Saturday, March 17, 2007
War is Not the ANSWER
Unless the question is: How can we stop foreign extremists from invading other countries and killing people there, et al.?
I just watched Cindy Sheehan and others speak at the ANSWER (an organization founded by the WWP, Workers World Party--for whom post-Stalinist communism was not rigorous enough) rally. It's the fourth anniversary of the start of a now unpopular and frustrating war and how many people have descended on Washington to protest it? Looks like about 4,000 to me.
I lived only 100 miles south of the nation's capital 4 decades ago, and I can recall mid-November, 1969, when about 700,000 descended on DC and gave the police a lot of overtime work. Even on April, 24, 1971, there were 500,000 in Washington protesting the war. Heck, I've seen bigger anti-war rallies at Stanford (Free the El Camino 600!) in 1972, when we were actually phased withdrawing from Viet Nam.
The thing I noticed is that in the late 60s and early 70s, all the speakers talked about at the anti-war rallies was, well, the war in Viet Nam. Now they're talking about the School of Americas, Palestinian rights, some guy in jail regarding Cuba, and a dozen other subjects, of very narrow interest, before Cindy Sheehan demonstrates her lack of a grounding in reality once again.
I hear the Gathering of Eagles had just as many counter-protestors (almost all of them Veterans) as the loopy lefties. Way to go, guys.
In defense of the lefty protestors, Global Warming has apparently made the ambient temperature in DC about 35, even though it's the last week of Winter. It's never pleasant to protest when the weather is cold, wet and windy.
I just watched Cindy Sheehan and others speak at the ANSWER (an organization founded by the WWP, Workers World Party--for whom post-Stalinist communism was not rigorous enough) rally. It's the fourth anniversary of the start of a now unpopular and frustrating war and how many people have descended on Washington to protest it? Looks like about 4,000 to me.
I lived only 100 miles south of the nation's capital 4 decades ago, and I can recall mid-November, 1969, when about 700,000 descended on DC and gave the police a lot of overtime work. Even on April, 24, 1971, there were 500,000 in Washington protesting the war. Heck, I've seen bigger anti-war rallies at Stanford (Free the El Camino 600!) in 1972, when we were actually phased withdrawing from Viet Nam.
The thing I noticed is that in the late 60s and early 70s, all the speakers talked about at the anti-war rallies was, well, the war in Viet Nam. Now they're talking about the School of Americas, Palestinian rights, some guy in jail regarding Cuba, and a dozen other subjects, of very narrow interest, before Cindy Sheehan demonstrates her lack of a grounding in reality once again.
I hear the Gathering of Eagles had just as many counter-protestors (almost all of them Veterans) as the loopy lefties. Way to go, guys.
In defense of the lefty protestors, Global Warming has apparently made the ambient temperature in DC about 35, even though it's the last week of Winter. It's never pleasant to protest when the weather is cold, wet and windy.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 1:14 PM 
