Pacific Views

The 4th Year Protest

Can you believe we've been fighting in Iraq for four years? A friend mentioned to me a while ago that we weren't technically at war because no war had been declared. That we were in some sort of police action, or something like that, kind of the way Vietnam wasn't really a properly declared war. Apparently, declaring war implies a number of obligations and conditions under international law. You know how the Bush administration feels about laws, not really their thing. I guess the administration could get try to tell people that it's silly to protest a war that isn't happening, though they've been using the term themselves for so long that even they might get whiplash from such a radical rhetorical departure. Also, 'No Iraq Police Action' doesn't work so well as a sign.

The L.A. Times manages to get through a whole article about the march on the Pentagon without making anything up like the N.Y. Times did the last time. This time, the Paper of Record decided that they'd be content with reminding everyone that the main march organizers were socialists. Eeeeek! I guess that, to them, you have to be an office-holding, Republican veteran to be able to have an unmockable view of the war. That leaves the credible population of opinions on Iraq at somewhere around two, now that Rumsfeld is gone, that is. Good thing both those guys disagree now, just think how boring it would be if they had to report that everybody who mattered thought the same way about Iraq. Oh, wait ... But the N.Y. Times has company over at the Washington Post where, in spite of a lot of excellent reporting in their back pages indicating that the Bush administration lied about the evidence for the case against Saddam Hussein, they marked the 4th anniversary of the Iraq war with an editorial lamenting that the case for war had been all too good and a gossipy, fashion hit-piece on Valerie Wilson that was deservedly trashed in the reader comments.

Over at DailyKos, diarist notanamerican went to the 4th anniversary protest, as well. They took a lot of good pictures. I wish I could have gone. Even though I'm here in D.C., I was in yesterday with a godawful cold; I'm sure everyone I come in contact with over the coming week will really appreciate that I didn't stand outside all day in the freezing weather. I hope I make it to the next one.

Though I'm thinking that next time, for the fifth anniversary, the main protest should skip government buildings altogether. The next set of marches should focus their ire on the offices of the credulous, simpering, trivia-minded major news dailies who helped get us into this miserable war and just can't seem to stop cheering for it. The Pentagon? Please. I vote for parking 10,000 angry citizens outside each of the main offices of the New York Times and the Washington Post for a day-long reading of the highlights of their most damaging Iraq lies and editorial crimes. I say there should be camps at the headquarters of FOX news and CNN with a mobile projection set-up running continuous loop of their fearmongering and weapons of mass deception.

I understand the protestors who wanted to impeach the president. It's just that it would probably be more useful to impeach the Fourth Estate. The criminals in the White House never would have been able to get away with any of this if they hadn't enjoyed the ministrations of such pliant and supple accomplices.

Posted by natasha at March 18, 2007 07:03 AM | Activism | Technorati links |