FORTY LIES IN 40 DAYS: #33 Buerkle Says All Life is Precious

Buerkle said. “I don’t think as a society we can pick and choose what life is valuable and what is not. All life is precious without exception.” [The Post-Standard, 8/23/12]

But she hasn't uttered word one about war...the massively expensive war in Afghanistan, the longest war in which the US has ever been involved; the massively expensive war on drugs both at home and abroad; the cruel war against providing all people in our great nation with health care insurance. She has been in a powerful position for almost 2 years, one of 538 Members of Congress, and what she might have said could have been so important to the national discussion of priorities. 

Buerkle says life is precious in utero. After birth she stops caring. 

Selective conscience is no conscience at all.

Cost of Wars to NY25

THE 25TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF NEW YORK:

Total Cost of Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Since 2001

$3.626 BILLION (as of this hour),

an average of over $329 MILLION a year,
or $909,113 a day,
or $37,630 an hour
in NY25
~
also, $503.75 from every person in NY25 per year
in taxes, or indebtedness (primarily to China)

President and General Dwight D. Eisenhower, from his speech on the Military-Industrial Complex at the close of his Presidency in 1961:

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

...

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

Cost of War in 25th Congressional District Since 2001

Ann Marie Buerkle could, right this minute, become a leader!

She could become an anti-wars activist.

The cost to the 25th Congressional District of the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 is over $3.8 billion, with no end in sight. I don't think we even have a bank that can handle that kind of money.

Blueskygirl cannot, for the life of her, understand why anyone would still think (if they ever did, which she didn't) that these wars make any sense at all. We have become masters at making enemies. We have lost our ability to make friends.

The nation that we love is no more. The love and respect that we once enjoyed has been squandered in our madness.

Ann Marie Buerkle: care to step up to the plate?

Ann Marie Buerkle, You Must Read: War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges

 "The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, 

for war is a drug." 

The movie Jarhead opens with this line from War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.


Chris Hedges has been reporting on wars for almost 30 years, first in El Salvador and other war torn countries in Central America during the nineteen eighties. He reported from Sarajevo and Kosovo. For the past two decades he has been reporting on conflicts all over the Middle East and Africa.

He graduated from Colgate University and Harvard DIvinity School. He studied Arabic. He worked with combat soldiers as he wrote War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He has been awarded prizes for his journalism and writing, and for his humanitarian concerns.

I have heard him speak. Never have I heard a more clear voice of conscience, reason and the realities of war in the 21st century.

His biography from Truthdig:

Chris Hedges Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. The Los Angeles Press Club honored Hedges’ original columns in Truthdig by naming the author the Online Journalist of the Year in 2009, and granted him the Best Online Column award in 2010 for his Truthdig essay “One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists.” Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City and has taught at Columbia University, New York University and Princeton University. He currently teaches inmates at a correctional facility in New Jersey. Hedges began his career reporting the war in El Salvador. Following six years in Latin America, he took time off to study Arabic and then went to Jerusalem and later Cairo. He spent seven years in the Middle East, most of them as the bureau chief there for The New York Times. He left the Middle East in 1995 for Sarajevo to cover the war in Bosnia and later reported the war in Kosovo. Afterward, he joined the Times’ investigative team and was based in Paris to cover al-Qaida. He left the Times after being issued a formal reprimand for denouncing the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. He has written nine books, including “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009), “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” (2008) and the best-selling “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” (2008). His book “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. Hedges holds a B.A. in English literature from Colgate University and a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, Calif. Hedges speaks Arabic, French and Spanish and knows ancient Greek and Latin. In addition to writing a weekly original column for Truthdig, he has written for Harper’s Magazine, The New Statesman, The New York Review of Books, Adbusters, Granta, Foreign Affairs and other publications.

About the book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Force_That_Gives_Us_Meaning

About Chris Hedges' work (on the Truthdig site):
http://www.truthdig.com/chris_hedges#

Wikipedia biography of Chris Hedges:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges

Cost of Wars: Theft from the 25th Congressional District

Dear Ann Marie Buerkle:

As of a few of minutes ago, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost the tax payers of the 25th Congressional District of New York $3,512,378,700. (See sidebar for Cost of War site link.)

In plain English, that is over THREE AND A HALF BILLION DOLLARS stolen from our district since 2001.

That is roughly $53,500 for every person in the district (FIFTY THREE THOUSAND, FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS).

If we had that money back here tomorrow...

...how many teachers could we hire?

...how many jobs could we create?

...how many crumbling bridges could we replace?

...how many decent housing units could we build?

...how many people could we offer fuel and electric assistance next winter?

...how many doctors' bills could we pay for care for indigent children?

...how many lives could we save from treatable illnesses?

...how many tax incentives could we offer businesses to locate here? (And no, Bob Congel, I don't mean you.)

...how much research and development could we encourage to get ourselves firmly on the path to true renewable energy independence?

...how many farmers could we pay equitably for the work they do?

...how many nursing homes could finally afford to provide the quality of care their staffs came into the field to give?

...and finally, how long would it take for us as a district and a nation to commit to respecting all our people equally; to strive to help all our people achieve their potential; and to feel proud of our nation as we join the global search for peace .

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953

34th president of US 1953-1961 (1890 - 1969)

Ms. Buerkle, please aim high, higher that you ever imagined you could. Find your way beyond unquestioned allegiance. Think for yourself. Abandon the politics game. Follow your heart. Let compassion for your fellow human beings drive your decisions. 

Very truly yours, 

Blueskygirl 

Ann Marie Buerkle: Potential Anti-War Crusader?

Ann Marie Buerkle is poised to become a strong anti-war leader. Consider the intersecting circumstances: 

• She has great and justified concern about balancing the US budget.  She is concerned that we borrow forty per-cent (40%) of what we spend. Then consider that thirty per-cent (30%) of the budget goes for current military. Another eighteen per-cent (18%) goes to past military.

• With the removal of Osama bin Laden, the US no longer has a reason to be fighting in Afghanistan. Also, the unsteady withdrawal from Iraq needs more push from Congress.

• Buerkle's position on the House Foreign Relations committee puts her in a good position to voice her opposition to war. 

• She has a brilliant background as a crusader. She has an unparalleled single-mindedness for advocating for what she thinks is right.

Blue Sky Girl can think of no one with more potential to become the newest champion of peace.

Go Ann Marie!

War is Breaking Us

Thanks, Code Pink and War Resisters League!

Here is the fine print: 

Half this pie feeds war. 

Increase in military spending since 2000 

could cost the economy close to 2 million jobs in the long run. 

"Massive Defense Spending Leads to Job Loss," 

Center  for Economic and Policy Research, Nov. 2009 

(warresisters.org/federalpiechart)

Light Bulbs?!?

Goodness, if you Teabaggers could get half as worked up about the deadly, pointless and budget-busting war in Afghanistan as you are about light bulbs, I would gladly join you in reducing the size of government.


In case you don't remember, the one thing that toppled the Soviet Union more than anything else was the amount of money wasted on military build-up and fighting pointless wars.


Please try to get your priorities straight. We haven't much time!

Ann Marie Buerkle: If You Want to Cut Government Spending, Work to End War

We live in a perpetual state of war.

The amount of money the US spends on wars past and present is obscene. 

I challenge Ann Marie Buerkle to step up and demand an end to war before she supports another dollar cut from education. 

U.S. Military Spending vs. The World
U.S. military spending – Dept. of Defense plus nuclear weapons (in $billions) – is equal to the military spending of the next 15 countries combined.

These numbers show military expenditures for each country. Some say that U.S. military spending will naturally be higher because it has the highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of any country. The United States accounts for 47 percent of the world’s total military spending, however the U.S.’s share of the world's GDP is about 21 percent. Also note that of the top 15 countries shown, at least 12 are considered allies of the U.S. The U.S. outspends Iran and North Korea by a ratio of 72 to one.

Source: War Resisters League (thank you for all you do to bring sanity to our world)  www.warresisters.org