Notes from the Basement

The Iraq war protest on Saturday was much smaller than in January, and there were more counterprotesters lining a section of the route to engage in colloquy (ahem) with the antiwar folk. The most common preprinted prowar signs said “PEACE THRU STRENGTH” and “BETTER THERE THAN HERE.” But one hand-drawn sign said it all, really, representing the epitome of rational discourse and bringing closure to the whole war debate: “HIPPIES SMELL.” Where on earth this guy found a hippie to sniff is beyond me.

So, despite the gorgeous weather, it was pretty depressing. But now, with a day of rumination (and a good night’s sleep) behind me, I figure it’s not as bad as it seems. Anyone can see that the “debate” about the war is essentially over. The public is fed up with it, and has been for some time. We’re starting to detect movement among the Republicans—you need a microscope to see it, unfortunately. And also unfortunately, the vast majority seems content to hunker down and suffer for another—let me check my countdown clock—492 days, 12 hours, 38 minutes, and 19 seconds. Some antiwar groups are planning more aggressive protests in the weeks to come. I’m guessing they’ll succeed in pissing Washingtonians off—boy, do they hate having their commute (or their sprint to the nearest Starbucks) disrupted.

On the plus side, I ran into a friend who was there with his college-age son, and we had a nice time catching up. I also took a few photos. Here’s one for my friend Thomas, Tub Thumper Extraordinaire for the Big I:

In a recent post, Thomas says, “Progress is just another word for nothing left to kill,” and analyzes why killing in Baghdad may be down slightly (as reported by Gen. Petraeus): most of the Sunni–Shia ethnic cleansing has been accomplished. Baghdad is well on its way to becoming a fully segregated city. Not a pacified city—a city with “neighborhoods” separated by walls (and worse).

Speaking of Petraeus and “facts on the ground,” it was disturbing to hear so much testimony with hardly a word about the catastrophic Iraqi refugee problem. As Ed Harriman writes in the London Review of Books:

Asking General Petraeus and Ryan Cocker, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, whom Petraeus describes as his “political wing man,” to report to Congress about “progress” in Iraq is a bit like asking schoolboys to write their own reports. Bush claimed in his speech to the American veterans [on August 22] that the US is “giving families in liberated Iraqi cities a look at a decent and hopeful life.” According to the UN, more than 2.2 million Iraqis out of a population of 27 million have fled their country, most of them to Syria and Jordan, and another 1.9 million have been internally displaced. Approximately 50,000 are fleeing their homes every month. I’ve looked on the White House website at all of Bush’s press conferences and speeches since the surge intensified in June. He hasn’t mentioned the refugees once.

Bob Herbert wrote about the refugees in the New York Times on Saturday. Maybe the media, and the US Congress, will begin paying more attention to this consequence of Bush’s war.

Here’s the rear-end of a bus from Texas, replete with Viva Terlinqua! bumper sticker:

Just to show there’s intelligent life in Texas. (Oh, relax! I’ve got some very smart kin down there.)

Toward the end of the march (my march, that is—some people stayed and amused themselves by climbing over barriers and getting themselves arrested), I ran into a fella named Mike from Bridgeport, Connecticut. After I took a picture of the back of his jacket, the lady from Arlington who was holding up one end of an upside-down American flag said, “You should see his shirt!” I said, “Wow, you dress in layers—layers of message!” Mike obligingly opened up his jacket so I could see the T-shirt, and the lady says, “You should see the back!” I thought, “This is turning into a vaudeville routine,” but the back was interesting so I took a picture of that, too. And here they are:

The quotation on the jacket is well known, attributed to Ben Franklin: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The T-shirt sports a definition of fascism from a 1980s edition of the American Heritage Dictionary: “A system of government which exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.” (We certainly heard and saw evidence of belligerent nationalism on Saturday.) The stuff on the back of the shirt may be more obscure to most readers. It comes from a guy named Lawrence W. Britt.

And that’s a wrap.

Tags: Iraq, patriotism, politics, U.S., Washington DC

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