Anti-War Grannies Challenge That Surge Is Working

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/20/6490



Published on Sunday, January 20, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
Anti-War Grannies Challenge that Surge is Working
by Joan Wile

Only 11 of our military died in Iraq the past week? Break out the champagne! That’s less than some of the weeks before the surge. Obviously, then, that means, as our government and our pundits are saying, that the surge is working. Therefore, let’s throw another lot of GIs into Iraq. Maybe that way even less of our precious young brave ones will die. Perhaps in a year or two we’ll reduce the death rate down to 3 or 4 a week.

But, wait, here’s a novel idea. What would happen if we withdrew ALL our troops? Amazingly, NONE of our kids would die in Iraq. Has anybody in Washington done the math? It seems quite elementary to us grannies.

And, what about the Iraqi casualties, which we are told have been reduced to a satisfactory number? Just today, it is reported that 80 people were killed and many more wounded in battles in Basra and Nasinya on January 19. That certainly IS progress, especially when you add to it the 8 killed by a suicide bombing Jan. 16 and at least 10 in a mosque bombing on Jan. 17.

The New York City group, Grandmothers Against the War, decided to try and counteract the lie that the surge is working and that as a consequence U.S. voters no longer put the Iraq war on the top of their agenda. We decided to do something to impress upon the public that the occupation is still the most vital issue facing us, from which all the rest of our urgent problems flow. Health care, education, poverty, and housing dilemmas cannot be solved as long as we are pouring money down the Iraq drain. But, beyond that, we still have the imperative responsibility to save our troops by getting them out of a place they have no business being in and where they can solve nothing, as so tragically evidenced by this week’s Iraqi death toll.

MROE