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Former MN Senator Becky Lourey: Why Not Let Moral Principles Guide Governance?

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Where Have Our Morals Gone?

But can’t you see, it is the war in Iraq that is causing the crumbling of our own economy, it is the unchecked greed of the people at the helm of our failing institutions as they walk away with golden parachutes and their employees lose their pensions and their jobs. Where have our morals gone? We have a president who told us to go spend money in time of crisis – I was raised to believe that it is not spending, but working – jobs, jobs that are needed to meet the challenges facing our world – that build and rejuvenate an economy. And war only makes a few rich – the oil companies and a few defense contractors.

Bush of course denies it, but the new report by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Blimes presents figures to us that are staggering. The Washington Post reports that the authors “final tally reaches $2.2 trillion in their best case scenario and $5 trillion in their realistic scenario – and those figures don’t even count the costs to Iraq, U.S. allies and the rest of the world. Choosing to err on the conservative side (and perhaps on the side of a catchier book title) the authors settle on $3 trillion.” The title of the book is The Three Trillion Dollar War ; its authors are experts on the subject. Stiglitz is the Nobel Prize winning Columbia University economist and Blimes is a Harvard University lecturer and public finance expert.

So – when Americans are focusing on the economy, they are in fact focusing on the war at the same time – whether they are aware of it or not.

Maybe 4000 U.S. military dead by the time this 5th anniversary ends, 29,000 physically wounded with multiple serious injuries, not to mention the psychological scars from repeated deployments and extended tours of duty without rest, inadequate medical support upon returning home. Somewhere between 600,000 and one million Iraqis dead, and 5 million displaced – take a moment to consider the horror refugees and immigrants are experiencing and the crisis created for the people and the countries. With the Red Cross estimating that more than 2,200 doctors and nurses have been killed and of the 34,000 doctors registered in Iraq in 1990, at least 20,000 have left the country.

Beatrice Megevand Roggo of the Red Cross pleads, “Better security in some parts of Iraq must not distract attention from the continuing plight of millions of people who have essentially been left to their own devices.”

How can caring Americans bear this unconscionable state of affairs? How can we go on remembering what we knew from the back pages of the newspapers, from former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, that there were no weapons of mass destruction. We knew there were no operational links between Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein even before the March 11, 2008, report from The Institute for Defense Analyses stated, after examining 600,000 Iraqi documents, that there was no link. What have we done!

Remaining Calm and Steady

We must remain calm and steady. We must not appear to be hysterical because we have a message. And we must never tire. We must seek justice – for hope I recommend that you read former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega’s book United States v. George W. Bush et al. It is from her hypothetical indictment to a hypothetical grand jury that I read in the first paragraph “a conspiracy to defraud’. Elizabeth states, “because of Bush’s fiction, we agreed to bomb people 8000 miles away whose only “crime” was that they were oppressed by a violent and cruel dictator”.

For emotional support and inspiration, I recommend you read Dissent, Voices of Conscience – Government Insiders Speak Out Against the War in Iraq by Colonel (Ret.) Ann Wright and Susan Dixon with a foreword by Daniel Ellsberg.

My son admired and respected General Eric Shinseki so I had planned to read the section where he was castigated in public by Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld for speaking truth. However, this quote from Marine Lieutenant General (Ret.) Greg Newbold reaches deep into my emotion and soul, “The commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions – or bury the results.”

On his death bed on March 7, 2006, Psychology Professor Emeritus, Kamal Gindy, UMD, called me to his bedside and told me to never give up. I’m here with you because of my promise to him.

But it is so hard, so hard, isn’t it, to be fighting fear – fear is primal, it is not taught, it is within us, and we must resist it and replace it with empathy and love and action.

--Becky Lourey

Words of grace, wisdom and honor from a formidable Minnesota woman. Another heroine who gives strength to this writer’s sword arm.

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Georgianne Nienaber is an investigative environmental and political writer. She lives in rural northern Minnesota and South Florida. Her articles have appeared in The Society of Professional Journalists' Online Quill Magazine, the Huffington (more...)
 

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