Red State Forums on Iraq--An Idea
Sat Aug 27, 2005 at 08:21:06 PM PDT
Recently our small red-state group wrote a LTE which called our congressional delegation out on their silence regarding Iraq, no WMD, torture, and traitorgate, or as Kennedy put it, "Bush's Vietnam".
The LTE unleashed a very interesting slew of LTE's from all over the state more or less on the same theme, and a lot point to our delegation's silence,the lack of accountability, the degrading of our military. Then of course, we got the crazies, the fringe-type letters, one of which we shut down pretty quickly by pointing out the strategy that people (republicans)use to avoid discussing the issue--inflame hate or raise a number of stupid, unassociated issues.
It occurs to us that even one courageous letter can help unleash the concern that you know is out there. It got our small group to thinking...
Join me below the fold..
Our red state rag--with wide circulation--recently published Gary Hart's "Who will say no?" editorial which I believe was in the NY Times. It followed shortly after our LTE and a number of other alternative viewpoints that were being expressed in LTE's , including mentioning of the words of Gen. Wesley Clark. It was as if the paper needed an excuse to do this, but that is another story and probably way too hopeful anyway.
So Cheney is in our back yard (guess which state?). Our group wants to initiate, plan and implement an "Iraq Forum" ...inviting Clark, Hart, others, and citizens to discuss these issues, ideas and approaches. Because of our context, we think this would draw a huge number of people from many political perspectives. We don't care so much about national attention as beginning to have forums where we can have some intelligent discussion of issues of concern.
This blog site I credit with raising the level of awareness critically needed to deal with this country's problems, and the lies of the Bush administration. Our idea is to keep these issues on the front burner by holding forums on Iraq (Mr. Preznit, if you're not going to talk about it, we are. Here is a set of options). I think we need to generate discussion among activists and concerned citizens on the state level to continue to keep these issues front and center, and to get our people back engaged in our government.
Ok, so winters here are bad and I need a life away from this blog site, so I am fishing for ideas on how to move this forward here, without it being buried in the snow like everything else. Our event would be planned for "spring".
It would be very cool if other red states either joined this forum or did their own, if this is an idea that works.
Thanks for reading. All ideas welcome!
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