As our economy slides quickly backward, gas tops over $4 per gallon, prices increase on everything and our roads, bridges and infrastructure slowly fall apart maybe it is time to demand of our national leaders, waht little we have, that they re-evaluate their priorities - especially now that they have thrown away over $4 trillion dollars in Iraq and still spending millions by the hour. Former Republican President Dwight Eisenhower had truly prophetic words and advice for this nation in his "Cross of Iron' speech in 1953. Said Ike, "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 in not spending money alone.
"It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
"he cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
"It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. "It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
"It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
"We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
"We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
"This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. "This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
One must really wonder what we are really fighting for in Iraq. With over 4,000 American troops killed maybe it is time for a little payback. As long as our soldiers are fighting and dying we nned to be pumping every drop of oil out of that little country we can get and we need to be pumping for the next 100 years - free at no cost! Energy solution solved! Because unless we take the oil we are not going to get anything for our trillions of dollars and wasted lives in the sand. Maybe one day this nation will learn from history but until then we will continue to see soldiers killed and injured for nothing, money thrown away and our nation slide economically backward. We will never solve the problems of healthcare, poverty, declining education and employment as long as we continue to throw money and manpower away in someone else's country. Four trillion dollars could have solved a lot more problems in American than in the bottomless pit called Iraq. It is time Americans put America first!
About Wayne Ruple
Cleburne News editor Wayne Ruple is a native of Ashville. Before coming to Heflin, he worked for three years as a computer systems manager in Birmingham. Ruple has worked for The Sand Mountain Reporter in Albertville, and was the editor of The Independent in Robertsdale. He has also worked for the Shades Valley Sun, the St. Clair News-Aegis and The Daily Home in Talladega.
