Public Employee Press

Ignoring the voters
Bush widens war

The people of the United States have spoken — and President Bush has ignored them.

On Election Day, Nov. 4, the voters rejected the politics of corruption, greed and war that have been recklessly wasting American resources and lives. A recent poll says that today, only 28 percent of Americans believe Bush is doing a good job; 64 percent disapprove of his performance. A scant 11 percent believe we should send more troops into the quagmire of Iraq, while 61 percent say “No more!”

The war was launched with Bush’s lies about weapons of mass destruction. His own elite “blue-ribbon” Iraq Study Commission, many of the nation’s top generals and even former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have opposed further escalation.

Similar troop “surges” in 2004, 2005 and 2006 gave us only more flag-draped coffins. The war has taken the lives of more than 3,000 American soldiers, injured tens of thousands and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

With his plan to send 20,000 more to kill and be killed in the crossfire of what is now clearly a civil war, Bush has ignored his advisers, and he has ignored the rising death toll.

“Bush’s decision to escalate is reckless and wrong. We are spreading violence, not democracy,” said Gerald W. McEntee, president of DC 37’s national union, AFSCME.

District Council 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts said the war in Iraq “steals the resources that we need to solve problems here at home.”

The war’s price tag is rising toward $2 billion — about $18,000 for every household. For that, we could provide heath care for all Americans, rebuild New Orleans, strengthen schools and inoculate every poor child.

The president cannot talk about “working with the Democrats” on domestic issues while ignoring Iraq, because the cost of the war is the number one domestic issue. But Bush ignores the cost of the war — human and fiscal.

To protect lives and public services, union members and all Americans must speak again in a way Bush can’t ignore — by urging their representatives in Congress to stop the escalation and end the war.

—Bill Schleicher