LBJ must be rolling in his grave at that one. It not only changed policy, it drove LBJ from seeking reelection.
Bush HAD the overwhelming support of the military in Iraq early in the war. I’m not so sure that’s true now. Particularly among the generals, since it seems the first thing a general does when he retires is come out against Bush’s handling of the war.
I think we’re long past the days where anywhere near most of the people think that.
Or, perhaps, there aren’t as many die-hard anti-war types in the real world as are represented on the Dope.
Not at all true.
What drove LBJ from seeking re-election were the protestors who stayed off the streets, got “clean for Gene”, and laid down the foundations for a massive grass-roots campaign in New Hampshire which could appeal to the average middle-class American and convince them that the war was a bad idea. Once LBJ saw that he had lost the support of the average Democratic voter, he pulled out. Two years of anti-war protests and marches before the election certainly didn’t stop him from running. And six further years of marching wouldn’t stop a Democratic Congress from fully funding the war.
If anything, the protests made it tougher for the anti-war cause to succeed: Tip O’Neill talks in his autobiography about how hard it was to gather and hold Democratic Congressional opposition to the war so long as the cause was being defined in most people’s minds by long-haired hippies.
Less support for Bush doesn’t mean less support for the war. There are plenty in the military, who after experiencing the mismanagement in Iraq firsthand, think that Bush is not being hawkish enough, preferring to keep the status quo trickle of casualties for the sake of public opinion, instead of doing something concrete to win, like pulling idle units out of S Korea and Germany to step up offensive operations in Iraq.
I’ve always thought of them as mental masturbation. It makes you feel good but accomplishes nothing.
Bush knows these people will never vote for him anyway and that they are a very small numerical minority.
The general public doesn’t care either. They are either apathetic to politics or they have long since made up thier minds. They just want them to get the hell out of the way so they can get to work or get some lunch.
The unintended consequences. I know a young man who graduated high school in 2002 and went to college in Cincinnati. He was intelligent but uninformed. He witnessed a couple of protests and talked to some of the demonstrators. He told me that there seemed to be nothing there “underneath all the shouting”. He then looked further into the issue and after a period of reflection…joined the Army.
All in all, everyone would be better off if they would gather in small groups and tell each other how much they matter and how much of a difference they are making. That way, they could continue to pleasureably delude themselves without annoying anyone else.
Viet Nam was reported. This and Gulf one showed the military managing and controlling the news. having generals give daly briefings is not a way to search the truth. The military was stung by Viet Nam and was determined to find a way to prevent from happening again. The system has been set up to make it far more difficult to reach them,
If protests were launched that shut down the capital ,you would find that steps have been taken to prevent that. I think marrests would be enormous and violent. Then you would come face to face with the Terrorist legislation. You would find your rights are gone and courts wont help you.
Well, I disagree. How do you like them apples?
Cite that this war isn’t being reported? Cite that protests are being shut down violently? Cite that protestors that are violently arrested find their rights are gone and the courts won’t help?
I can make up nightmare scenarios that have no relation to reality just as well as you can, except I won’t. Fact is, the war is extremely unpopular and growing more unpopular. Mass protests aren’t needed to spread the word that the war isn’t going according to plan, everyone who can read a newspaper already knows this, and those that don’t won’t be swayed by demonstrations anyway.
Demonstrations and protests are useless and counterproductive if you don’t have the votes. We have a chance to vote this November. If antiwar activists can’t get antiwar candidates elected, what good is marching on Washington gonna do?
My wife teaches business law at a local community college. Thos she avoids providing a political slant, the business law curriculum necessarily touches on various aspects of government action. The other day she observed that she was impressed with how uninformed, uninterested, and apathetic the majority of her students seemed about just about everything related to government and politics. True, her sample is limited to students in 1-2 classes per semester over the past few recent years at a single community college.
Of course, for all I know it has always been thus. I recall voting rates among young people have always been dismal.
I know it made me feel good to see people worked up enough to publicly express their outrage. Similarly, I was excited to see what I perceived as considerable youth energy in the last persidential election - which may have contributed to my disappointment at the results.
People in the US today are just more apathetic and self-centered. Plus, there is just a lot more stuff to do today. You can organize a war protest, or stay at home eating microwave burritos while simutaneously listening to a CD. playing computer games and watching porn. Back then your alternative was bowling on ABC’s Wide World of Sports or a repeat of Petticoat Junction. Also today you can look back at the 60’s and see the protests didn’t do any good. Back then, people thought what they were doing would maybe, possibly, make a change, maybe naively. In retrospect, we see that protests don’t do any good, that the Pres & co. don’t give a shit what the people think. And as stated earlier, GWB has stated he will stay the course, no matter what his approval ratings, so why bother?
As opposed to… when? The great mass of anti-war protests during Korea? Prior to World War II? World War I? The Civil War? When?
Oh, right, right, Vietnam, because the Baby Boomers were inherently moral and constantly working to make the world a better place. Except that anti-Vietnam protests in strength ended pretty quickly after the draft was ended, meaning that most of those protesting were protesting because they were afraid of being drafted, and once that threat was gone, it was back to sitting at home, smoking dope, and watching All In The Family.
