It’s all over!
27th December 2011 · 0 Comments
By Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.
TriceEdneyWire.com Columnist
President Barack Obama just said, “It’s all over!” Usually those are dreaded words in any relationship, but when President Obama said “It’s all over,” unlike “Mission Accomplished” by another president, it means the war in Iraq is finally over. What a great day that was! When President Obama campaigned for office, he promised to end that war and he did just that. We peace activists are overjoyed that he kept his promise.
Here we are nearly nine years later, with 1.5 Americans having gone to Iraq to execute a war that began under former President George W. Bush under what we now know were false pretenses. More than 30,000 soldiers were wounded. As many as 30 percent of soldiers returning from the war have been scarred with mental illnesses shortly after their return. 4,500 soldiers died, and military families have borne a very heavy burden in a long, long war to which many of us objected before the invasion of March of 2003 occurred. The war lasted far longer than many of us could ever have imagined, but now “It’s all over!”
As a peace activist who cried a river of tears as I saw bombs dropping on Iraqi friends under former President George H.W. Bush, I couldn’t believe that we were doing it again. Along with thousands of others from around the world, I worked over time, in dangerous circumstances, spending 40 days on the waters of the Arabian Sea in a peaceful protest trying to prevent the first Gulf War, so I lived in agony as former President George W. Bush took us down that same road. I had been on a peace mission in 1991-92 with 200 women from around the world, working for a peaceful resolution to the Iraq-Kuwait conflict, when I barely escaped the explosion of the first bombs in Iraq. Less than 10 years later, the pain of yet another war was almost unbearable. I am grateful for all the people who worked to end this war, and I am grateful to a President who opposed the war from the beginning and kept his word to end it.
We still have a war to end in Afghanistan, and we must stand with President Obama as he makes every effort to do that. We have another war here at home, and we must stand with the President to end that war against poor people, underserved people and the middle class. If we the people were united, we’d have jobs for the unemployed and underemployed. Seniors wouldn’t have to fear losing Social Security and Medicare on a daily basis. More than 160,000 Americans would not be anxiously awaiting a decision on whether their taxes will go up in January 2012. We wouldn’t have to worry about facing a government shut down every few months.
We could use a little help from our leaders and the media to stop the gloom and doom, and begin motivating us to take on a “can do” attitude to make a positive difference in all the ways we can. I applaud the President for refusing to accept the notion that nothing can happen for the benefit of the people unless Congress says so. He’s taking administrative actions wherever he can to offer help to those in need. Call Members of Congress on (202) 225-3121 and tell those who are supporting silly actions to suppress the rights of voters, making it more difficult for us to exercise one of our fundamental rights—the right to vote. We need every vote to say to some Members in 2012, “It’s all over!”
This article was originally published in the December 26, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper