Peace is Patriotic

As the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion approaches this weekend, I support the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq.

The Iraq invasion is a stain on the integrity of the United States. It is an illegal and immoral war based on perhaps the most well-known lie in the world. That Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It is now being justified by an even more ridiculous lie that we are there to bring democracy to Iraq.

Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorist network responsible for 9/11 are arch enemies of Saddam Hussein. Osama is a pan-Islamic fundamentalist seeking to create a greater Islamic empire. Saddam is a secular pan-Arab nationalist seeking a United States of Arabia.

Now, with the publishing of the Downing Street memos, we know that Bush and Cheney deliberately lied us into war. This violates not only the UN Charter, but the principles we established at Nuremberg. If we are to regain our integrity as a nation, we must seek the impeachment of our president.

Read more: Why Bush must be charged as a war criminal

The quarter of a trillion dollars our nation has spent waging Bush’s war is money not spent on our children, the elderly, and the infrastructure of this nation. According to costofwar.com, we have spent more than $9.3 billion of Ohio tax money waging the illegal Iraq war.

What could we have done if that $9 billion had stayed in Ohio?

• Every child in need in Ohio could have attended a free year of Head Start. This would have saved us money in the long run by making those children far more likely to graduate from high school and go on the college, and not be caught up in Ohio’s newest industry, the prison industrial complex.
• We could have protected those children and given every one of them health care.
• We could have lowered the student-teacher ratio in Ohio to 15-1 and greatly improved our school systems which are now unconstitutional and massively unequal.
• We could have given every graduating high school senior a 4-year scholarship.

All of this could have been done with the $9.3 billion wasted in Iraq.

When you elect me governor of Ohio, I will issue an immediate executive order prohibiting the Ohio National Guard from serving in Iraq. Until I am elected, I’ll be using my First Amendment rights to speak out and petition our government for a redress of grievance.

On Saturday at 2pm, I’ll be speaking with other peace activists and patriots at the Ohio Statehouse peace rally. Remember, peace is patriotic.

If you love our country and our state, you’ll speak out when a small group of people seize control of our foreign policy and try to divert our military into regime changes and imperialist occupations. Our founders fought against British imperialism. Let’s fight against Bush, the Lesser. Peace!

It has been a pleasure and privilege to blog with you all this week, and I would like to thank the staff of the Plain Dealer for this opportunity to speak with my fellow Ohio citizens. To continue this dialogue with me, please come to www.bobforohio.com and look for my new interactive blog, www.fraudbusterbob.com.