Thanks to the gutsy Cindy Sheehan, our Potemkin "press corps" has finally discovered that there is an antiwar movement. Although even some liberal and antiwar partisans seem to have trouble recognizing that it exists.
These are four of the more informative pieces I've seen on the subject recently, from some of the more realistic writers out there:
Dog Day Afternoon by Billmon 08/14/05. This is a good analysis, although Billmon surprisingly accepts the wrong-headed conventional wisdom that says the anti-Vietnam War movement was ineffective at best, counterproductive at worst. For now, let's just say that's a crock. One that war critics need to clear their heads about, by yesterday. But most of it is good. Like this on the Bush team's response to Cindy Sheehan's protest:
There's a kind of comical desperation about it - like watching cartoon elephants dance in hysterical fear at the sight of a cartoon mouse. I said recently that the Rovians attack what they fear most. And when your greatest fear is the mother of a combat soldier who wants to ask the president why her son had to die in Iraq, you know you've got some serious PR problems.
Dumbo [guess who he means], on the other hand, still doesn't understand what all the fuss is about ...
Antiwar sentiment gets champion by Brad Knickerbocker and Kris Axtman Christian Science Monitor 08/15/05. This article has some useful observations mixed with the conventional assumption about the "ineffective" anti-Vietnam War movement. For some reason, our alleged "press corps" has trouble recognizing stuff like this as an antiwar movement:
CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll this month, echoing other surveys, shows that Americans by a 55-44 majority now believe the US "made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq." Some 56 percent say some or all US troops should be withdrawn now.
The hardening sentiment hasn't gone unnoticed in Washington. Many Democrats have become more vocal about the need for a definitive timetable for the withdrawal of troops, and they have been joined of late by some Republicans. The recent special congressional election in Ohio - where the Democrat was an Iraq war vet who nearly won in a heavily Republican district - has added to concerns about the war in some GOP circles.
Within the military, some senior commanders have talked about a timeframe for starting to bring home troops. But late last week, Bush tamped down any expectations of a quick withdrawal, saying it was too soon to say when the number of troops might be reduced.
Of course the Republicans and the war profiteers and the press barons don't want people to recognize that in a democracy, the people can decide about war and peace. Even when, as in the Iraq War, the mainstream press all-but-completely failed in its role in providing news and acting as a watchdog on the powerful.
But us Jacksonians just don't process things the way our economic royalists do.
It's about accountability by David Neiwert, Orcinus blog 08/1505.
The Cindy Sheehan matter has produced more than its fair share of dumbassery from the usual suspects: i.e., right-wing bloggers for whom fealty to the Bush agenda is the chief gauge of a person's worth. You know the type.
But I've seen an inordinate amount coming from ostensibly mainstream media folks, too. However, considering what Sheehan's campaign is really all about, maybe there's a reason for that, too.
Our sad excuse for a press corps is almost as "postmodern" as the Bush administration, only lazier about it. They figure if the Big Pundits haven't noticed it, it must not exist. Gosh, imagine that. Ordinary people don't like the idea of invading a country and getting bogged down in a nasty war based on totally fabricated reasons. Who would have thought such a thing?
Apparently not our pathetic substitute for a national press.
Cindy, Don, and George: On Being in a Ditch at the Side of the Road by Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com 08/14/05.
Over the last two years, administration officials, civilian and military, have never ceased to talk about "turning corners" or reaching "tipping points" and achieving "milestones" in the Iraq-War-that-won't-end. Now it seems possible that Cindy Sheehan in a spontaneous act of opposition -- her decision to head for Crawford, Texas, to face down a vacationing President and demand an explanation for her son's death -- may produce the first real American tipping point of the Iraq War.
As a million news articles and TV reports have informed us, she was stopped about 5 miles short of her target, the Presidential "ranch" in Crawford, and found herself unceremoniously consigned to a ditch at the side of a Texas road, camping out. And yet somehow, powerless except for her story, she has managed to take the President of the United States hostage and turned his Crawford refuge into the American equivalent of Baghdad's Green Zone. She has mysteriously transformed August's news into a question of whether, on his way to meet Republican donors, the President will helicopter over her encampment or drive past (as he, in fact, did) in a tinted-windowed black Chevrolet SUV.
Pentagon's 9/11 commemoration prompts number of questions by Jules Witcover Baltimore Sun 08/17/05. Witcover addresses one of the more outrageous stunts that this authoritarian-minded administration has pulled:
It may be just a coincidence that the Pentagon is planning a "Freedom Walk" on the fourth anniversary of 9/11 to commemorate the victims - just 13 days before critics of the war in Iraq hold a protest march of their own to the Pentagon. ...
The 9/11 commemoration is to include a concert featuring country singer Clint Black singing "Iraq and I Roll," whose lyrics include this stanza: "You can wave your signs in protest against America taking stands; the stands America's taken are the reason that you can." Another notes: "It might be a smart bomb, they find stupid people too, and if you stand with the likes of Saddam, one just might find you."
The Pentagon's event could work to the advantage of the war protesters. Until recently, they had achieved relatively little success in drawing news media attention to the anti-war movement. This minor dust-up in the press could oblige the sponsoring news outlets, and the Post, to pay more attention to the Sept. 24 protest march, part of a three-day event.
Part of the scam here is to try to set up country music - which has a lot of fans among the Reps most hardcore constituency of Southern white guys - as Republican, prowar music.
This will not stand. No pasaron. Diese geht nicht. That ain't gonna happen.
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