Why Republicans Are Desperate to Bait the Antiwar Left

I should explain that I do not accept this argument, I find the assumptions it is based on unconvincing, and it seems to me rather that by voting it down we have again given the Bushites our consent to continue unilaterally. However, it seems worth putting the argument up, some of the points he makes seem well taken. So flame on.


The uproar in the House of Representatives on the Friday before Thanksgiving over the Republicans’ phony proposal for “immediate withdrawal” of U.S. troops from Iraq revealed not just that their side of the aisle swarms with political reptiles and 40-year-old high-school debaters; that much isn’t news, even to independents like me. What it really showed is that Republicans now desperately need the anti-war movement their Democratic colleagues refused to give them in the vote on the resolution.

Republicans want an anti-war movement like that of the 1960s to cover their own cut-and-run strategy, which has been to send “our brave men and women” to fight while cutting taxes that would pay for adequate armor and benefits, and while dodging the institution of a draft to distribute the war’s burdens fairly; and then to run for re-election on the conservative-Wilsonian philosophy that supposedly drives this dubious grand strategy.

The warmakers’ predicament has become all the more excruciating because it was so completely self-induced. Determined in 2003 to show that the Iraq war would be different from the one in Vietnam, they convincingly assailed "deja-vu" Democrats and other dissenters, who were predicting reruns of Vietnam's trumped-up pretexts, massive overkill, and bottomless quagmires.

Iraq is different, the warmakers insisted, but they were right in ways they never intended. They were so successful at deflecting and silencing every warning or doubt that they had no one to blame but themselves when, instead of being conveyed through grateful, flower-strewing throngs on June 30, 2004, Ambassador Paul Bremer III had to be rushed out of the Green Zone two days early, as his American successors may have to be with the desert equivalent of Vietnam "boat people" clinging to their heels.

HNN

Disorderly, disrespectful youngsters, the fuzz knocking heads, a call for LAW AND ORDER!!!! Of course, those kids were INVESTED--they all had draft lottery numbers, or knew someone who did!

Nowadays, only GOP kids can afford a completely parent-funded, carefree college experience--and the only demonstrating those self-indulgent farts are doing is how to do jello shots. The kids who are Democrats are likely working two jobs, going to school part time, and sweating paying off loans. And when they demonstrate, they aren't having a festival, they are dead serious, want their voices heard, and their time to really COUNT. And they are joined by their parents and grandparents!!!!

There's a real gravitas to demonstrations nowadays--it's not like the combination of simple anger and a party (live for today, you could be shipped off, or on the run in Canada tomorrow!!) that we saw in the 60's.

They are not going to get the sex, drugs and rock-n-roll image for the anti-war movement, no matter how much they want it. They get Cindy and Murtha instead. It's got to be driving them nuts.

...and young parents with strollers, grizzled vets from WW II and Korea as well as Vietnam, people in wheelchairs, nuns, you-name-it. The draft-age kids only gradually started showing up in any numbers, but we have them now.

Some in the media want to portray today's protesters as if the 1960s college kids reappear unaged from some tie-dyed Brigadoon, but it just isn't so.

The article's writer does make an interesting point, however. I think some Repubs in Washington would just love for us to step into the stereotype. How disappointing for them that we have been on the whole so peaceful -- even the civil disobedience often gets co-ordinated beforehand. The acts of violence have largely come from law enforcement...

Hekate

I'd love to see a "Sunday Best" demonstration sometime. Probably unrealistic, but just imagine the power of demonstrators ringed around the White House, all in suits and ties, church outfits, dressed as though they were going to a funeral, carrying smaller, rather plain signs with their messages in simple letters, and making their point by sheer numbers and quiet determination.

It would freak the GOP out; they wouldn't be able to point to the more outrageous demonstrators and paint the whole crowd with a 'fringe' brush.

It's funny, but protests after Ghandi have been very much media events, so what happens on the camera is very important. How you look is a message, too.

The civil rights marchers were making the point that they were not just someone's maid or garbage-collector, but adult people to be respected. The 1960s anti-war protestors were making the point that they had broken free of the constraints of the college dress code imposed in loco parentis (remember those?).

