Wall Street Journal - October 29, 2003
In a Tent Hospital, A Close-Up View Of Attacks in Iraq Doctors Face Rising Toll Of Badly Injured Troops
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Perhaps I'm a fool but when I read things like this, things which should make Americans' blood boil at the thought that all this is for nothing really - nothing good anyway - I long for seething national anger to be directed towards Bush and his fellow criminals.
Not just some vague dissatisfaction that, as the pollsters put it, the country is 'going in the wrong direction' but a full throated rage that people's children are killing and being killed to assist the sinister project of a few murderously stupid people.
Just the other day, here in the office, I heard a group of men declare Rumsfeld to be "scum". As the quotation marks suggest, that is the precise word they used.
These are solid, suburban, SUV driving citizens - usually good audiences for men in power. Rumsfeld's strutting act (now in hiding as Iraqi resistance burns with an increasingly more ruthless and lethal fire) wore them out in the end. He's seen, by these fellows at least, as a fool who makes McNamarian 'game theory' speeches while people die.
But this is not enough, this declaration of "scum" must be used, by 'ordinary' people, against Dubya and the rest. The link must be made.
I want, for example, to go into a neighborhood barber shop and hear an African American guy call Powell and Rice scum in defiance of long established tradition to celebrate 'brothers and sisters who do well'.
I want middle aged White guys in corporate management positions to abandon their habit of giving other middle aged (or older) White guys in positions of authority the benefit of the doubt because, well, they're guys and White and hold big jobs and see clearly that these men who appear to be culture heroes for their class are in fact their dedicated enemies.
I want, I suppose, people to stop being polite, to stop showing 'with all due respect Mr. President' deference and decide, based upon the blazingly bright evidence, that their government is a problem for themselves and the world.
People who were skeptical from the start, who harbored no love for the Bushies long before the current horror, who hold no illusions about American international benevolence, don't count this time. They are the choir the preacher's always addressing with success.
Or, to put it another way, I admire Chomsky, I still read his analyses, but he doesn't need to reach me. I'm familiar with what he's going to say and thanks to his example can research political topics quite nicely on my own. The learning continues of course but school's out for me.
But what about those millions of others? What about the person who might read that WSJ article about GI casualties and conclude, 'we really need to get those terrorists!'
This person is not thinking, as we might hope, 'that bastard Bush!'.
This is the person who must be reached.
DRM
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