This set the tone for the vigil, which got numerous horn honks and waves of support and was joined by a 50 ish man who often joins with his wife. It was a sunny 64 degree night and Pacific Coast Highway traffic driving by the vigil was heavy, easily a thousand vehicles in that hour, and the vigil sign was clearly visible to many of them.
Meanwhile, in the face of the mounting death and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan and the U.S.'s rapidly sinking finances, in Congress on Wednesday Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich offered a resolution to withdraw the U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
The resolution was meant to appeal to the numerous Republican fiscal conservatives whose mandate is to slash spending. But their reaction to slashing war spending was muted and their leadership seemed to oppose it.
The Iraq War is eight years old and the Afghan War is 10 years old, arguably the longest war in U.S. history. The U.S. has paid a heavy price in lives and in dollars and has little to show for it and no sign of progress as Iraq's and Afghanistan's governments are kept in power by the U.S. military and are highly unpopular with the people of those nations.
For the Afghan War, the U.S. has borrowed and spent $454.7 billion per Rep. Kucinich and President Obama has requested $113 billion more. But even among the "deficit hawks," there is little support for Rep. Kucinich's resolution, because I believe, no-one wants to look "soft on terrorism," and because the military and its contractors are big campaign contributors.
Meanwhile, we reduce educational spending, fire teachers and cut medical programs for the poor, including in-home care for the elderly and frail.
So on behalf of those wars' many victims, our candles burn brightly and our message is one of hope that reasonable people will end the wars and allow a vast healing to begin as those nations then chart their own destiny.
Dick
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