CONGRESSMAN PETER ROSKAM'S OCTOBER REPORT CARD ON IRAQ WAR

Congressman Peter Roskam
150 S. Bloomingdale Road, Suite 200
Bloomingdale, IL 60108

Dear Congressman Roskam,

You support of the Iraq war brought a new milestone of shame in October. Total expenditures for this made up war, possibly the most egregious foreign policy blunder in American history, reached a hundred billion dollars during your inaugural term as Sixth Illinois District Congressman. That hundred billion dollars did not come from our national nest egg, Congressman. It was swiped on the national credit card, to be paid for your children and my children, and future generations to come. All the while you preach and vote for endless tax cuts for your wealthy congressional supporters. This is not what a majority of voters in the Sixth District consider the “Peoples Business”.

Imagine the lost opportunities this profligate spending on needless war has cost us these past ten months. We could have invested in education instead of watching helplessly as China, India and other nations surpass us in intellectual and technical knowledge. We could have put Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling bridges and highways instead of exporting American jobs overseas to pump up corporate profits. We could have invested in a modern rail system to speed passengers between cities for a fraction of the automotive pollution and congestion choking our cities. We could have provided efficient, affordable health care to the forty-five million denied it by a heartless society. We could have secured our borders, slowing the tide of undocumented workers instead of doing nothing except fanning the flames of cultural hatred and bigotry. We could have expanded and modernized our aviation infrastructure to ease the abysmal increase in wasteful flight delays. We could have eliminated the most vulnerable threat to our domestic security by establishing an inspection system for the twelve million containers entering our ports, any one of which could contain the weapon that will set off the mushroom cloud our President, in the lie of the century, said would come from a weaponless Iraq. We could have worked to become energy efficient instead of letting the oil barons running our country enrich themselves.

With fourteen months to go in your term, you appear determined to spend an additional one hundred forty billion more dollars on endless war in Iraq and how many more hundreds of billions on the next made up war looming against Iran.

Congressman, you have shown no capacity for growth and wisdom these past ten months. You have failed to grasp that senseless war is not the health of the state; it is the death of the state. And today, you started your eleventh month in office helping to hammer another 300 million dollar nail in the coffin you and your war party, and the Military Industrial Complex are building for our once magnificent political and democratic experiment.

That is a truly sad legacy to be part of.

Originally published in Glen Ellyn News, December 12, 2007