Please rethink decision on troops

Dear Mr. President: Please do not send more of our young people to Afghanistan. This is not the way to peace, stability, prosperity, or hope for any of us. Scripture measures the faith and righteousness of rulers by how the poor, the widows and the immigrants are treated on their watch.

How do you think the most vulnerable will fare under your plan - in the U.S. and in Afghanistan - if you send tens of thousands of troops to bomb and raid? And what of all of the young people (and all people who love young people) who elected you? You won our hope and we worked for you and what we thought you were promising. If you go forward with your plans to announce war, you will betray our trust, our hope. It makes me weep to think of hope turned to cynicism. But that's what will come of this.

Please change your direction. Listen to what you know is right. What council would Martin King give? Jesus? Gandhi? Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman, Abraham Lincoln, Jimmy Carter? The people from your neighborhood and church in Chicago? Your mother? What does your own heart tell you about sending our poor and working class kids to kill their poor and working class people? What kind of world - what kind of people - are you shaping and misshaping?

I have an 18-year-old son. Many of his friends plan to join the military as a way to eventually get to attend college. I think of these boys who have shared dinners around our table, whose hands I have held as we've prayed a blessing, whose laughter I recall.

Rewrite your speech. Change history. Announce a different way.

Rev. Denise Griebler

Pastor, St. Michael's United Church of Christ, West Chicago