Opinion piece in the Univ. of Houston newspaper The Daily Cougar.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Students must rise up against unjust war
Timothy O’Brien
Students can make a major difference in the world around
them by organizing on their campuses and speaking out, but historians will have
a difficult time looking back at our generation and saying we stood up and made
our world a better place. Students today aren’t playing a role in holding our
government accountable for its horrendous actions in Iraq. March 20 is the fourth anniversary of the day the war in
Iraq began.
Four long years have passed since President Bush and his administration
sold the American public a phony bill of goods on the threat Iraq posed to our
safety. From the crimes in Abu Ghraib to the weakening of our civil rights, the
evidence is overwhelming that Bush has led us down the wrong path. The illegal
war is a disaster and the Bush regime has damaged our international reputation
and perverted democracy.
It’s time the lawbreakers in the White House are held to the
same standard everyone else is. Students who are caught breaking the law are
held accountable. If we don’t pay our tuition then we aren’t allowed to
continue our education. The world can’t wait for Bush to start another war in
Iran. We should see major anti-war actions across campuses today where students
organize and demand an end to the war and call for impeachment proceedings for
President Bush.
Most students, however, feel our country’s actions in Iraq
don’t endanger them, so they blissfully go about their business of studying,
working and partying. One difference between Vietnam and Iraq is that there is
not a draft. But the war in Iraq does affect students. A large number of UH students” work
part-time jobs and take out loans to get a college education. Money is always
an issue when we try to sustain ourselves through years of higher education. When
the financial aid office doesn’t have enough grants to fulfill our needs and
the state doesn’t allocate enough funds to meet UH’s budget request, students
will pay the difference. This fall we saw a tuition increase, and all UH
students have had to dig deeper or borrow more to continue their educations.
As of September 2006 the Iraq war cost Texas $30.9 billion,
according to the National Priorities Project. Houston’s share was $2.7 billion.
To put that in perspective, the University’s 2007 budget for our campus is only
$716 million. Much student aid comes from Washington, and money wasted on a
futile war can’t be spent on education. The New York Times reported the Iraq war
is costing us $300 million a day. The cost of fewer than three days of the war
in Iraq could keep UH running for an entire year.
Our generation has a choice. We can be scorned like the
generation that laid down in the face of the Nazis or praised like the one that
abolished slavery. Students need to respond to the Bush regime reading our e-mails,
listening to our phone conversations and taking away our civil rights.
As the World Can’t Wait’s steering committee says, “Driving out the Bush regime before
2008 should be the mission of this
generation.”
Timothy O’Brien, a Ph.D. candidate in history.