Please sign on to the following open letter to President Obama and forward this email widely to friends. Mr. President:
Bin Laden’s death should be a time of reappraisal, not celebration. Much has been lost since the 9/11 terror attacks – beyond the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians and nearly 6,000 U.S. soldiers. A decade of war and occupation has helped push U.S. society to a breaking point: in debt, divided, with an unprecedented assault on social services and public employees coast to coast. Civil liberties have been trampled.
It’s time to rein in empire. Time to end the wars and ask why we have troops stationed in 177 countries. Time to finally hear Martin Luther King’s lament about “a society gone mad on war.” Time to rebuild our country by redirecting money from war to education and health and environmental cleanup. Time to reject the military’s call for four more years of combat in Afghanistan.
We sign on to this open letter to say there are large numbers of us not inclined to gather outside the White House for triumphant chants and flag-waving. We are too worried about the future. We are active citizens who vote and many of us helped put you in office. We demand a change of direction that puts justice and democracy ahead of empire.
Signed,
Again, please sign on to this open letter to President Obama and forward this email widely to friends.
Sincerely, Aimee, Sarah, David and the RootsAction team