I don’t think there’s a lot of correlation between anti-war protesters and “die-hard anti-war types”. I mean, I’ve been opposed to the Iraq war since the idea was first floated, and I’ve never been in a protest or march or whatever.
One may as well hypothesize that there aren’t so many anti-war protesters these days because a lot of folks are afraid they’ll get spied on by the FBI and end up on Dick Cheney’s enemies list.
John C., good point, but there were also many more protests in that era compared to now, that didn’t directly involve the war. I’m sure many blacks today feel discrimination is still going on, and on occasion have protests, but not in the numbers and with the intensity of the late 60’s early 70’s. Women still don’t earn as much as men, and are disproportionally represented in executive jobs, Congress, etc., but where are the bra burnings of today?
And as off the wall as they maybe were, where are the SLA’s and Weather Underground’s of today?
George Bush might not care about what some hippies with giant puppets are yammering about, but for certain he’s gonna care about what a Democratic majority congress thinks.
A rally of 50 people to stop the war, free Mumia, end globalization, stop genetic engineering, guarantee reproductive freedom, protest the sellout of Pacifica Radio, support legalization of hemp, stand in solidearity with Palestine, and ban nuclear power isn’t gonna do squat. Voting for a democrat, volunteering for a campaign, stuffing envelopes, answering phones, becoming a journalist, talking to your friends, and arguing with strangers on the internet just might.
All this “we can’t do anything, the fascists control everything” whining is just an excuse. If enough people agree with you you’re gonna get what you want. And if enough people disagree with you you’re not gonna get what you want. But you can take action to change people from the first category to the second category and vice versa. Blocking the streets at rush hour isn’t gonna do much to convince the fence-sitters.
Demonstrations were chosen as a strategy in the civil rights era because, get this, black people had no civil rights, they couldn’t vote themselves the right to vote. Demonstrations happen when people have no normal methods of redress of grievances. Well, you’ve got a chance for a redress of grievances this November, if you blow that one then 100 demonstrations afterward won’t mean squat.
Holed up in a cave on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Who are you gonna shoot to stop the war? What buildings are you gonna bomb to stop the war?
That’s not gonna work, is it? The violent revolutionaries of the 60s were convinced that the system was rotten, and a few solid blows would topple it. But there were dead wrong. Nowadays even the revolutionaries aren’t stupid enough to believe that a couple of bombs is gonna bring on the Age of Aquarius.
Embeds dont report. They are controlled reporting.
The generals gave presentations not news.
The military spent a lot of brain cells trying to figure a way to control . They have.The psychology of embeds has gotten much talk, When you directly depend on them to protect you the results are clear. This war was a tv show when it started. Every expert was a military man with maps and charts. This is control.
The patriot act defines terrorists rather generously. It includes green protesters and people who picket defense plants.
Please stop making shit up. Please cite that green protestors and people who picket defense plants are being prosecuted as terrorists.
Either undertake to stop making shit up, or stop posting in Great Debates. Either outcome would be fine with me.
As for “embeds”, sure, and embeded reporter is going to empathize with the people he’s embeded with, and is going to preferentially show their side of the story. But where your theory completely fails is that any reporter who likes can go wander around the streets of Baghdad interviewing whoever they like. If they don’t mind getting their heads cut off by insurgents, that is.
Journalists are only controlled by the military to the extent that they allow themselves to be controlled by the media. The reporters aren’t confined to the Green Zone by the Pentagon…they’re confined to the Green Zone by the other side. The freedom fighters. The guys who cut the heads off of reporters. If the freedom fighters want positive media coverage maybe not killing reporters would be a start.
http://www.infowars.com/articles/commentary/emails/patriot_act_defines_terrorism_broadly.htm Robots are appreciated. You train well. Look up ,I have and read the GENEROUS def. These are a couple examples. I have many more byut racketball is now.
I didnt say they could wander the streets now. They could have in the beginning.
Not exactly the same thing, but I’ll point out that Homeland Security had a large-scale international cyber terror simulation last February, and the enemies in that scenario were left-wing vegans and anti-war protesters.
Never mind Chinese hackers or Al Qaeda terrorists, it’s the vegans and Massachusetts nuns we have to watch out for! 
Yawn. Let’s take a look at the horror stories from your link, those with links that worked.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=111509
So…this guy wasn’t prosecuted under the “Patriot Act”. He was prosecuted for ordinary fraud and harrassement. That someone called him a “paper terrorist” is freaking irrelevant.
http://216.22.2.74/cgi-local/ffa2.cgi?noframes;read=6157
Nothing about the Patriot act. Nothing about terrorism. He was harrassing people. He is being charged with misdemeanor harrassement.
http://www.capitalnews9.com/content/headlines/?SecID=33&ArID=125290%20
Your cite calls him a “prankster”. No, he planted a fake bomb. He should face charges.
http://www.lex18.com/Global/story.asp?S=2989614%20
Nothing about the Patriot Act in here. Nothing about homeland security. Just a kid who wrote a violent story that included real people, and the local cops took it seriously. Maybe they were idiots, maybe not. But this is another totally weak story.
Your cite sucked. Thank you, come again.