VINIE BURROWS ON THE 8TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE INVASION OF IRAQ

Recruiting Station Times Square New York City:

Brothers and sisters we gather today in solemn observance of the 8th anniversary of the United States invasion of Iraq. However in our grief  let us empathize with the suffering of our sisters and brothers in Japan the earthquake and the tsunami which have devastated them. And we also recognize that their precarious nuclear situation can be traced back to the hellish invention of the atom bomb.  On  August 6, 1945, at 8:15 am , under an Executive Order of President Harry Truman  an evil genie was let out of a bottle over the city of Hiroshima  and the genie  can never  be put back into the bottle and so brothers and sisters, the  horrors of nuclear power  will come back to haunt us again and again until the world forever renounces war and nuclear power.
There is no way to peace, peace is the way. The wars and occupation of  Iraq and Afghanistan have cost, at a conservative estimate the lives of more than 1 million three hundred thousand human beings –  civilians , non-combatants ,  and almost  5000  US service men and women . The human cost of war includes, also, thousands who return from wars physically. spiritually and emotionally damaged. And we can add to the cost of war, the diversion of funds that could be used for schools, hospitals, mass transit, sewers, tunnels, bridges, the vital infrastructure which serves as the arteries and veins of transport and travel locally, regionally,  and nationally. And we can add to the cost of war here and abroad,   the destruction of  educational and cultural institutions, museums, schools, libraries, universities, the migration of more than three million human beings fleeing the war, the heartbreaking dissolution of family and human networks.
A 9 year old Afghan boy said and  these are his words in translation.

WHY DID YOU KILL MY FATHER
YOU NEVER  EVEN KNEW HIM
HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO MAKE A GUN
WHY DON’T YOU MAKE BREAD INSTEAD.

The businessmen (Halliburton, Bechtel) who trade in death are also the shareholders of private military, gas and oil corporations who  receive compensation,  in other words receive our tax dollars for the so called reconstruction of  Iraq. You see they made money to destroy and then they make money to reconstruct and the MONEY THEY MAKE  IS OUR MONEY IS OUR TAX DOLLARS AND WE HAVE A RIGHT TO SEE THAT IT IS SPENT JUSTLY.

The economic situation in the USA and in Puerto Rico is dire.  Absolute poverty exists in our harlems, our ghettos, our inner cities, Appalachia, Indian reservations.  Tens of thousands have lost their jobs, thousands more have lost their homes. In our own city the number of homeless has increased, the number of children living in poverty has increased.
We grannies – who are mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers – denounce the Obama agenda which in its foreign policy suspiciously resembles the Bush agenda. Our  combined ages total one thousand years and we tell the president whom we supported listen to your mothers:
Mothers represents life. War is death, the grannies wage a struggle for peace. There is no way to peace, peace is the way. No more wars Thank you.

– Vinie Burrows
for the Granny Peace Brigade
Photo: Bud Korotzer