as we have been saying for the past nine years, “Enough.”
As an organization led by women, our hearts go out to all the women who are living with the ravages of war and violence. And we say, “Enough.”
When all you have is bombs, everything starts to look like a target. And so after years of providing Libya’s dictator with the weapons he's been using against the people, all the international community – France, Britain and the United States – has to offer the people of Libya is more bombs, this time dropped from the sky rather than delivered in a box to Muammar Gaddafi's palace.
If the bitter lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan has taught us anything, though, it's that wars of liberation exact a deadly toll on those they purportedly liberate – and that democracy doesn't come on the back of a Tomahawk missile.
I have spent nearly ten years of my life speaking, writing, protesting, organizing, even singing and dancing for an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I could quote statistics:
* 20% of Americans who die from suicide each year are veterans.
* More than 4,000 troops have died in these wars.
* There is documentation of more than 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq -- a country we were told we were liberating.
* The cost of these wars now totals more than $1 billion for North Dakota taxpayers alone.
These statistics are not new information. The cry for peace is not a new movement. It occurs to me this morning that I have nothing new to add. So I'll tell you what others have said.
The peace group I co-founded, CODEPINK, has not only been protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the drone attacks in Pakistan, but we have been going to military recruiting stations, high schools and career fairs throughout the country encouraging our youth not to join the military. We talk to young people about the [...]
When Jon Stewart was on Larry King's show talking about his Rally to Restore Sanity, he likened himself to Alice in Wonderland and the rally as the Mad Hatter Tea Party. But is Jon Stewart really Alice, trying to find sanity in an upside-down world? Or is he the March Hare, the ultimate "slacktivist" who thinks it's always teatime -- time to sit back and jibberjabber?
On Wednesday, Sen. Max Baucus called on the IRS to investigate non-profit organizations engaged in political activity, focusing on groups that are newly flush with corporate cash and strongly connected with the GOP. Karl Rove better get ready to open his books.
Monday, May 2, 2011
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