A Letter From the President ...(The following is excerpted from the monthly Newsletter) This month I am stating my own opinion, and it in no way represents the official stance of All Souls Congregation or the thinking of every member and friend. I am so angry with President Bush’s administration for this immoral, unethical and provocative war in Iraq. In the winter of 2002-03, before there was a war, I was one of 50 to 60 All Souls congregants and others who went to Washington, D.C., New York City, and Boston to protest this unprecedented decision. While we had good support in these great cities, we were taunted as being unpatriotic (or worse!) by showing our strong disapproval. Regardless of what the Bush administration says, our U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and the democratic process give us the right and, yes, encourage us, to protest and speak out on these important issues. Last month, we reached another grim milestone when it was reported that 4000 U.S. military men and women have died in the Iraq war. At this writing, the actual count is 4028. If you read the Day, you possibly experienced four very difficult days in mid-March when the paper was profiling 42 Connecticut residents who died in Iraq. I started reading all of these gut-wrenching profiles, but it was too much for me, and I had to stop. I was trying to understand why these 42 young people enlisted in this war and finally gave their highest sacrifice – their lives. When I multiply that by 100 to over 4000 U.S. families who lost a loved one in Iraq, I am both depressed and livid. The U.S. casualties in Iraq are estimated to be over 30,000 – many of whom have debilitating injuries and whose lives will never be the same. We’ll never know the actual number of deaths of Iraqi civilians and military, currently estimated to be between 85,000 and over 1.2 million! Take a moment to reread this paragraph and thinking about these immense numbers. There are the direct and indirect costs for war. I read an article by Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz about their new book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. By using inflation-adjusted dollars, they compared the costs of WWII and the Korean and Vietnam wars to the Iraq war. Only WWII, the war supposed to end all wars, cost more ($5 billion) than the Iraq war. Together the cost estimation is $3 trillion. In numbers, this looks like $3,000,000,000,000. No – there are no typos. One trillion is one million million, or one thousand billion – staggering numbers! Bilmes and Stiglitz' monthly calculation for the Iraq war is $12 billion – then they add $4 billion for Afghanistan. So U.S. annual costs for Iraq and Afghanistan military conflicts are just under $200 billion ($192 billion). The authors state that society’s costs, such as the huge drain in the national debt, pulling down a struggling economy, and immense family changes when a soldier dies or gets seriously injured, are much higher than military expenditures. Let’s play some Monopoly - but instead of starting with a pittance of $1500, you get $200,000,000,000 or $200 billion every year. Where would you start spending? Would you offer financial help for public education, renovate dilapidated cities, feed and house homeless people, fix the crumbling highway bridges, make public transportation a high priority, or research ways to reduce the global warming? Yup - I’m angry – but it feels good to write about it! On March 19th, the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war beginning, approximately 60 All Souls congregants, families and staff, including my daughter, Alyssa, and me, went to Hartford to protest. The total number of pacifists and activists in Hartford that day was estimated to be 150 to 200, and approximately one third of them were from All Souls. That weather was horrible; it rained heavily. But it felt appropriate to be part of the “Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice” protest. Someone in the bus said, “If the soldiers are in Iraq to get shot and get killed, we could at least get wet!” I’m writing this letter on the weekend of the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination in Memphis, Tennessee. Remember Dr. King’s simple message to all of us, 40 years ago: when we see inequity, disenfranchised people, or simply know that something is morally wrong, we have to use our voices to demand change! Let’s make the journey together! ~ |
Board of Trustees ...President, Joel Ackerman Members-at-Large Rob Casey |