This Saturday, March 19, 2011, marks the eighth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Come to the corner to protest and bring a friend.
Weekly Vigil
Every Saturday
Noon - 1:00 P.M.
Intersection of Wadsworth Blvd. and 52nd Ave.
Arvada, Colorado
MAP
The following is an outline of two main talking points. One is that war is costly and the other is that these wars are unnecessary.
War is Costly
- We have spent over a trillion dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 1 This does not include trillions more on the military budget, bases all over the world, or medical and other costs to care for returning soldiers.
- We lost over 58,000 soldiers in Vietnam and 5,766 in the current wars. 2
- Over 40,000 soldiers have been wounded in the current wars. This does not include post traumatic stress disorder and other difficulties reintegrating into civilian life.
- The loss to our country by what could have been if these people had not sacrificed so much for war can not be calculated. War results in children without both parents and communities without the contributions that might have been.
- Our politics have been polarized by the emotion, sacrifice, and outrage generated by war.
- We have little money to invest in infrastructure to maintain our prosperity.
- Our identity as an anti-colonial free people is tough to maintain when we act like an empire. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., the "soul" of America is damaged by war.
- Invading and occupying other countries contributes to a damaged world. Peoples rage at the death and destruction in their countries is directed at the United States and contributes to terrorist attacks.
- Our massive spending on our military is over six times the world's next most expensive military. This puts us at a disadvantage with our economic competitors.
- Many of our communities have become dependent on military spending. Not only does this divert the energy and creativity of these communities away from creating prosperity but it makes it very difficult to make decisions about security.
- Our large military creates a brain drain causing many of our brightest engineering graduates to work for the military instead of designing consumer products.
Recent Wars are Unnecessary
- Vietnam We got involved in Vietnam in support of French colonialism. Direct combat by U.S. troops was sold based on the Golf of Tonkin incident and the Domino Theory. The golf of Tonkin incident did not happen as claimed. The Domino Theory held that if we did not stop Communism in Vietnam other countries would fall like dominoes. After killing a million Vietnamese people and sacrificing 58,000 of our bravest citizens, we left and it did not happen. The region did not go communist.
- First Gulf War After supporting Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran (which killed a million people) and building up his military capacity including biological weapons, we went to war to remove Iraq from Kuwait. It would have been cheaper and killed fewer people if we did not build up his military capacity in the first place.
- Second Gulf War The weapons of mass destruction did not exist. None of the 9-11 hijackers were Iraqi. Iraq's military was crippled after the first gulf war and Iraq was not a threat to the region.
- Afghanistan There are fewer than 100 Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan. 3 We are fighting the Taliban, a Pashtun based group that did not attack us on 9-11-01.
1. National Priorities Project Tallies Cost of War through September 30, 2010, http:www.nationalpriorities.org/publications.
2. http://www.defense.gov/news/casualty.pdf
3. President Obama's Secret: Only 100 al Qaeda Now in Afghanistan, Richard Esposito, Matthew Cole and Brian Ross, Dec. 2, 2009, ABC News, http://abcnews.go.com.
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