The Madness of an Iraq Attack

The whole world (including our 1991 Arab allies, Britain, Germany and Saudi Arabia) is against our attacking Iraq, a sovereign state, at this time. Yet we get daily media blitzes on the need to attack, now even suggesting "doing it alone" if our allies cannot convince our government to abstain from attacking.

We are told we'll need 150,000 to 250,000 ground troops to go fighting house to house. Where are these troops coming from? We're not even protecting our own borders, but our solders are babysitting Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia, Korea and Afghanistan,.

We are so low on troops (because of poor pay) that women are being used more and more. Our state National Guards are called to babysit countries that have been fighting each other for hundreds of years. Why not let them finish the job if that's what they're bent on doing? Why separate our families for this dangerous nonsense? The minute our boys are called home, the fighting will resume. So we've achieved nothing but a huge expense in wasted time, the sweat of our troops, and a huge jolt to our national expense sheet.

It's time to call our boys home and use these billions of dollars we've been sending overseas (only to enrich the dictators, as their people still live in hovels) to help our own people (the sick, the elderly, the downsizing victims, the homeless sleeping on heating grates in the sidewalks, under overpasses, and in cemeteries). If these people were paid livable wages, they would not need to be interviewed constantly by young social workers who decide how much aid they should receive. It's very humiliating.

There's more to helping people than shuffling manila folders. We've seen how futile this is in our own state's child and families division (children endangered and even killed because of incompetence). There's no substitute for regular (and surprising) visits to the apartments where these children reside. Updating manila folders monthly from an office desk will not do the job. State and government workers are paid with our tax monies. We need to be more vigilant observers to make sure they're doing the job they're paid to do.

If September 11 taught us anything, it should be that each of us is our brother's keeper. The world has many problems and each of us needs to pull more than our own weight to turn around this mess the "haves" have created, if only for our children's sake. They deserve as much (or better) from our generation as we received from previous generations.