Western Courier

Issue date: 3/31/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Martyn Davis The Macomb Area Alliance for Peace and Justice held its second annual peace rally since America's invasion of Iraq.

Media Credit: Martyn Davis Macomb residents attended a peace rally in Chandler Park on Saturday to protest the Iraq War.

Saturday morning, following a stand of peace held weekly in Chandler Park, the Macomb Area Alliance for Peace and Justice held its second annual peace rally to acknowledge the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War and recognize its toll.

The rally's theme for the year, "The costs of war" was expressed in many forms, including a petition to end the war and signs bearing slogans such as "Wage Peace" and "War = Wa$te." In addition, many local musicians played songs and various people gave speeches.

In his speech, Rob Casey, member of the Campus Greens, said, "The true cost of the war is the loss of empathy for the everyday human being who walks the streets of this planet."

He added that the financial cost of the war is "increasing at a drastic rate."

Macomb resident Sally Egler said, "The real sacrifices have been borne by too few, and their sacrifices have been too great for us to accept."

She added she felt the reasons given to go to war, the predictions of time it would take and estimates of the troops required to get the job done were not true.

"All the predictions of what this war would cost - totally false," Egler said.

Iraq War veteran Ryan Langston said he felt there was a cost in the lives sacrificed to the war.

"When we think about the cost of the war, a lot of the time what comes to mind are the economic damages that we're going through right now," he said. "I usually think about personal and emotional things that happened in my life, mostly friends that have died."

Langston added that in addition to American lives lost, many innocent Iraqi civilians are dying as a cost of the war.

"They don't care about some spread of democracy or religious jihad. They just want to live a life where they don't have to dodge bullets," he added.

Mohammad Siddiqi, journalism

program director and professor, said he researched what the money spent on the war could have funded and found half of the trillion dollars spent could, for 10 years, "provide every American health insurance, (could) double the funding for cancer research, (could) pay for treating every person with diabetes or heart disease and (could) fund a global immunization program for every (child) on this earth."

"I think this would have been a much better way to spend more than $1 trillion," he added.

Rally participants also voiced their disagreement with the war and wished it to end.

"In the 20 years I was in the military, I always thought of myself as a peacekeeper, never a war-maker," said war veteran Ron Medlock.

Western professor and Macomb resident Shazia Rahman said, "Just because George W. Bush is going to be gone and this administration is going to be gone, I haven't heard anything from anybody, including Obama, that has convinced me that U.S. foreign policy is going to change."

The rally concluded with a march around Chandler Park.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools