January 14, 1991
Promenade Park
by Toledo City Councilman Mike Ferner
(Note: After months of military buildup in the Persian Gulf, President Bush set a deadline of January 15, 1991 to commence an air and ground war against Iraqi forces if they did not withdraw from Kuwait. Several religious and peace organizations sponsored a demonstration in downtown Toledo to protest the Bush policy. About 1,500 people attended.)
It is a distinct privilege to be asked to speak at this important gathering, and I wish to thank the organizers of this demonstration for that invitation and their work culminating here today.
My road to this point began in earnest 21 years ago. I served in the U.S.Navy Hospital Corps during the Viet Nam war, working at the Naval Hospital at Great Lakes, Illinois.
During that time, I frequently went on Medevac runs to the Glenview Naval Air Station. We rode out to Glenview in what were essentially school buses painted battleship gray. The main difference between our bus and a school bus was that instead of seats, ours had rows of hooks onto which we would load stretchers bearing the wounded soldiers coming back from Viet Nam.
The planes we met were Boeing 737’s, also painted battleship gray. And instead of seats, they had stretchers stacked four-high down the length of the plane on both sides.
I doubt there are many people today who truly believe that the money and lives invested in Viet Nam were well spent. The billions of dollars wasted on that war could have bought real school buses to benefit students in need of them. It could have bought real mass transit systems providing good jobs, rebuilding our economy, and reducing our dependence on imported oil which leads us to the brink of war today.
Since I have served on Toledo City Council, I have seen that it is at the municipal level where government is expected to keep our streets safe, insure clean air and water, provide recreation opportunities, and pick up the garbage.
But our cities and our citizens have been held in the grip of an Iron Triangle that has stolen many of the dollars needed to provide those essential services. That Iron Triangle consists of the weapons manufacturers, their congressional supporters, and the Pentagon—the old “Military-Industrial Complex” that President Eisenhower warned us about.
During the decade of the 1980’s, the military budget has doubled. That money did not magically appear. Much of it was borrowed from our children and grandchildren by greatly
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increasing the national debt. And the rest of it was stolen from programs that provide for human needs.
Federal housing funds to assist those who cannot afford a decent, safe place to live have been reduced by nearly 80% in that same period.
Funds to research and implement energy conservation programs have been nearly eliminated.
The $37,000,000 in Federal Revenue Sharing funds received by Toledo in the 1970’s and early 80’s is now gone; cut off entirely, as it is to other cities.
In 1987 alone, Toledoans sent two and one-half times as many federal tax dollars to the Pentagon as we generated in local income taxes to run all city operations.
But we will not give up on the Peace Dividend that we have paid for with our hard-earned dollars and that is rightfully ours.
We will not surrender the symbols of our demands for peace to the right wing and the warmongers. They demand that all good Americans “support our troops” and follow our President headlong into war.
Do we support our troops? Do we support our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters? Of course we do! We support our troops and so we say: bring them home alive, now, President Bush!
I want to close with some quotes from our elected officials, safe and warm in Washington, D.C., contrasted with what some veterans have to say on the same subject.
George Bush recently said that Secretary of State Baker will not be allowed to go to Baghdad for talks beyond the Geneva meeting with Iraqi officials tomorrow. “You have only two choices,” he warned the Iraqis, “comply with (U.N.) resolutions or risk destruction of your country.” (1-6-91 Toledo Blade). General U.S. Grant said, “There never was a time when, in my opinion, a way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword.”
Vice-President Quayle, visiting young men and women in uniform in Saudi Arabia said, “I’m sure you’re becoming as impatient as our President is.” A veteran once said, “There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror.” Gen. Wm. Tecumseh Sherman.
George Bush, commenting earlier this month on the U.S. recession, as we spend billions of dollars preparing for war in the Persian Gulf said, “The worst, last thing we ought to do about
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it (the recession) is have a lot of spending programs aimed to ‘put Americans back to work.’” (1-2-91 Toledo Blade). General Eisenhower said in 1953, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children.”
And George Bush, threatening that if Saddam Hussein doesn’t leave Kuwait by January 15 said, “No price is too heavy to pay.” (1-2-91 Toledo Blade). Well I say to George Bush: YOU go visit the back wards of the V.A. hospitals where lay today the broken bodies and broken minds of soldiers of past wars. YOU look into the eyes of the mothers and fathers of today’s soldiers and tell them no price is too heavy to pay.
