E Pluribus Unum

The Senate is poised to vote on legislation that will mirror the Iraq bill passed by the House.

Hopefully you live in a state where your Senator(s) already support this legislation. If not, please contact your Senators today and urge them to approve that bill.

Below is the text of a letter I sent to my Senators in Louisiana (Landrieu and Vitter) neither of whom supports the language in the House bill. Feel free to use it whatever way you like. But please don't wait -- the vote is coming up very fast.

[Feel free to add that "a solid majority of Americans say they want their congressional representative to support a bill calling for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq by August 2008. Nearly six-in-ten (59%) say they would like to see their representative vote for such legislation, compared with just 33% who want their representative to oppose it," according to a new poll by Pew Research.]

Senator,

I understand the Senate is going to be considering passage of a bill similar to the Iraq war bill passed by the House. I am writing to urge you to vote in favor of it.

I understand that you do not support the approach that the House took because you feel that it puts the legislature in the position of "micromanaging" the war and ties the hands of our generals on the ground. I know how you feel about this. I felt the same way too. But then I thought about it some more and here is what I found:

The US military is run by civilians such as the Defense Secretary as well as the Legislative branch of our government. These parties are directly or indirectly answerable to the people. The same goes for the Commander in Chief -- he is a civilian who is elected by the people. And in November of last year, the people spoke loud and clear: it is time to end the war.

Now, the House heard the call and has given the Commander in Chief all the money he asked for and more. The troops have plenty of support to get the job done -- which is now defined by the House as "getting out of Iraq."

If the President vetoes the bill, then it will be he that is not supporting the troops, because he will be denying them the money to complete their mission.

The fact is we have achieved everything we set out to do when we invaded Iraq: Saddam is gone, there are no more WMD and Iraq has a government elected by the people. It is time now to declare victory and come home.

I hope you will vote in a way that supports this. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Ara Rubyan
Baton Rouge, LA

[Note: I was inspired by I Help You Blog’s “101 Great Posting Ideas For Your Blog” to write this post about citizen activism and the war in Iraq.]