Another unedited Rant: a message I sent to my Representatives

Whether we agree with this war or not, it has consumed too much of our valuable resources, not leastly including personnel. This is certainly not just an "election issue"-no matter how tired we became of it being pounded on by the candidates last Fall. Our nation cannot continue to bully its way through this complex issue, or just throw money (that we don't have, by the way) at it. Since this really is about the money, I'd like to take a moment to mention how truly absurd our military budget is-which is around 6 times larger than those of the next 5 largest military spenders combined, I believe? Yet we haven't enough money to continue to fund necessary programs for our own citizens. A nation is a collection of individuals working toward the betterment of all-not just a few elitists who think they deserve it. We regular citizens are the nation, the ones the government is meant to serve, and the ones who are meant to decide what our government does. I don't feel I need to remind you of these facts, I am confident in your perspective and motivation, yet maybe some of your colleagues have lost sight of this. The money funneled to the war is not going to the children in need in our own cities, or the women who are in danger every day, or those who just need a little help; our money is being spent to put more of our fellow citizens in danger-unprepared, unprotected, and needlessly into battle with an enemy our nation created. I say that we did this because I have had time enough (and the wherewithal) to read some of our country's real history. It is a fact that we have bases, both declared and secret, around the globe which were established to protect interests determined, also in secret, by our leaders for our 'benefit'. We are receiving the benefits of those decisions now: the attacks and killing in retaliation for our uninvited occupation of numerous other countries, our destructive interference in other governments' workings, our contributions to terrorists and terrorism, our spying and harrassing of individuals, our refusal to admit involvement and collusion or to be held accountable, etc. We should never have started spreading, and certainly should not continue to spread, this empire of hypocrisy. It can be no surprise to us that these people, who have suffered from our actions-or at least with the apparent approval of disregard-would wish the least form of redress: vengence. We have time, I hope, to offer these people an alternative to destructive recompence, but we cannot do this by continuing to trespass and meddle, to establish oppressive bases, and support tyrannical regimes. After all, it is our example they are following. We have shown them for too long how to terrorize, it is past time that we show them how to live peacefully and coexist.