Legalectric

Today – Washington D.C.

Methinks it’s time to levitate the Pentagon again.

Today – Photos soon from Belle Plaine, and here we are in Red Wing, doin’ our part! It’s everywhere, we’re everywhere:

Words from Bill Habedank, who also motored over with Hank Brummer to Belle Plaine:

We meet here today as many of us did on Feb 15, 2003. On that cold, windy day about thirty or so of us protested as America was about to enter another war and we knew the real consequences of this war. We feared this new policy of pre-emptive war would unleash an era of unending war; wars which would inflict the death and horrific suffering of many innocent people. We knew it would take the precious lives of many of our young men and women. We knew it could bankrupt our treasury. We knew it could possibly destroy our democracy. Now we have found out that it made us unable to respond to natural disasters in a timely fashion or to be able to afford the reconstruction of the hurricane devastated areas.

We, who stood here on that day in Feb., 2003 are not saying these things now in hindsight. We understood then these real costs of war. We knew the probable outcome of this path to war would lead us to the full realization about the futility of war. We did not want to be right but the grim truth is now facing all of us Americans squarely in the face.

We, the American public, should be hearing, much more often, the kind of insights that were expressed by President Dwight Eisenhower, who in 1953 said: “Every gun that is made, every warship that is launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

That was spoken by a man who led this country in its? greatest moment of triumph, WWII and he later became our President. He understood the tremendous costs of war and questioned its? real worth in human terms. Whether we are fighting for democracy, our freedoms, or are seeking retribution against those who attacked us, we should never, ever forget these costs.

We should listen to the words of Gandhi who said: “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?”

Even our President, George W Bush, said something recently which should denounce the use of war when he said on May 25, 2005 in the White House “We should not use public money to support the further destruction of human life.” Of course he was using that phrase in another context where he was talking about stem-cell research. However if he truly believed that phrase how can he say the lives of the unborn are more important than the lives of the living?

The time has come for America to end this War on Iraq. This war has made us less safe and it is creating terrorists faster than we can kill them. It has made everyday life for Iraqis a hell on earth; even worse than under Sadamm Hussein. It has destroyed the chance of America getting cooperation and respect from other peoples around the earth. It is bankrupting our children?s future. It is denying us the ability to take care of our own people and of our ability to fund research necessary to create methods of using renewable energy. It will fuel a global arms race that will end with nuclear war.

Theodore Roosevelt, a great Republican president, on May 7, 1918 said this: ?To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.?

The time has come for all of us to stand up and demand that we end this war and seek peaceful means to resolve human conflict. We must oppose the policies of the Bush Administration and do it loudly and clearly. We must take it to the streets of every American town or city, to every neighborhood and to the very halls of Washington. Also, we must hold those accountable who have led us down this path of self-destruction so help us God.