War for Peace

I'm watching these anti-war protesters getting arrested for exercising their First Amendment rights. It strikes me that free speech is the first correction to the Constitution, not Amendment #78 or even low double-digits. No violence, no guns, no dead children due to the protest, and they're being busted in D.C. itself.

Our America. Wild.

The jackboot stuff kicks in around 6:15 when a mounted cop uses the unreasoning fear tactic, using the threat of violence from his horse to do it.

It's like suddenly being at a Karl Rove-staged GOP/Bush rally. As if D.C. is Bush's space, sheriff Cheney, not our town anymore. Not for every American.

So this is what the social contract has come to under imperialistic GOP rule.

I was also struck by the question of whether this protest was part of a larger plan, some sort of coordinated peace movement, but I'll bet the best we can expect is that the viral dissemination of the arrest video makes a couple stars and provides a little fuel.

But I don't think that's the case. I just watched this riveting video one of my heroes, former weapons inspector Scott Ritter. He just wrote a book called Waging Peace because he thinks that for there to be a truly effective peace movement, it has to get hard, get organized, get Sun-Tzu.

Ritter argues that the majority of Americans aren't against the Iraq War, they're just against losing. Ritter comes right out and says we lost.

Was that so difficult?

Then he says that those of us who want to be fighting for peace have to realize it isn't about converting everybody over to our cause. There are, in fact, pro-war factions that aren't going to change, including those in Congress who are vested in the military-industrial complex, per GOP President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself.

“If you want to be anti-war, that means you have to be in conflict with those who are pro-war.”

D'oh!

Petraeus is now revealed as completely in bed with Bush. He sees himself as a future Presidential candidate or something, defending his counterterrorism reputation. (Wouldn't you?) Leading up to the reuniting in D.C., Bush has been making a total fool of himself (and of course thus us) in Australia, confusing it with Austria (I kid you not), calling the APEC meeting he was at "OPEC" (what would Freud say?) and just like on his last trip to China, going off the stage the wrong way into a dead end (how overdetermined).

As for Bush's supposed nemesis, our nemesis, Osama Bin Asshole, either he or someone dressed like him (it's actually hard to tell) is in a newly released video giving us a recent history lesson (sad for its accuracies), taunting us to leave in another smartly timed release to steel our resolve.

The last thing Osama (or Al Quaeda) wants is for us to leave. Otherwise why would he/they release tapes on the last weekend of the last Presidential election?

Our presence there is his oxygen, and unless there are some serious Democratic led fireworks over the next several weeks, the USA is going to keep providing it to him.