Here in the USA we are being forced to support war.

People are aware that our veterans are being short-changed in the exchange. We see 40,000-plus homeless veterans subject to the worst living conditions, despite the fact that they made the choice to put their lives on the line for the quality of life we are given in the USA. We see war profiteers being rewarded behind closed doors for their manufacturing of weapons of mass destruction. We see global financial institutions leveraging their influence through mainstream media to force our armed services onto the fields of battle.

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War doesn’t make anyone safer,

in fact the long term effects of war are very disturbing. Whether it’s Agent Orange-related ailments, or sickness associated with depleted uranium, there are plenty of examples of post-war pollution and death which are not figured into the statistics of deaths caused by war. All around the world we find old battlefields which are still littered with live munitions threatening lives in the aftermath of war. We also see soldiers who are traumatized by their experiences. These soldiers are often dealing with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries; another ailment which soldiers face is Gulf War Syndrome. There are also difficulties associated with psych drugs given to soldiers. Another disturbing effect of war is the suicide rate among veterans - in the USA we lose 22 veterans a day to suicide.

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I am an American, and I believe the USA needs to bring all of our soldiers home and close our war bases abroad.

Foreign war bases are a symbol of imperialism. Our foreign war bases harm the citizens of the nations which they occupy. Our soldiers are known around the world for their illegal and unconscionable behaviors. People in places like Okinawa have been calling for the USA to remove our war bases for decades. They see their women and children suffering the violent effects of our soldiers.

Here on the home front our social structures are suffering as a result of our war spending. We see our infrastructure failing, our schools lacking funding, and our military veterans physically thrown aside in order to afford more missiles, more bombers, more drones, and more profits for the weapons manufacturers. It’s a sad statement of values when you see sick and hungry veterans in the streets while war profiteers take multimillion dollar cash bonuses for their weapons sales.

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We need a dramatic shift in priorities, and we need to reclaim human dignity as a value in our society. We need to shift our efforts away from violent destruction and towards a cultivation of basic human rights. In this modern era there is no reason for the indignities of war.

"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 are not clothed."
Dwight Eisenhower

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