Reactionary Ignorance

Here’s an example of how the Reactionaries (in this case, Augusta County’s own SWAC Girl) feel about the constitution and the Bill of Rights:

“You can't be for the troops but against the war. It doesn't work that way. Everytime someone steps a foot into the streets to protest the war, it's demoralizing to our troops because that is what is shown in the MSM [Mainstream Media]... and it gives the feeling that all Americans feel that way which is not true, no matter what the polls or MSM try to tell us.

If we don't stand up to terrorism, we are doomed. They want to kill us just because of who we are. They don't want to talk about it, they don't want to get along ... they have a jihad to kill us. Period. They are brainwashed from the time they are born to hate America.

President Bush was faced with a terrible situation on 9/11. Our country suffered the worst attack ever on our own soil. It could not go unanswered.

Leadership sometimes demands that we do things that are not popular. We have to do things that are right. That's what our President has done to keep us safe the past five years.”

I am extremely disturbed that an American thinks that Americans should not express their opposition to the war. It is my firm belief that the war in Iraq--not necessarily every war and certainly not the mission in Afghanistan--is wrong. It was unjustified and illegal from the beginning, and even the rationalizations for it, concocted by the Bush regime and sold to gullible supporters like SWAC Girl, proved to be false. But rather than admit his mistake and change course, Bush bullies on, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and several thousand American lives. SWAC Girl equate the Iraq war with the war against terrorism, but in reality there is no connection. Iraq didn't perpetrate the 9/11 attacks. Iraq didn't blow up the Spanish train or the busses in London or the nightclub in Bali. Iraqi terrorism is taking place NOW, in Iraq, because the US is there. This is a common mistake of the Reactionaries, to equate Iraq and Afghanistan, but the fault for their ignorance lies with the Bush administration, which has deliberately misled them.

I do support the military, and have many friends in the military. There is no inconsistency between my support for them and my opposition to the war. I am not surprised that there is anecdotal evidence that the troops are not happy about opposition back home to the war they have been sent to fight, but if there is any validity to the argument that the troops are fighting for our freedom, then we all ought to recognize that Americans have the right, and I'd say the obligation, to speak up when they believe our country has gone in the wrong direction. And we have certainly been taken in the wrong direction by George W. Bush and the Reactionary Right.

And then she says that "they" want to kill us because of who we are. Who, exactly, is "they"? Iraqis? Arabs? Moslems? I just don't buy it, and I've spent a significant amount of time in Islamic countries. Our wealth is resented, true, but it is our arrogance and our greed that is hated. I agree that one can't negotiate with a terrorist, but we can certainly do more than just commit genocide--which seems to be what SWAC Girl is suggesting--in order to diminish the threat from terrorism. And, paradoxically, instead of diminishing the threat from terrorism, this absurd war is actually making it worse by driving a new generation into the terrorists arms. If there is another attack, it will be because of this war, and it will be SWAC Girl’s responsibility because she did not oppose it. That’s where the real mystery lies. How can anyone support this war?