Letter to the Editor: What’s Wrong with Us?

By Sun Advocate

We are going to allow our government to rebuild Iraq at an estimated cost to us of about $600,000,000 over the next two years. I do not have a problem with the United States rebuilding, or helping to rebuild Iraq or any other liberated country. I do have a huge problem with the United States rebuilding Iraq or any other country while our own public education system is going to hell in a handbasket.
It seems to me that our government needs to take care of the many problems that exist right here at home first. We have senior citizens that cannot afford health care or proper nutrition because public assistance programs keep having their budgets cut. We have teachers in Oregon volunteering to work for two weeks without pay to keep the schools from closing. We have teachers in Oklahoma doing janitorial work because there isn’t enough money to pay the janitors any more. We have several million homeless people on the streets of our cities and towns.
How can we have the money to rebuild Iraq when these problems exist here in what is supposed to be the greatest nation on Earth?
I submit that we don’t have the money, and if anyone believes that we do; then you had better send your school age children and your elderly to Iraq because that country will soon be better equipped to educate them and to care for them than this country is.
The next time you receive your paycheck and notice how much you are paying in taxes, ask yourself if you would rather have your money going to Iraq or helping maybe your own children and/or grandparents or maybe the kid next door who will be a better asset to himself and to society with a good education.
I wish the people of Iraq the very best in rebuilding their country. I do this even though I believe that they are going to thumb their noses at the United States as soon as they don’t need or want our help anymore.
If our hard earned tax dollars don’t do us the good that they should, then maybe we all should stop volunteering to pay them.
If our elected leaders think that the welfare of the Iraqi people is more important than our own, maybe we should vote them out of office and recruit some leaders whose first priority is to take care of our own problems here at home.