lbo at inkworkswell.com quoted:
>The first answer is the way that racism conditions the attitudes and
>conduct of many anti-war activists, often without their realizing it.
-It -may be - emphasis on the may - that people of color are more -concerned with immediate survival issues than with foreign policy. -Antiwar organizers have tried to draw connections between war abroad -and austerity at home, but it doesn't seem to be working.
Why should they see a connection, other than as propaganda by the rightwing? Bush was committed to slashing taxes for the wealthy at the expense of spending on the poor long before the Iraq War. There is no necessity due to the war for these cuts-- eliminating Bush's tax cuts would cover most of the increased costs quite easily.
It's no doubt a lot of lost resources that could be better spent, but so are the hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate tax loopholes and subsidies.
And no matter how you count the body bags of American soldiers, the death toll from poor health care, rotten social income support and other problems in the inner city are far higher than from Iraq.
No, the war in Iraq has to be condemned on its own foreign policy terms and, frankly, issues of global justice are far more important than Iraq, yet get far less attention from those organizing the antiwar movement.