EARTH TO BUSH --
Read our lips: No war on Iraq
By Deirdre Griswold
How relieved the war gang in Washington would be if ordinary
people were to go back to discussing nothing more dangerous
than "Have a nice day" and "Kind of warm, isn't it?" in their
daily encounters.
Instead, a different kind of discussion, one long delayed
but thus all the more necessary, is bubbling to the surface.
Tentatively at first, people are asking each other, "What do
you think of this war Bush is talking about?" And, perhaps to
their surprise, they are finding that their friends, neighbors
and co-workers harbor the same doubts they do.
They haven't heard this on television or read about it in
the newspapers. As far as the corporate media are concerned,
there's only one viewpoint out there among the people:
unswerving loyalty to President George W. Bush. But more and
more there is concrete evidence that people are thinking for
themselves.
Major demonstrations planned for Oct. 6 and Oct. 26 will be
one gauge of popular sentiment. But there are also the millions
of people who, for all kinds of reasons, will not be attending
demonstrations but are starting to weigh in with an opinion
against the war.
It is starting to come out that the offices of congressional
representatives and senators are being bombarded with letters,
faxes, emails and phone calls running overwhelmingly against a
war.
The title of a story filed Oct. 1 by the British news
service Reuters--"Opposition to Iraq War Fragmented,
United"--seemed deliberately worded to obscure this point.
The dispatch revealed that, of 5,000 letters and telephone
calls about Iraq to the office of Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.)
in the last week of September, only about 100 supported an
attack.
The office of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) received almost
35,000 letters, emails and telephone calls in the last two
weeks of September. It reported about 99 percent were against
the war.
And it's not just liberal Democrats who are reporting this
new grassroots opposition to a war. Even Republican senators
Jesse Helms of North Carolina, John Warner of Virginia and
Charles Hagel of Nebraska say their mailbags are "running
substantially against military action," reports Reuters.
The Bush hawks are trying feverishly to launch their war
before this mass sentiment can gel into a formidable movement
of opposition. They have little to fear from the Democratic
Party, which has shown plenty of energy when it comes to
seeking out rich campaign donors but appears frozen in Bush's
headlights.
Meanwhile, the real opposition is gathering in the streets,
at union halls, on campuses, in churches, mosques and
synagogues, and in meetings and protests across the country,
looking for ways to unite and maximize its effectiveness so
that this war really can be stopped.
Reprinted from the Oct. 10, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
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