I know it�s being done to death right now, but I need to voice my opinion.
Sure, Saddam shouldn�t be the dictator of Iraq. Sure, they need democracy there. Yes, he lives a life of luxury while people starve on the streets of Iraq.
Is that any different than the United States or Canada? Our politicians live in the lap of luxury. State dinners, beautiful homes, new cars, steak dinners�all courtesy of the tax payer. While, on the streets are people freezing to death in the winter, living on top of grates for warmth, sleeping in bus shelters, being chased out of public buildings for using the washroom to bathe.
I wonder if it�s worse in Iraq.
Hamilton is just as bad. On a regular basis, Council has meetings around lunch or dinner time. Steaks, roast beef, salads, whatever they fancy that day. Outside City Hall are the homeless, picking lunch or dinner out of the trash cans. Half-eaten donuts, the drip at the bottom of a coffee cup, a scrap of bread crust or an apple core. Waiting for the bus, I have seen it.
But even without going to those extremes, there are people who need help with money to feed their family. Food banks are stressed with the amount of people who need assistance, families are evicted from their homes due to late payment or nonpayment of rent, hydro gets cut off, gas gets cut off. Elderly people live on fixed incomes because there isn�t enough pension to go around.
I remember a law class in high school when we went to the Court downtown. An elderly woman was being charged with shoplifting cans of 35 cent cat food. The judge asked why she stole it, and she told him that it was cheaper than tuna and she needed to eat. I almost cried at that.
I know that this must happened in the United States. It cannot be only a problem in our city, or in our country for that matter.
So George Bush can sit in his ivory tower and declare war on a nation that �needs to be freed� and try to bring down a dictator who apparently rules his country unfairly and in fear.
I fear the state of the Western world to pass judgment on another nation while we allow our people to live in such states of poverty that they die from sleeping in the cold, or starve to death, or eat cat food to survive. I fear that we are more worried about condemning other nations to try to justify, or make right, the sad state of affairs our own countries are in.
Which should be more important? The war on Iraq, or the war at home?
Home