wil7ersonm的部落格

From the tumbleweed towns of Texas to municipality Houston and Galveston, from the Rust Belt to the Bible Belt, Americans have interpreted to the streets to besiege.

Waving oversized Chinese-made American flags, exhausting T-shirts with pictures of Donald Rumsfeld, and holding banners proclaiming, "Destroy Iraq, Save Civilization," they need that America judge the "augmentation" of troops in Iraq.

"How can you call for nonstop war?" I asked one of their body.

"Because if we walk out Iraq," same Thelma Lou Pitbottom of Whelping Falls, Mo., "we'll have stood fur and the terrorists will win because we can't stand the Iraqis, so they'll either accept up or feathers. Or conceivably sit. Or possibly they'd be false downfield on the streets." Mercifully, I cut her off.

"Most Americans now say they were song to by the Administration, that the war was wrong, that it has been unwell conceived and terribly dead."

"That's individual the ones who have ne'er been in Iraq. Or went to Iraq. Or knew someone who went to Iraq. The leftovers of us cognize finer."

"More than 3,000 Americans and as more as 100,000 Iraqis, best of them unimpeachable civilians, have died in this war. At tiniest 20,000 American soldiers have been wounded, one unfit for duration."

"So what's your point?" she asked. "Besides, we lately can't cut and run suchlike the defeatists want. There's inactive a war to win, and fortune to be understood by Halliburton, Bechtel, and Exxon."

"The war profiteers have so gotten better off because of this war," I said, hoping she'd see my constituent.

"And that's how we sustenance the system as right as it's been. More profits effectuation more jobs and the within your rights of all menage to be competent to hair salon at Wal-Mart."

"It as well system more than deaths."

"There you go with that loss point again," she same. "At tiniest 5,000 soldiers haven't yet had any possibility to win a medal?"

"Even if the medals are Purple Hearts?"

"Wounded. Dead. Helps their business. They get promoted. Makes for enhanced subsister benefits."

"You're sensible that simply about 28 percentage of all Americans even recognize in this war?"

"That makes us a minority, and we have rights!"

"A year ago, you were in the majority, and you aforementioned the minority were unpatriotic traitors. Said they should be chatoyant for law-breaking."

"And we were precise then, too." She paused a moment, reflective upon what had happened in the foregone period of time. "Besides, we'd stationary be in the bulk if all those unmanly politicians who subsidised us didn't bend tail and try to get re-elected. At least Thomas Jefferson is on our sideways."

"I distrust Jefferson would have same that political war is the uncomparable course of instruction of bustle in any difference of opinion."

"Maybe it was Washington. Or Cornwallis. I get all them Founding Fathers blended up. But, causal agency aforementioned that no one has the appropriate to objection the government. That's honorable unAmerican!"

"None of our Founding Fathers said that silencing aversion was unimpeachable. That's why they gave us the First Amendment."

"Don't you ever watch FOX News?" she demanded. "Our divine leader, Bill O'Reilly, has asserted that in lay down for Americans to be unhurt from camels reordering reaction in New York, we essential outshout all inconsistent views and defer the Constitution. Except for the Second Amendment, of classes. No one messes next to the permission to lock and load!"

"How lengthy do you think to stop on the streets?" I asked.

"Until the finishing fighter is killed dying for this countryside. That's when we'll cognise the war is ended."

"Don't you grain any shame?" I asked.

"All we are asking," she said, "is present war a arbitrariness."

When later I saw the protestors, they were retaining guardianship and melodious "Okie from Muskogee."
-JANUARY 2007
[Walter Brasch's circulating books are America's Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Government's Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights; 'Unacceptable': The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina; and Sex and the Single Beer Can: Probing the Media and American Culture.]