Take the Anti-Imperialist Pledge!
by Cindy Sheehan & Jack Balkwill
The thing that tends to hold us back when it comes to making a better country and a better world is the elephant in the room corporate media never sees: The Empire.
It costs over one trillion dollars to maintain an empire, particularly when that empire goes against the interests of the majority of the people in the nation and most of the people on the planet. We spend ourselves into deep red ink on The Empire while supporters of The Empire implore us to cut what little is beneficial to the people of the nation and the world. For example, President Trump has asked that we cut things like Medicare and Social Security while simultaneously increasing “defense" spending and cutting taxes on the rich.
We invite all voters in the United States to join us in dumping The Empire in the 2020 election. If a candidate insists on supporting The Empire, we pledge to not give them our vote or any campaign donations.
Thanks to the obscene cost required by The Empire, the United States is the only industrialized country without a medical care system for its people, allowing thousands to die each year for lack of medical care. The United States drags its feet when it comes to environmental responsibilities because its wealth is not spent on wind turbines and solar panels—but on The Empire alone.
The purpose of The Empire is to intimidate the world into toeing the line to laissez faire capitalism which benefits the plutocrats at the expense of the 99 percent. If The Empire were gone, the majority of the Earth’s inhabitants would be far better off with considerably more freedom, democracy, prosperity, peace and environmental sustainability. Unbeknownst to many, the U.S. Military Industrial Complex can arguably be accused of being the biggest environmental danger on the planet.
To dismantle The Empire will mean to:
- End all of the wars.
- Shut down all of the overseas military bases.
- Bring all of the troops home.
But this will not be easy.
For those who don’t see the problem, perhaps this will help: A recent survey of 21 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development nations revealed that 68% of the respondents want to tax the rich to help the poor. This is a universal desire that, decade after decade, goes unaddressed. What more could prove that we do not have democracies but plutocracies?
However, the rich have had their taxes decreased for 70 years—decade after decade.
Despite mainstream media screaming that our economy is booming, homelessness has increased for two years running.
The majority of people want peace, but we get war. The majority of people want universal health care, but we get the deaths of thousands from a lack of health care. The majority of people want no or low-cost access to quality education but, we get horrible public education and prohibitively expensive university. We do not have anything remotely resembling a democracy. For those who think we have a republic, in a real republic there are representatives of the people who address the problems of the people, and that is not happening here.
At March on the Pentagon, we encourage you to sign a pledge to dump The Empire in next year’s election. We invite you to withhold your vote until a candidate pledging to cut defense spending, end one or more wars, and close military bases abroad joins the playing field.
While, as a non-partisan organization, we do not endorse or support any particular candidate, we hope to educate and inform like minded Americans of their options when it comes to each candidate’s stance on wars and US imperialism.
2 groups of people who never benefit from our wars are the homeless and the unemployed.
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