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As the old saying goes, everything old is new again. Last weekend felt like a scene from my youth as thousands around the nation got together to protest the fourth anniversary of the United States’ involvement in the war in Iraq. Maybe I should rephrase that, the war that our president started in Iraq.
As I watched the news reports and listened to the chants and speeches, it was as though I went back in time. Listening to the protestors I could have closed my eyes, and had I not known what they were protesting, I would have thought I was listening to a documentary on the sixties.
“What do we want?” the speaker shouted. “Peace” the crowd shouted back in unison. A golden oldie from the days of the last extremely unpopular war we were engaged in, Vietnam. But this war is different and the protests took longer to surface than they did back then. Like it or not, be prepared to see more of them, a lot more.
Yep, there’s nothing we like more here in America than a cause. As this war continues, more and more people are growing tired of seeing brave Americans die in this pointless exercise. Couple that with the current administration’s arrogant attitude towards the will of the people, look at the last national election, and you have the makings of mass demonstrations like those of the sixties and early seventies.
We have become a nation of people who like to make their opinions known on the Internet. Most of the youth nowadays spend their time blogging on their My Space pages and have never even seen a protest in person. The closest they have come is watching protests on the evening news, You Tube, or documentaries on the History Channel. In my opinion they are ripe for the next new thing, which would be to actually participate in a protest.
Once they have risen up out of their computer chairs, and have to interact with real people, they will see what our forefathers experienced in the early days of this country and they may never go back again. Well, until the battle is won, then sadly they will return to the glow of their computer screen.
This prospect may not sit well with some parents, but the older ones who remember those days of civil unrest may yearn to see their kids experience a little political activism that isn’t contrived or monitored in an academic setting. When that freedom of speech is truly unleashed, unfettered, that is when you get the next generation of freethinking activists. I don’t think that we will find the next Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy or Cesar Chavez on the Internet.
No, you really need to feel the crowds and the passion of the people in order to fuel the fires of change. I remember during my first year at San Gabriel High School there was a “Sit In” to protest the war in Vietnam. Almost all of the senior and junior classes assembled in front of the school. People stood up at random and exchanged ideas while the rest sat quietly and listened until the speaker finished then cheered their support.
It was an eye opening experience that really made you think about what a great country we lived in. It was the first time I had seen, in person, the liberties that were often talked about in history class at work. And if you think that it was a pointless exercise for high school seniors to hold a demonstration, you need to remember those were the days when this country still had a military draft. So guess who was next in line to go?
That’s right, those senior high school students, who had seen friends and relatives either die or come back never being the same after fighting a war, or police action as it was referred to, that the majority of Americans didn’t agree with. We all learned a lot of lessons during and since that time, but obviously Dubya didn’t or we wouldn’t be where we have been for the last four years.
The one lesson that we have all learned since then is to respect the men and women who are serving in our armed forces. As opposed to the mindset of the sixties, everybody on both sides of this debate agrees that supporting those who have the unenviable task of carrying out the whims of the current administration is mandatory. They were not the architects of this debacle, only the protectors of the realm, charged with carrying out the orders of their superiors.
A night doesn’t go by where we don’t hear the tearful tales of those left behind and the hardships this war has wrought on the families of those serving. Mothers and fathers, while proud of their children’s patriotism, are left scratching their heads now wondering if they were sold a bill of goods about the reasons why we are there in the first place.
There is one group that isn’t giving our troops the support that they need and that would be the people who sent them there in the first place. Since the war began, the stories told by the soldiers themselves have been of inadequate equipment.
Lately, the shabby and deplorable conditions and services in the medical facilities have come to light. So no matter how much we on the home front want to support them, there isn’t much we can do in the areas that matter the most to our servicemen and women. That responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders that sent us there to begin with and continue to keep us there. If we weren’t fully prepared to enter this war, why are we there?
Enter the protestors who are saying enough is enough. The numbers keep growing in both political parties as they have finally figured out that this was a mistake. Though we thought our intentions were patriotic and noble in the beginning, now that we realize that we have all been lied to, we should all be picking up our signs and making our voices heard until the troops come home.
As of this writing we have lost 3,224 of America’s best, and for what? Are we any closer to catching Osama Bin Laden, the catalyst for going into Iraq in the first place? If it wasn’t to get him then it must have been to get Saddam Hussein. Well we got him and he is now pushing up the daisies. So, again I ask, why are we still there? Whatever the reason is, 3,224 Americans lost is 3,224 too many.
As that death toll rises, which it does daily, so will the amount of patriotic Americans who are fed up with the no win situation that we are in. So let the protests commence until our soldiers come marching home.
It is one thing to wrap yourself in an American flag, it is another to use it to drape over a coffin.
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