She Turned Me into a Newt...I Got Better
Two points: Number one, there is very little anti-war sentiment in this country. Don't be as gullible (or hopeful) as the media is when they use polls indicating Americans aren't pleased with the Iraq war to conclude a strong anti-war sentiment. Many of the respondents simply mean they wish the war was being fought differently and most of the rest respond with a shrug. The reality is that with such little loss of American life a fairly unpopular war elicits almost no resistance. Well, except for...
Point two, the anti-war movement is till mostly peopled by the bizarre and the unstable. Which is not to say that there are no reasonable voices against the war...but certainly not enough to undo the damage done by the vocal majority. When reasonable people start to grumble against our current war stance they look to the barricades, size up their potential allies and then figure that they may need to think a little harder. Sure they may not be happy about the war...but are they really SO unhappy that they'd be willing to risk being caught in a photograph next to a member of Code Pink? Clearly not.
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1 comment:
Maybe as late as '06, anti-war Americans generally meant they weren't pleased with the way the war is being waged; having lost faith, however, that it remains possible to wage the war effectively for the years and years it would be necessary to maintain even the possibility of victory in a nation few of its people seem to want, be assured that anti-war Americans generally mean what they say.
Will they mean it enough for a decisive anti-war vote to emerge? I doubt it, if economic forecasts prove to be true. Nevertheless, the idea that Americans are rethinking anti-war sentiments based on protestors, let alone Berkeley protestors, ignores the numbers that do matter to reasonable people: lives lost and dollars spent, both of which most Americans whether they're for or against the war consider unacceptably high.
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