We're told to write letters to the editor, contact our elected representatives, elect the right people to serve at the different levels of government. We obligingly follow the civics lesson and expect that we will bring about change.
Oh, how I wished that were the case!
What more can we do to stop the killing that is being done in our name by our government, using unmanned bombers called drones, destroying buildings, infrastructure, families, all in our name? Many Americans, many Ashevillians, say no more! No more!
We've done all the right things that people told us good citizens need to do to bring about change, but for some reason we're not listened to by those people we elected. We do a demonstration as our President's entourage comes into town for the our leader's and his wife's vacation. Yet we see no change. Instead we see an Emergency War Funding bill get debated in Congress that will spend some $30-plus billion more on our war in Afghanistan, a war torn country whose biggest crop are poppies and now terrorists, we're told.
We're also told we're the good guys bringing democracy to a people who have lived centuries under another type of government based on family tribes and Islam. We've come to rescue the women who are second class citizens in their own country, but yet it's the women who tell us to go home, to stop killing their husbands, their brothers, parents and children.
We lament that teachers in our locality and state lose jobs, that Asheville has people who have to rely on food stamps to put food on the table, where people fight for two and three part-time jobs just to pay the rent, where more than $57 million of our tax dollars since 2001 have been wasted to kill grandmothers and grandchildren in Afghanistan! This is insane! Standing by and letting this happen is taking part in the insanity and the injustice.
Many of us want to do more to stop this madness that our leaders don't seem to be too concerned about. How can we get the message to our elected people in Washington that this kind of stuff has to stop?
Maybe if we could get our city leaders who sit on the City Council to let us present a resolution for their examination, maybe we could get our federal representatives' attention, maybe other cities in North Carolina would follow the lead of a city in Western North Carolina. Maybe from there, we would see resolutions debated in Iowa, or Nevada, or Michigan. Maybe the word would get to their representatives. Maybe our representatives would start listening to their constituents instead of the military/industrial complex. Maybe Wall Street in Asheville would have money invested there instead of Wall Street in New York which speaks for our military contractors.
Waging war should not be about creating jobs in the USA. Waging war should be about protecting our shores when necessary, not invading other countries creating new terrorists who arise from the ashes in Afghanistan to defend their homeland and to train new terrorists to get us any way possible any time possible.
But then, wouldn't you do the same for your country?
Some of us remember Vietnam. We had a lesson from France which lost a war of aggression there in the 1950s and 60s, but we chose to ignore that lesson. We went into that country because of the threat of communism and left with our tail between our legs, humiliating many of the South Vietnamese whose only option was then to come to this country as refugees rather than be executed as traitors in their home country after our departure.
During the Vietnam War, students at Kent State in Ohio were killed by our own National Guard in a clash because of the Vietnam War. Can we look forward to a repeat of such actions in our country once again as the people here find their words not being heard by our corporate-owned media or a government that is also controlled by corporations?
I ask all grandmothers like me and our grandchildren who live anywhere near Asheville to come to the City Council Meeting on June 8th, 5 PM and stand with us when we simply ask to have our proposed resolution to Bring Our War Dollars Home to Asheville, instead of being built into bombs to kill other grandmothers like me and their grandchildren in Afghanistan. Nine years is way too long to torture an entire civilization.
Elected leaders in Asheville, in North Carolina, in the US: Bring Our War Dollars Home!