U.S. Mayors Sign Resolution to Speed Up Withdrawal From Iraq and Afghanistan, Free Up Money for Needs at Home

Well at least someone in this nation is making some sense. On Monday, mayors from around the country who were gathered at the U.S. Conference of Mayors voted "overwhelmingly" in favor of a resolution urging President Obama and Congress to speed up withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. As The Nation's John Nichols notes, the resolution asks that Obama and Congress “bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments, and develop a new economy based upon renewable, sustainable energy, and reduce the national debt.” Nichols also writes about the somewhat surprising bipartisan support for the resolution:

The resolution, which Code Pink and other antiwar groups campaigned for, was sponsored by a group of progressive mayors from traditionally liberal cities, including R.T. Rybak of Minneapolis; David Coss of Santa Fe; Dave Norris from Charlottesville, Virginia; and Carolyn Peterson of Ithaca, New York.

But it drew backing from mayors representing cities across the country, from Robert Sabonjian of Waukegan, Illinois, to Joy Cooper of Hallandale Beach, Florida, to John Dickert of Racine, Wisconsin.

The resolution has drawn some derision from people like Michael McGough of the LA Times, who argued that the mayors "have no role in foreign or defense policy" and that the effort "smacks of interloping." But as Nichols and others have pointed out, the mayors are in touch with just how hard Americans are suffering at the local level, and how much they need federal funding for safety-net services and other things that are not the military. Indeed, another announcement from the conference on Monday was that some four dozen metro areas around the U.S. won't see jobs return to pre-recession levels until 2020. So maybe President Obama needs a push from just these people.

Read more at The Nation.