For quite awhile into the current peace movement, we could count on the media to focus in on the small number of people who fit the old hippie stereotype, and then try to play the story (if there even was one) as flaky-hippie-dippy -- well, you know. Some tried it with Camp Casey -- I blasted a WaPo reporter who portrayed it as Woodstock in the desert. :eyes:

The reality is that our social dress code has become very casual, and most of the people who show up are dressing for an afternoon's walk in whatever the weather is that day. Uniform message t-shirts for groups marching together are popular.

I like your idea -- it would be a change, and it would be fun to get a contingent of "suits" en masse.

Hekate

Admittedly, it is an attention-getting device, but having everyone dressed for a funeral, because our service personnel are dying, our democracy is on its deathbed, and honor and dignity in the White House are a moldering corpse, makes a powerful point.

And the lamestream media would HAVE to cover it...the visuals would be too powerful to ignore.

Back when I took Poly Sci classes, this would have been called a shotgun paper. He tries to hit way too many things at once.

That said: A Senate vote makes a movement? Any Republican wants to relive the 60's? What possible good could come from that? Conservative-Wilsonian? Are there any important political decisions that are not "completely self-induced"? Are they throwing flowers or clinging to heals? (I'd say they are throwing bullets and clinging to political power). What does "New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins, an incisive and trustworthy observer('s)" quote have to do with the anti war movement?

Wait...massive internal upheaval to cover the politically damaging withdrawal? No one notices? Got it. One Senate vote is enough cover for the blame to be put on the Democrats.

snip/
Mr. Sleeper, a former New York Daily News columnist and the author of Liberal Racism, is a lecturer in political science at Yale.
snip/

This is a rant. He should be embarrassed. I have a degree in political science and no one from the John Birch Society to the Comintern should be proud of this. My blue book would have run red with the ink a grad assistant would rightfully pour over this drek had I turned it in.

into a few paragraphs. And The 60's are worthy of six feet of print alone. This latest turmoil will probably cover 60 feet.

whoretaculture :hi:

And i believe the Shock and Awe campaign was meant to do what the warhawks wanted to do in Viet Nam, bomb them into submission. I think they thought to themselves we'll just bomb them senseless to start with and then they will throw flowers at out feet for saving them from their former government. It hasn't worked that way. Now any civilian that has lost friends and family members has become an insurgent. And the enemy is blended into the fabric of society and we have a stinking urban warfare disaster. Quagmire doesn't begin to describe this mess.

Dems should have voted yes and called the Neocons bluff. They control the congress so if it passed they would have also been against the war. Dems now look weak and disorgnized.

We need leaders in Washington with balls, sorry but Nancy is just not doing it for me.
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Nov. 29, 2005 12:00 AM ARIZONA REPUBLIC

Your editorial last Wednesday "403-3 seems clear" is so, so wrong.

The sentiment of the vote on keeping troops in Iraq did not represent an overwhelming support of the administration's "policy" in Iraq.

The only thing the Nov. 18 House vote indicates is that there should not be a precipitous pullout.

Indeed, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., himself advocates a structured pullout. It is time for Iraqis to stand up for themselves; we shall see what form democracy takes.

The editorial's assertion that Rep. Murtha has changed his tune is also wrong. Rep. Murtha, an honorable man and a war veteran, has been on the record as being opposed to the war since 2004 when he realized that America had been sold a bill of goods courtesy of the neocons running the executive branch and the chicken hawks running Congress.

Punch. The writer argued that the Repugs set up polarization, they create "bad guys" so that the average American can identify these people as the Bad people, like Al Qaida, the terrorists, Al Zarkawi, Usama, the list goes on and on.

They desperately need groups or identities to be used as scapegoats, or labels, so that everybody can quickly assume that they're the Bad People, or the liberals and things like that.

We saw this just a few days ago when John Murtha spoke up about the war in Iraq. What did Scott McLiar do? He immediately connected Murtha with Michael Moore and the "extreme liberals". Same thing with the New Anti-war protesters. They will be quickly pigeon-holed.

This is coarse manipulation. Even the most dense American should be able to see through this.