Hell yes! We had to get gasoline over $2.00 a gallon for the oil companies somehow! Sheesh. What a pack of ingrates Americans are.
Posted by phidipides at May 30, 2005 07:02 PMLOL - Juan Cole... "just screwed". Well, Juan, everything changed after 9/11, haven't you heard? If the American people and this country's reputation rested on the miserable failure and deceit of the Bush Iraq War, we would truly be lucky. Unfortunately, everything that Bush has done since inaugurated 4.5 years ago has been as big a failure as his War. "Just screwed" is the biggest understatement possible.
Posted by T2 at May 30, 2005 07:13 PMI think it's an example of learned helplessness:
Learned Helpless:A term developed by Martin Seligman, pioneering researcher in animal psychology, to describe what occurs when animals or human beings learn that their behavior has no effect on the environment. The impact of this experience leaves an individual apathetic, depressed, and unwilling to try previous or new behavior. This concept is relevant to people with dissociative disorders who may show some degree of learned helplessness due to repeated exposure to traumatic events which they could not change or avoid by their behavior.
Posted by Oleary at May 30, 2005 07:26 PMI'll tell you why Americans aren't protesting even though they think the war was not worth it and Bush lied to get us there. Because it doesn't impact them unless they chose for it to. The administration has told us constantly we are at war but be happy, shop go to the beach etc. Why was it different for the Vietnam war? Why were kids protesting? Because it was anymore wrong? NO The reason is simple, during Vietnam there was a DRAFT.
Posted by Ron In Portland at May 30, 2005 07:36 PMI think it's an example of learned helplessness:
Timothy Leary's dead. No, no, no, no! He's outside, looking in.
Posted by phidipides at May 30, 2005 07:37 PMDr. Frank Newport
I don't know how many other people hear this pretentious dipshit on the radio but he's carried (I think as part of CNN Radio News) on the local affiliate that carries Air America.
His opinions (in my humble opinion) are not worth the air that carries them to my ears from the radio speakers.
Posted by fly at May 30, 2005 07:37 PMYou know, it is easy to blame Americans for not standing up and protesting against this war, myself included (although I would go to a protest in a heart beat). Sometimes I forget that the majority of Americans receive their information about the war from the MSM, which is, as we all know, the Propaganda Branch of this Presidency. Although we consider ourselves knowledgable about this war, most do not have half of the information that we do. I never understood the importance of the media until four and a half years ago.
Personally, I think all it would take would be one anti-war march on Washington of a million people to get the ball rolling. Perhaps Move On or some other group could organize such a march.
An anti-war march on Washington
Oleary, good comment. I think you are probably close to the truth.
Posted by Judith at May 30, 2005 07:54 PMRon in Portland has hit the nail on the head.
When the pot gets too hot the frogs will jump.
Destroying Social Security is a tangable threat and people will react to it. A threatened revival of the draft would be the tipping point to social unrest on a sixties scale. Bu$hco knows this, but the hubris is so high soon they just might try!
I think that Ron in Portland has a good point, but I also think that there is more to it than that. It would be very irresponsible for us to just pull out of there now. If it was our mistake to make the mess, it is our respsonsibility to clean it up. It doesn't even matter if we had a different president now - this is America's problem - not Bush's. We can be angry and we can speak about how unnecessary it all was, but we cannot just walk away now. I am not saying that we need to keep doing what we are doing, but we need a solution. If we need change, and we want our troops out of there, then we still need to replace our current "plan" with a new one. Our relationship with the rest of the world, which has suffered in the past few years, would not improve if we just pulled out.
Posted by Andy at May 30, 2005 10:15 PMAndy, I agree. We need a plan, period. Just what in the hell is Bush's plan? To stabilize Iraq? Words that roll easily off his tongue, with absolutely no substance behind them. Yes, we need a "new plan", like setting a date and then getting the hell out of there.
Posted by Judith at May 30, 2005 10:31 PMWell, we have not seen marches or protests on US soil yet because we have not had a major terra attack since 2001. Americans generally are chickens and since we have not been attacked it must be that Georgie is protecting us. Americans are big in statue but can be easily scared by an airplane flying overhead. What a joke.
I agree with Ron. Bush has said he won't bring back the draft. And I happen to believe that because if he did bring back the draft, the protests and outrage would be enormous. He'd have a collosal PR failure, and the cost to the Republican party would be huge. I think he'll try to hang in there with our shrinking troops as long as he's in office. Then, like every other failure in his life, someone else will come in and clean up after him.
Posted by ann at May 31, 2005 05:32 AMJohn, there were no terror attacks in the 60's - but hundreds of thousands marched against the Viet Nam War. The difference - The Draft. Funny how, when faced with involuntary servitude in a shooting war, people get off their asses and riot.
Posted by T2 at May 31, 2005 06:36 AMI don't think much of Frank Newport, either, but I think he hit the nail with his comment about how Americans think the Iraqis are "better off," even if we aren't.
I have been hearing that, too, on non-political forums, when I complain about the war. Hell, I heard it about an hour ago! The arguments usually go something like this:
"Yeah, Bush isn't perfect and the war sucks, but at least the Iraqis aren't being killed by that Saddam Hitler guy with his weapons of mass destruction anymore."
The belief that the Iraqis are better of is a pervasive one. Why shouldn't it be, when everybody saw the dancing Iraqis with their purple thumbs last January. The news informs us that the insurgents are all out-of-towners picking on the poor locals who just want to live in peace and drink Coca-cola and go to those new schools we painted.
That's the image that has been sold. And bought, by many people. We live in an echo chamber where we inform each other of the deadlier truth of Iraq. It doesn't get out to the rest of the people. And that is, partly, our fault.
Posted by Dumbo at May 31, 2005 06:38 AMMary, check out the articles by Phyllis Bennis and Stephen Zunes on what a credible exit strategy would look like. (At Institute for Policy Studies & Foreign Policy in Focus websites.)
Cole is wrong that we just cannot leave Iraq. He himself believes that the guerilla war may last for as long as 15 years. Apart from what this horror would mean for Iraq, consider the costs in American treasure and lives.
Posted by theologicus at May 31, 2005 09:58 AMIn other words America's f##ked.
Posted by code cooker at May 31, 2005 02:03 PMtheologicus - thanks for that site. I'd begun to believe that there was no way to get out sensibly. Unfortunately, I still believe it will be very hard to get us out of there until the warmonger in chief is gone.
Posted by Mary at May 31, 2005 10:05 PM