B writes:
> Yeah, maybe the US is culturally different than
Israel, etc., but the idea of supporting STATE-FORCED
conscription/slavery of human beings, and to become
not crop framers, trained murderers is so incredibly
fucking odious that I'm amazed it's seriously on the
table here.
But killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis was not odious enough to stop the war. The antiwar movement is an utter failure. So maybe the idea of losing a son/daughter to war will be odious enough for the antiwar effort to act in ways that are effective and bring about change.
Preventing the loss of Iraqi life was not motivation enough to work hard enough to stop the war. The stakes have to be raised. People are never going to band together simply because war is wrong. There are far too many pleasures/distractions to keep them occupied in capitalist culture for a collective action based on "war is wrong" to be sustained and intense enough for change to occur.
These lines occur at the close of Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" after the Misfit has killed the family:
"Take her off and thow her where you thown the others," he said, picking up the cat that was rubbing itself against his leg.
"She was a talker, wasn't she?" Bobby Lee said, sliding down the ditch with a yodel.
"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."
The antiwar movement would be effective if there was the constant, daily threat of losing a son/daughter/niece/nephew in war. Otherwise the antiwar effort just talks (and marches) feeling contented that it has done its part. Once every family in America is a military/potential military family, then the the antiwar movement may actually accomplish something.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister