That is a question being address by a group of young people who descended on Capital Hill challenging lawmakers to address the bloated defense spending that imperils their schools, communities, and futures.

American Friends Service Committee (A Quaker organization) is proud to be associated with this group of young people.  See the article about these young people at http://afsc.org/story/1-trillion-contest-winners-visit-capitol-hill

The basic question being asked is what could we have done with the money we spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars?  As a result of all this spending many in the U.S. congress today are stripping aid to towns and cities and also agencies that give at least a small safety net to those who have fallen on desperate times.

The following are words in a petition currently being sent to our Washington representative. If you are interested in supporting this petition click this link: http://afsc.org

One thing we must all realize is that it is not patriotic to allow our citizens to starve or lose their homes. It is not patriotic to allow military budgets to divert urgently-needed funds from our communities. We should be asking our congressional representatives to do their duty to cut military spending instead of the social safety net.

We spend forty time more per citizen on our military complex than any other country on this earth. It is unbelievable that we would continue to support this bloated condition by stripping the safety net from the least of our citizens and putting the debt associated with this condition on our children and grandchildren.

Someone has to stand up to this totally absurd condition…

But what do I know.