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CounterPunch
January
25, 2003
We Can Stop
This War
A National Rifle
Association of Peace?
by RICH PROCTER
George Bush wants to invade Iraq so his petro-pals
can get that glorious sweet crude, his p.r. machine can have
a new "product" to promote to get people's minds off
the death-rattle economy, and his "base" can have gleeful
"war-gasms" watching all that delicious smart-bomb
"eye candy" on CNN and Faux.
Rummy and Wolfie and Condi and Cheney
want to invade Iraq to prove how tough they are. Nothing establishes
your street cred like sending out other people to get shot, bombed
and gassed.
Big media wants to invade Iraq, because
Great Big Stories mean Great Big Audiences which means Great
Big Ad Dollars. And if it's like Gulf War One -- great visuals,
great heroes, exciting wham-bam-thank you Sam plotline -- it'll
yield years of "America Kicks Ass!" special reports.
And like GW 1, nobody will care that a couple of hundred thousand
dune goons got turned into crispy critters. Fortunes of war,
ya know.
About the only people who aren't with
the program are the American people. You know -- you, me, your
neighbors. More than 70% of Americans think we should let the
UN Arms Inspectors try to find these weapons of mass destruction
that Bush keeps yelling about. Even if we find them, a vast majority
of the American people think we shouldn't go into Iraq without
a broad coalition of allies. Dubya thinks different, of course.
Guess what, friends and neighbors? It's
time we stopped hoping this nightmare goes away, and started
staring at the truth. Our President is nothing but a rich-kid
bully who has always gotten what he wanted by banging his spoon
on his high chair. His dad and his pals got him out of serving
in Vietnam, got him into Yale, got him into the oil business,
fixed his drunk driving arrest, and bought him his own baseball
team. When he couldn't beat Gore fair and square, dad and his
pals fixed it up with Jeb and Katharine Harris and the Supreme
Court Five to grease his way into office. Why should Bush care
what the people of America want? He's told us again and again
how he operates. He "operates by his gut." He's a "black
and white kinda guy." He "doesn't have to 'splain himself."
Anything in there about listening to the people of America? About
consensus? About humility?
Everyone I know, including people who
voted for Bush because they considered Gore a pompous stiff,
think this war is going to be a catastrophe. Even if we win,
they know the oil companies are going to make mega-bucks, and
taxpayers are going to get stuck with the trillion dollar bill
of trying to bring order to one of the most chaotic places on
earth. That's if we WIN. If we get bogged down in block-to-block
street fighting, and Saddam unleashes chemical weapons, and we
take 10,000 casualties in a week...then what? Then expect John
Ashcroft to announce that anyone who speaks against the war can
be declared an "enemy combatant" with no rights, subject
to immediate, indefinite imprisonment.
So what can we do? Let's pretend, just
for a moment, that we're the "National Rifle Association
of Peace." Let's pretend we believe we've got power -- that
when we say JUMP, politicians say "How High?" on the
way up. Let's say that we BOMBARD our Senators and Representatives
with e-mails, faxes and letters DEMANDING that this farcical
ego trip by Chickenhawk #1 G.W. Bush be called off. Let's say
our Senators and Representatives get HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of
e-mails, faxes and letters from their constituents. What would
happen? They might begin to believe there's a political consequence
for putting American lives at risk so that "THE WORST PRESIDENT
EVER" (thank you Helen Thomas) can get his macho yas-yas
out.
The story of America is the story of
citizens like ourselves having to rise up and tell our leaders
to sit down and shut up. The very founding of our nation was
a bunch of rabble-rousers telling the Brits to get lost, we'll
run things ourselves, thank you very much. The Civil Rights movement
was a bunch of righteous, outraged black people who were sick
of getting pushed around by ignorant bullies. The government
and the experts and the television pundits all told us we fighting
world-wide Communism and battling back those dominoes in Vietnam,
until the mothers and fathers of the kids who were dying said,
"No more."
We're about to cross a line we've never
crossed -- attacking another country without provocation. If
you read accounts of what went on in the White House during the
Cuban Missile Crisis, you'll hear Robert Kennedy tell the Joint
Chiefs, "My brother won't go down in history as Tojo."
Meaning no bully-boy first strike attacks. The good guys don't
do that. Peace-loving nations don't do that.
We haven't crossed the line yet, but
it's getting mighty close. We can still stop this war. If we
raise enough hell, we can stop the Worst President Ever from
making the Biggest Mistake Ever in our name.
But we have to act NOW. All of us. With
e-mail, faxes, letters and phone calls. Let's send the chickenhawks
back to the coop for good.
Rich Procter
is a cranky, disaffected Democrat whose work often appears in
"SmirkingChimp.com".
He can be reached at planetniner@yahoo.com
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