>--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> > didn't they try this one last time and wasn't it
>bullshit?
>
>Who, Doug? Are you telling me that article was just
>bullshit? I hope not. I just sent it out to my
>"everybody I know in the world" list.
>
>Thomas
DaddyShrub used this tactic last time, to scare everybody into believing it was going to be a long, protracted, bloody war. It was a tactic for drumming up support for the war: we must support or boys. Then it wound up being a turkey shoot. This worked out so well on many levels, for the War Party, that it wasn't even funny. Remember that back then, the military was seen as extremely incompetent. Many people feared we'd fuck it up with equipment the boys didn't know how to operate. (I remember friends coming home from the service saying exactly that, full of jokes about how fucked up and incompetent it all was.)
If memory serves, opposition to GWI was up around 80-90% in January that year. I pulled a file out of storage, but I never kept any info on polls. But that's what sticks in my memory. anyone else recall the numbers?
Anyway, seems to me that the same thing that's happening now, "I'm so glad you guys are doing this..." was the same thing that happened then. Everyone was honking their horns in support of protests. When the bombs started flying, though, we had people in our faces yelling, "What would you do if someone raped your mother?"
As I said awhile ago, there is much more to build left movements around. It is important to protest, of course, because silence is what they want. OTOH, I just read a directive from Navy military bases re: planned demos near bases. In it, they are reminded that they are NOT to get in altercations with protestors and that anyone doing so will be reprimanded, that the job of the military is to protect freedom (!), AND they remind military personnel who are protesting not to do it in uniform. Fucking cooptation: recognizing the rights of military personnel to protest war!