Speech below:
Good Morning City Council Members,
I am David Patterson, the current President of the San Diego Veterans For Peace. I am here to ask you to consider the Proposed Resolution on Gaza submitted just today.
Regarding the US actions in the Middle East, we are supplying the weapons to Israel to the tune of Billions of dollars in their war on Gaza, with 26,000 dead including 10,000 children. Still, no one of any merit is predicting that Hamas will actually be eliminated.
With our weapons, we have been helping the Saudis wage war on the Houthi’s in Yemen for at least 10 years now, with at least 400,000 Yeminis killed. Still, the Houthi’s have not been deterred.
We spent Trillions of dollars in Afghanistan warring on the Taliban and then surrendered it to the Taliban 20 years later, with at least 70,000 civilians killed there. I could go on….
Apart from the shameful moral morass that we have created by killing so many people, we are burning up money that we do not have. The dollar printing machines are running full bore and the interest due on that debt is creating an impoverished American population. Because we waste so much money on weapons, we do not have the money to fix our streets and infrastructure, to help our poor and homeless, to the point that married couples are forgoing having children because they can’t afford it and their future looks untenable.
I hope for all these reasons, you will choose to declare through this resolution that the US government must stop funding unnecessary wars. Starting with the current Israeli war on Gaza. We cannot build a peaceful future for our children, over the graves of other people’s children.
Thank you for your time.
David Patterson
San Diego Veterans For Peace
Dpatterson998@yahoo.com