<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div><font face="Arial"></font> </div><div style="font: normal normal normal 10pt/normal arial; ">----- Original Message -----<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-color: rgb(228, 228, 228); background-position: initial initial; "><b>From:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a title="ghiggin2@earthlink.net" href="mailto:ghiggin2@earthlink.net">Gary Higginbottom</a></div></div><div><br></div><div class="MsoNormal">Dud Hendrick, in his very modest manner, may not pass along the text of the speech he made to the Deer Isle Town meeting. But it needs to be passed on, because it is truly inspirational, and few people can put together the words, experience, background, knowledge and power that Dud brings to this issue. So I'm passing along his speech (with Dud's permission) for folks who weren't there.<br><br>--Gary Higginbottom<br><br>*****************************<br><br><i>Deer Isle Town Meeting:<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>March 2010</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>What I have to say comes from the heart, it comes from my own experiences, and it comes from paying close attention for several years.<span> </span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>I am a Vietnam veteran, having volunteered to serve there. I’m not comfortable with my memories and I don’t wish to over-dramatize them, but those experiences are relevant to my strong objections to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>I lost several friends in Vietnam and I have many friends who survived, but whose lives were profoundly affected by that war.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>Today, I’m proudly the President of the founding chapter of Veterans for Peace.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>This national organization, with over 7,000 members and 130 chapters with at least one in each state, works to seek peaceful alternatives to militarism and war.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>It is because I feel for the troops and all victims of war so deeply that I have been examining the rationale for wars so closely.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>The scrutiny has led me to conclude that, like Vietnam, our present wars do not serve to make us safer and, in no way, do they serve our interests.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>On the contrary, I believe our wars are adversely affecting us all.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>What General Eisenhower had to say in 1953 is as true today as then:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal">“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.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Maine taxpayers have seen $2.5 billion of their tax dollars go for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001—that’s $350 million/year. Deer Isle’s share has been approximately $465,000 per year. The state taxes applied to the wars would be equivalent to paying the salaries of 50,000 elementary school teachers for one year. We can site many other equivalencies each of which should bring our attention to the 5,000 lb gorilla, the one that is diverting funds from desperate domestic needs to the wars.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>Ask any of our neighbors who are in education or who are working at the Island Nursing Home and I bet you will hear of unprecedented budgetary short-falls.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>There’s less money available to take care of Deer Isle pot-holes and frost-heaves and nearly every Weekly Packet or Island Advantage carries news of reduced employment and services at Blue Hill Hospital.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>By many measures we’re failing. Randall Amster, a professor and author at presitigous Prescott College writes,<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>“Educationally, economically, politically, culturally -- all of our national gauges are pointing in the wrong direction. When compared to other countries we're moving down the list on health care, democratic governance, productivity, environmental protection, academic achievement, official transparency, incarceration rates, transportation, and public services.”<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>I believe the connection can be made—the more money and resources committed to war, the less attention given to the areas that affect all of us.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Then there are the casualties. We went to war in Afghanistan in October of 2001 in response to 9/11.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>Our goal then was to avenge the horrific deaths of over 3000 Americans. Then for reasons that have proven to be fallacious, we turned our attention to Iraq.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>To date credible sources report that over 1million Iraqis have died as a result of that invasion and occupation.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>It’s nearly impossible to get an estimate on the civilian casualties in Afghanistan.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>We do know that nearly 5,000 Americans have died in Iraq and Afghanistan and tens of thousands have been severely wounded.<span> </span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>I understand that some of you here agree that we should not be in Afghanistan or Iraq but are reluctant to support this resolution because they believe we would be leaving Afghanis to the mercy of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. I would respond that we are building these radical anti-American movements with every drone attack, with every additional life lost.<span> </span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>The Defense Science Board Task Force commissioned by Donald Rumsfeld in 2004, charged to review the impact of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on terrorism and Islamic radicalism, concluded that the underlying sources of threats to America’s national security and what most exacerbates anti-American sentiment, and therefore the threat of terrorism, is American direct intervention in the Muslim world, specifically our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.<span> </span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>It’s worth considering that last point closely. The threat of terrorism is heightened by the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>When I went off to Vietnam and for a short while after my return I recall responding to anti-war activists that I did not think they might better know what was good for our country than our President and our leaders.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>In time, with deeper reflection and closer observation I came to the opinion that Presidents and leaders are subject to influences and pressures that aren’t necessarily in the best interest of our country.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>I believe that President Obama is a good and wise man, but he is surely under great pressure –much of it coming from people who have vested interests in the continuation of war.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>There are over 13,000 licensed lobbyists in D.C. and that the defense industry spent over $135 million on lobbying in 2009. These are people handsomely paid to influence policy-making favorable to their interests.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>The approval of this article will be largely symbolic.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>But, if we believe that these wars are contrary to our national security, that many innocent Iraqi and Afghan lives are being sacrificed by these occupations, that our wounded troops should be healed and our active troops used more wisely, and that our tax dollars are needed here at home, shouldn’t we speak out?</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span> </span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Our voices will be heard by other towns and they will be heard by Congressman Michaud.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>Should this resolution be passed those of us who sponsored it will convey the results to him.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>He is a member of the House of Representatives and that body does have the Constitutional authority to stop the funding of war.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>That won’t happen if the people do not speak.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>I’m asking you to support this resolution as a matter of conscience.<br><br></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Dud Hendrick</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br></span></blockquote></div><br></body></html>