Speech on war:
Written conversational style, so please dont crit on grammer/spelling.
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It is hot; much too hot for this usual time of year. Just sitting here in your hajib, clutching your two year old daughter, in your small flat, makes you sweat. It’s the smell of the dust, the noise of the outside world, the shattering place around you that makes the heat pulse so. You’re hiding under the table in your kitchen, away from the windows like you’re told. Covered, hidden, but not safe. You’ll never be safe; not with the camouflaged troop of soldiers waiting outside your door; not with the air a thick cloud of hissing stealth bombers making explosions that splinter the air around you.
It’s been this way for ages. Everyone is afraid, just like you. Everyone is waiting, hopeful, scared, and anxious just like you. Anxious for the troops to leave, the white men in green hats to leave, for the air to clear of the grayish smog and the smell of smoke that will forever linger. You are waiting for the streets to finally be clear of bodies, for the pile of rubble that is Bagdad to turn back into the city you once knew. But it won’t happen. Not while your sisters and your children, your brothers and your nephews are being killed everyday, every minute, every second. It’s not going to happen, not today, not tomorrow. The war, it’s here and it’s here to stay, and you can only sit here, crouched, hidden away in the kitchen, praying to god to save your children from this mess.
What did you do to deserve this? Nothing.
Unfortunately, this is how life is for the people of Iraq. It isn’t a story, and I didn’t make it up.
The question is how to end this disastrous situation and the answer isn’t simple. For the next ten minutes I will discuss the effects of the war, why we got into it in the first place, and how to finally end it.
There are countless horrifying consequences of the war. Perhaps the saddest effect of the war is the death toll of civilians. A recent report from Stop the War Coalition stated that the main victims of the war were the Iraqis children—dying from starvation directly caused by war, dying from Iraqi and American fire, missiles, bombs, and other war-related things. In fact, statistics show that since the start of the undeclared war on Iraq, one in eight children die before their eighth birthday.
Since the arrival of American troops, no less than 655,000 civilians, women and children of Iraq have died. This is more than twenty times the amount of deaths Bush predicted in December before the war began. And every year the number grows and grows. It is estimated that at minimum, 500 Iraqi civilians die each day.
The Iraq Coalition tells us that nearly 4,000 of our own soldiers have died, also, and 25,000 have been seriously wounded.
But deaths and physical injuries are not the only detrimental effects of the war. Much psychological damage has also been inflicted. The national center of PTSDs, or post-traumatic stress disorders, predicts that this war is likely to produce a new generation of veterans with chronic mental health problems associated with participation in combat. Many of the challenges facing the soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq are stressors that have been almost identical with the veterans of other large-scale wars such as Vietnam. The war creates in the soldier a fear for his or her own life, and imbeds the damaging mental effects of the actual killings.
It has been estimated that about thirty percent of soldiers in the war will suffer from a PTSD and other serious mental illnesses.
Although these effects on individuals in and around the war are terrible, there are other effects of the war that concerns the US as a whole. One such effect is the price of the war.
As I sat researching the statistics of the war, I came across the National Priorities Project, a site built to help taxpayers understand where their money has gone. On the site there was a link that shows a flashing number—the overall cost of the war. As I watched, the number flickered every quarter of a second, adding a few thousand—so that in about half a minute the cost would go up a good 100,000 dollars. In total, when as I was writing these words down, the price of the war was almost 464 billion dollars; but by now, as I am giving this speech, the price will have gone up another billion. The cost Phoenix pays is nearly 2 billion.
To show how much the money is going to waste, I’ll throw in some comparisons. Instead of paying for a war, we could have built almost 5 million public housing units. We could have hired almost 9 million more teachers. We could have insured 280 million children and we could have provided 25 million underprivileged children with a 4 year university scholarship.
The cost of the war has skyrocketed the country’s deficit and we are now ten trillion dollars in debt.
To know how to fix all of these problems, we have to know why they were created in the first place; why we are in Iraq.
One reason I believe we went to war is because of the oil there. Most people think we went to Iraq is because of the Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The government made Hussein look as if he was directly the cause of 9-11, although we know that there is no evidence to this point. And the government has also made it seem as though Iraq equaled terrorism. But there are many other horrible dictators around the world, and other countries that host terrorist groups, but they don’t have oil and so we aren’t there. This reason also applies to the main notion that we are there to help the poor people of Iraq, who suffered under the Hussein regime. In comparison, however, to the conflict in Darfur for which the government has done nothing, the problem in Iraq is relatively smaller. So why no help for Darfur? No oil.
Another main reason for going into Iraq was because of the so called “weapons of mass destruction.” What most people don’t know, though, is that Bush had amended a treaty so that no country could have WDMs, and that the US had to eliminate the countries’ WDMs as well. However, this soon turned into a game of pick and choose. It’s ok that that Israel has nuclear weapons and its ok for India to have nuclear weapons —but it’s not ok that Iraq does. It’s ok that the US has nuclear weapons—but it’s not ok that Iran does. It’s who we decide should or should not have them, and Iraq seems to be the unlucky pick. It’s a double standard, which makes this reason a bad one.
To be truthful, I could come up with two billion reasons as to why we are in Iraq, many of which would seem good on the surface. But let’s face the facts. None of the good goals we might have come up with have been met and no positives have materialized. The bottom line is that the government underestimated the costs of the war, and overestimated the benefits. One such overestimation was when Cheney said that we would be welcomed as liberators and that the war would last in perhaps a few weeks, but no more than a few months. Instead, according to a gallop poll, 90% of Iraqis said the country was better under Saddam, and 71% of Iraqis want us out; and the war has lasted 5 years.
So how do we end the war?
One way to leave Iraq would be for congress to cut off funding for the war, and vote against anything other than legislation providing for the safe withdrawal of US troops. The simplest plan, of course, would be just to take the troops out and go home.
There are, however, many disillusioned fears that the government has instilled. For example, many people think we’d have to fight hard to leave, but the truth is that the opposition would be minimal, as most Iraqis will be looting the abandoned base camps, and the rest will be sufficiently weak—with no tanks and no heavy weaponry. We would lose fewer men in leaving than if we stayed one more month.
The cover of the American Conservative says it all to well: Under a drawn out picture of a soldier hopping a bus, a question is set: “How do we leave Iraq?” The answer below: “By land.”
Let me leave you with a poem written by an Iraqi soldier preparing for death. It details perfectly the horrid reality of the war and the absurd injustice of being placed in it.
Your hero is talking
I didn't die for my country, I died for his greed.
Blaming some "enemy," making us follow his lead.
I knew it was my duty, to fight in our wars,
But I trusted in him to take the right course.
I guess I was wrong to think he valued our creed,
To deter war if at all possible, fight only in need.
A great lesson is learned by watching our man,
He acts on his own and endangers our land.
Stand by the soldiers that signed up to serve,
Vote for justice and our lives to preserve.
I am not a pawn to be lost while the "king" simply kneels,
His party striving for power, while our country reels.
Pray to Allah this murderous plot comes to an end,
For God's name is marred with every troop that he sends.
I would have gladly paid taxes and bought gas at two-seventy-five,
To have a better economy and still be alive.
Don't blame the "enemy" for my shortened life,
Reserve that blame for the one that concocted this strife.
Osama Bin Laden was the one we fingered for blame,
Saddam Hussein was not even in the game.
I see the connection between your father and you,
If I were alive, I could tell you the truth.
Keep fighting YOUR wars with American lives,
But shiny new boxes can't comfort our wives.
To elect someone else is my only hope,
You should be glad that dead men can't vote.
