Apache Junction, Ariz., Dec. 15 -
Today the Pinal County Greens passed a resolution hailing the end of the Iraq War, "a useless, catastrophic mistake that never should have happened and which wasted American and Iraqi lives and resources."
"With the end of U.S. military actions in Iraq," said Richard Grayson, Pinal County Greens co-chair, "we end a miserable chapter in the saga of the United States as a failed empire. This was an entirely unnecessary tragedy foisted on the public by Republicans and Democrats alike, with the Green Party, always against the war, offering a lonely voice of sanity amid the 2002-03 rush to war based on lies."
Grayson said he spent the day when the war began at an antiwar service at St. Maurice Roman Catholic Church in Dania Beach, Florida, with the parish's priest and fellow members of the group Peace South Florida and others aligned with the Catholic organization Pax Christi.
Grayson ran as a write-in candidate for Congress in Florida in 2004 on a platform calling for an immediate end to the Iraq war.
"We never thought the war in Iraq would last this long," Grayson said, "but the war in Afghanistan, broadened by President Obama, has gone even longer. The Pinal County Greens call for an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from the failed war in Afghanistan, too."
The Pinal County Greens are members of the Arizona Green Party in Pinal County, which, according to 2010 U.S. Census figures, is America's second-fastest-growing county.
