Polls show that the
American people are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the war in Iraq and
want our beloved troops to come home as soon as possible. Nearly 80
communities nationwide have put these sentiments in city and town
council resolutions that call for bringing our sons and daughters home
from a war that has become a deadly quagmire and an occupation as
unpopular in Iraq as in the United States.
In September, the
cities of Chicago and Philadelphia passed resolutions urging the
cessation of combat operations in Iraq. They cited the lives lost and
the monetary cost to their communities. In November, the city of
Baltimore unanimously passed a resolution “urging President Bush and the
United States Congress to commence a humane, orderly, immediate
withdrawal of United States military personnel and bases from Iraq.”
This resolution also cited the deaths of U.S. troops and Iraqi civilian
men, women and children.
In December, the
smaller town of Wilkinsburg passed a resolution supporting neighboring
12th District Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha’s call for U.S.
troops to come home from Iraq in six months. This resolution urged Rep.
Mike Doyle (D-PA), to stand with Murtha, a fellow Democrat. With its
passage, Wilkinsburg supported its citizens, soldiers, Murtha and the
nation. Local legislators asserted their place in a global society by
voting for peace.
These cities and
towns are leaders in the growing trend of citizens recognizing the power
of their local communities in participating in a global society.
The monetary cost to
us as a nation is $252 billion thus far with $120 billion more in the
works. According to the research institute National Priorities Project,
our nation could instead have provided over 57 million Americans with
health care, or 2 million affordable housing units. We could have
equipped half a million U.S. homes with renewable energy. Fifty million
students could have received university scholarships.
The costs of this war
hit us where we live, who we are as families, communities and as a
nation. As the saying goes: "All politics is local." That has never been
truer than today in a world virtually without borders and in a world
where what happens “over there” has direct implications for what happens
over here.
This hopeful trend of
increasing civic participation at the local level showed up strongly in
the months leading up to the invasion in Iraq. From December 2002 until
the March 2003 invasion, 170 city councils, representing over 50 million
Americans, passed city, town and county resolutions that decried the
administration’s path of pursuing “pre-emptive,” unilateral war. These
resolutions protested the imminent war’s launch, which came without the
consent of the United Nations Security Council and without allowing the
U.N. Weapons Inspectors to finish their job as they requested to be
permitted to do.
With over 2,250 U.S.
soldiers killed and estimates of at least 100,000 innocent Iraqi
citizens dead, Americans are again using the civic outlet most
accessible and most willing to listen—City Hall—to make their voices
heard and call on the federal government to bring the troops home.
Citizens of our towns
and cities have sons and daughters, mothers and fathers over there. They
have sons and daughters, mothers and fathers buried in the ground over
here. They have schools that need fixing, they have health clinics that
need funding. They have a conscience and they have a voice.
Karen Dolan is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C., She also directs the Cities for Progress project there. Email to: kdolan@igc.org
Copyright 2006 MinutemanMedia.org
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