How Many More?

It is Friday May 4th and I'll be out on the corner of Washington and Clinton Streets protesting the war. In the past week, there was Walk out on the War, Dr. Joe Gerson discussing his book Empire and the Bomb: How the United States Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World at PEACE Iowa, and today, it is the 37th anniversary of the Massacre at Kent State. I sense a building up of people who have had enough with the war and the unnecessary deaths of our soldiers and civilians.

Unfortunately, there are people who are convinced that pulling out our troops will lead to worse things like the "terrorists following us home". I believe there are two wars being waged, the one in Iraq and the psychological war being waged to convince us, against our better natures, that "they" are out to "get us". The Republican minority has been pounding us with that message all this week. Even the Democrats are hedging about our future in Iraq.

The only thing I know as a fact is our government, through our tax dollars, has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons ever assembled on the face of the earth. Our government has threatened to use them on Korea and Iran. While we have signed a number of nonproliferation treaties, we have not reduced our arsenal by even one bomb since inventing them, though we have promised innumerable times to do so. As an example, in November of 2001, President Bush in meeting with President Putin, said, "We will reduce our operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next decade, a level fully consistent with American security." To date, none of these warheads have been decommissioned. In fact, we want to renew these weapons and make them even more lethal.

The beautiful thing about our country is the ability of its people to live in denial about how our government serves us. I love our country because of the ideals that our nation's founders built it on, not the way our government functions.

It is because of the idea that "we, the people" can change things that I refuse to go over to the side of those who believe there is nothing that we can do about how things are. That is why I will be on the corner tonight holding a sign to end this war. It isn't the only thing I do, but it is the most visible. I don't live in the past, I live here and now.