How can we pressure our government to stop using depleted uranium?

Question

Today Vietnamese children are still born with devastating birth defects as a consequence of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. Today our military drops tons of the radioactive poisonous dust, depleted uranium, on Iraq. This harms not only the victims of our air strikes and will affect those generations into the indefinite future, but it affects our own soldiers and their future children. How can we as a population pressure our government to stop this madness?

http://www.thewe.cc/weplanet/news/depleted_uranium_iraq_afghanistan_balkans.html

Answer 1

Stop paying your taxes!  When you don't like the service of a business, you boycott it.  You're telling me that you don't like the service that you're getting from government.  So stop paying for it.....

....it's not as easy as that, is it?  Employed by only a minority, such a boycott will not result in the cessation of the atrocities that you protest.  Rather, it will result in a nasty end to the tax protesters.  But don't you see?  That is the problem.  At its root, taxation rests upon violence.

There are many useful and necessary things that government does with tax money, it is true.  Most Americans have been conditioned to believe that those activities would not happen if our money was not first forcibly taken from us.  I would argue against that, but a full argument here would detract from my main point [1].  I want you to understand that any good that comes from taxation comes attached with useless and evil activities.  You've only highlighted one evil.  How many more could we name?  Of how many more are we not even aware?

Government activities tend over time to become evil because they are financed by violent means.  Yes, there are good people who attempt to enter "public service" to do good.  But the vast number of people entering politics know what it is based upon.  They are in it for personal gain and sometimes for evil intent.

I know that I'm being idealistic.  An effective tax protest will not occur anytime soon.  But I think that anything we do short of that will fail in the broader scheme because we will not have understood the original act of evil.

Edit:  The other two responders raised a good point.  The point of war is to cause a lot of damage.  If you're thinking that you'll somehow make war "nice", I think that you're kind of confused.  To be consistent, you must recognize that your complaint is only one facet to the greater general destruction that occurs in war.

Answer 2

I have depleted uranium in my house, I live with it and I work with it, and I have done so for twenty years. Who says it is detrimental to humans or any other life form?

Answer 3

when we  run out of enemies we will no longer need it

Answer 4

Sigh....it's not that we cover the land with DU pixie dust.  The particles come from solid DU amunition impacting a target.  Now, do you seriously think we would be laying waste to the target if they were not shooting at us?    What you are saying is that our amunition is deadly.....Isn't that sort of the point?  But hey maybe if we used flowers instead of bullets, that would work...just ask the Czechs when the Soviets enforced their law on them on how well that works.

Answer 5

As the other person who answered this said, I think you've got your basic premise wrong.  But to answer the question, no one has yet found a way to get the government to stop doing anything.

Answer 6

Did you even READ that entire article?  Most of the pictures have nothing to do with Depleted Uranium at all!  They are there because they look scary, to influence the weak mind.

Why are you even mentioning Agent Orange? You are a few years to late to join the fight for stopping that, but you go ahead and write your letter to the White House about it, and see if you get an answer.

I hate people who like to use big scary words, and put up horrible pictures to frighten others, and make them think like you do.

Now, go do some more reading, and come up with a good argument on how cars make people drive drunk, and how spoons make people fat!

Depleted Uranium is also used in tank armor, and it works, because nothing can get through it.  i personally know men who were in a tank that was hit in Iraq, and they are alive to tell the tale.  As far as tank bullets (also made of DU), they punch through enemy tanks and stop bad people from hurting innocent people.  It saves lives.

Answer 7

I would start trying to find addresses to congress, and perhaps even state representatives and write them.  Then encourage people who are of like mind to yours do the same.  I have heard where radio stations have encouraged people to call their senator and plead them to vote a certian way on some issues.  I really don't know much about what you are describing but I do know what rights we are given in the first Amendment to the Constitution!  

Hope this helps.