Local Grannies Protest Cost of Afghan War
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Albany Times Union
Maud Easter
10/15/2010
Tomorrow, Saturday the 16th, I'll be out on the sidewalk by Colonie Center, joining other grandmothers – or in my case, grandmotherly aged women – to demand an end to the Afghan War. We'll be there because we know we and our families can't afford this war anymore. Instead of spending our treasure – tax dollars and precious grandchildren's lives – in Afghanistan, we desperately need money for jobs, schools, and health care here at home.
Drive by and you will see us, dressed in red and black. From 2-3 PM, we'll be at Central Avenue and Wolf Road, with our banners:
Nine Years is Enough!
The Cost of War is Too High: Death, Dollars & Debts.
End the Afghan War Now!
Are You Worried about the Debt?
Make Jobs Not War!
We invite anyone concerned about this terribly wasteful war to join us. Our demonstration is one of many across the country in a National Week of Commemoration of the Ninth Anniversary of the War.
I live in Albany County, so I used the excellent National Priorities Project website http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home to learn what our county has already spent on the Afghan War. It's astounding – from Albany County alone, taxpayers have spent $465.4 million on the Afghan war since 2001! That money could have bought 86,736 of us health care for a year, or paid for scholarships for 77,481 of our young people to go to university for a year. Go to the website and check out what those tax dollars could have bought for your family, your neighbors.
It's an important time for us all to be doing these calculations, because the alternative of a negotiated end to this war is in sight. Peace talks have begun in Afghanistan. There was good news this week that the US is supporting these and is giving resistance leaders safe passage to meet with the Afghan government in Kabul (a welcome change from the previous US policy of preventing in-country peace-making meetings through a "capture or kill" list of exactly those people who needed to be involved in the talks to end to the violence.)
On Saturday, we Grannies will be speaking for the 58% of Americans reported by a CNN survey to now oppose the war. http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/09/29/afghanistan.poll/ If we speak for you, please come join us – our elected leaders need to know that we will back their steps toward peace!
