Iraq Occupation

It’s an encouraging sign that the local March for Peace & Life, protesting the Iraq and Afghanistan military occupations, drew many younger participants Saturday.

Nathaniel Batchelder, one of the event’s organizer and director of the Oklahoma City Peace House, wrote this about the march and accompanying rally in a Facebook message:

The Oikos student-led Rally and march for Peace & Life today was the more powerful for the young activists who spoke. Emma Velez, Katie Williams, Stefan Warner, Andrew Stein, and Jessie MacArthur inspired adult listeners with hope that "the next generation" fully grasps the futility of war, and the urgent need to shift resources into life, justice, environmental, and human need priorities.

Students involved in OCU’s Oikos Scholars program, which promotes social justice, helped organized the event.

The 100 or so rally participants met outside at Oklahoma City University and held signs along 23rd Street encouraging drivers to honk for peace. They listened to speakers that also included Batchelder and Dr. David Macey, and then marched down Blackwelder to 30th Street to Classen and then back on 23rd Street to OCU.

Some speakers mentioned how the long length of the occupations—seven years in Iraq, nearly nine years in Afghanistan—has tragically normalized the idea of war and violence for many young people in the U.S. Younger people simply haven’t experienced extended years of peace in their lives. How has the sense of perpetual war influenced them?

As the speakers adamantly pointed out, war should not be normalized.

The rally’s participants also formed a line and went to a podium one-by-one to read the names of all the Oklahoma soldiers that have been killed in the two occupations.

According to The Washington Post, 4,378 American soldiers have died in the Iraq conflict and 1,033 have died in the Afghanistan conflict. Thousands more have been injured. The Post lists 94 Oklahomans who have died in the two conflicts.

Some organizations estimate that anywhere from approximately 100,00 to 1 million Iraqi civilians have been killed since the occupation began in 2003. The numbers vary greatly, but most everyone agrees there has been major casualties among the civilian population. The number of civilians killed in Afghanistan range from thousands to tens of thousands.

Costofwar.com estimates the costs of the two occupations so far has been nearly $987 billion. Oklahoma’s share of the cost is estimated at nearly $15 billion. Oklahoma City’s share of the cost is estimated at $2.3 billion. Tulsa’s share of the cost is $1.8 billion.

The Oklahoma Peace House and OCU Oikos Scholars are inviting people to attend a March For Peace at 11 a.m. March 20.

The march, which will form at the corner of NW 23rd Street and Blackwelder, will mark the seven-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There will be speakers, drumming and music.

In general, many in the right-wing continue to distort the gruesome military occupation, calling it a victory. Yet thousands of American and coalition soldiers have been killed and wounded. The occupation has also resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. The occupation, begun by former President George Bush, in on track to cost at least a trillion dollars.

Let’s take some time to celebrate the idea of peace during a violent period in our country’s history.

The right-wingers on cable television and radio will be howling over today’s White House announcement that the nation’s ten-year budget deficit is now estimated at $9 trillion, but there are simple ways to fix the problem.

Here are two ways to address the deficit: Congress could raise taxes on the country’s most wealthiest citizens and corporations, and the government could immediately end the military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of course, that won’t happen because the nation’s wealthiest citizens and defense contractors buy the type of political influence through campaign contributions denied to ordinary Americans. But it’s important to raise these issues even if the right-wing attack machine marginalizes the ideas through its own special theater of the nonsensical.

At least one poll shows Americans do think the wealthy should be taxed more, and Democrats have floated ideas about taxing the wealthy more to help pay for health care reform.

So this question bears repeating: Why in the world are tax hikes on the nation’s wealthiest citizens not a larger part of the national conversation during a time of economic distress?

Some financial experts argue that tax hikes can delay an economic recovery by preventing business expansion, but what about the millions upon millions of dollars in disposable income held by the wealthiest among us? Should these citizens—I’m speaking of multi-millionaires here—be allowed to essentially hoard money while most of us struggle with stagnant wages, high health care costs and unemployment? Wealth disparity is the problem, not the answer, to our economic problems. The country learned this lesson in the 1930s, but somehow forgot it in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan.

Apparently, the country now has the greatest wealth disparity in its history, according to a report that looks at the numbers since 1913. This does not bode well for basic democracy.

A two or even three percent federal tax hike on, say, those earning $350,000 or more a year could help stabilize the budget. Maybe the hikes should be even higher, and the income level should be lowered to $300,000. Tax hikes on massive corporate profits above a certain threshold could be instituted as well without affecting small businesses. My numbers may be off here, but the point is we need an extended conversation about our taxation system that deals with real numbers and facts. What we don’t need is more right-wing, slippery-slope arguments that only serve the interests of the wealthy.

The failed military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan speak for themselves. Every dollar spent and every life lost in these occupations are tragic wastes. Estimates vary, but as of April, 2009, the Iraq occupation had cost approximately $642 billion and the Afghanistan occupation had cost around $189 billion, according to a congressional report. These costs grow by the day and don’t take into account the extended medical treatment needed by wounded veterans.