You could easily ignore this diary. That's what usually happens to this type of diary when I post it here. Here in the USA, we pretty much ignore this issue, unlike the '60's, when it was right in everybody's face. You see, in the 60's we had a draft, so ANYBODY could be called up to serve in the armed forces and take a chance on dying, as about 60,000 US citizens did, and you had to have a compelling legal reason to get out of serving, like Dick Cheney, who had "other priorities". By the way, I enlisted in the US army in '63.
And it's too bad if this diary just disappears; this is a 'good news' diary; this is what we can do to make the country better. There's very little that we can do that would be better for the world, for the USA, and for our health and wealth and that of our children and grandchildren that is better than a real, viable, energetic peace movement.
Follow me over the fold for some good reasons to dust off the ol' peace symbol and join this hippie in getting active.
maybe you're wondering where the money went that should be paying for universal health care, like it does in countries such as Mexico, where there has been socialized health care for decades. We're not talking France or Germany here; we're talking our neighbor to the South, not to mention our neighbor to the North and most of the other industrialized countries.
Maybe you're wondering, since we like to trumpet our 'greatness' to all the world, how come we have so many people homeless, and not just 'losers', but ordinary families.
Maybe you're wondering where old veterans go when they get out of the military and can't find a job or a place to live.
U.S. veterans face a greater chance of becoming homeless than the general population, say experts. According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (search), a study released in 1999 found that while veterans count for 9 percent of the entire population, they are nearly 23 percent of the homeless population and 33 percent of the adult male homeless population.
I feel that if we are going to be a warmaking nation, we should treat our veterans, the very people without which all this war would not be possible, with greater respect; and yet
Rick Weidman, director of government relations with Vietnam Veterans of America, said he thinks the VA has worked hard to build a network of programs for the homeless that hadn’t even existed before the 1980s, but the VA is still serving only about one-fifth of the estimated veteran homeless population.
He said the department needs to put more resources into the right places to deal with mental illness in the veteran population, including more money toward prevention.
"We are simply not prepared to deal with the mental problems, or even the physiological problems at a healthy rate," he said. "We could prevent a great number of veterans becoming homeless in the first place."
What about our children, our grandchildren; aren't we robbing them by passing on a huge debt?
In February 2009, Congressman Barney Frank, D-Mass., called for a reduction in the defense budget: "The math is compelling: if we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy. I am working with a variety of thoughtful analysts to show how we can make very substantial cuts in the military budget without in any way diminishing the security we need...[American] well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by canceling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face."
But a good peace movement is not only good for the country and the world; it's FUN!!!
In the 60's, the peace movement spawned a whole style of music, energized the counter-culture, and accomplished several goals, including helping to stop the Vietnam war. Forget that the war was lost before it was begun; it could have been that most profitable of conflicts, an endless war just like the present war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there was a consciousness that really went against that. People were awakened to their own power, and we can be that way again.
Here's some other info on where YOUR money is going; we give military assistance to other countries, to the tune of about 5 billion a year. More than half of that goes to Israel. Now I know what you're saying;
"Five billion? Chicken feed!"
It's true; but five billion here, five billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money!
"But... We're a PEACEFUL nation!"
Yeah? Go to wikipedia, Timeline of United States military operations then to Extraterritorial and major domestic deployments and check out how many wars we've been in; and all to the profit of certain people who profit from any conflict while not being physically involved, like... you guessed it... Dick Cheney, whose profit from Iraq (Through his ex-chairmanship of KBR, the biggest supplier to the US military in Iraq) has been estimated at $900,000,000.
Yes, this is a long rant; and there's more, because there's more coming out of YOUR POCKET that goes to pay the war profiteers; and until you wake up to the fact that you're being robbed legally, and a bunch of our wealth that could build infrastructure, health care and education is going into the pockets of these profiteers, You're just not getting it. You're just not getting how we, and future generations, are being robbed.
You want to be really horrified? go to this site and watch as OUR money is being spent by THEM to enrich THEM while we enjoy the present 'economy'.
http://costofwar.com/
So... yeah, I want a powerful peace movement, like the one in the 60's, and I want it NOW.
And the good news?
YES WE CAN.
We can have it. We can have an end to this madness, this toxic mess that robs us, poisons our relationship with other people, and messes up the whole world. It's going to take some doing, we're going to have to get active, a collective waking-up is in order.
The main word is "WE".
Thank you for allowing me to vent a little, and now I have to dust off the ol' peace symbol. And I hope to bring out some pro-peace music in the next month. We need some good movement music.