My own little Iraq war anniversary

[RainDog]

For the first time ever in my life, during the propaganda build up to the invasion of Iraq, I sent an email to the White House. I wrote to the presumed president of this country and told him that I thought he would be a war criminal if he invaded Iraq.

I told him that his take over of Iraq was a violation of the Nuremberg Principles that our nation helped to write after the horrific abuse and torture of people in WWII. I signed my email: sincerely.

A few months later I answered the door to what I thought must surely be a Jehovah's Witness. Oh crap, I thought, I really do not want to have to deal with this. I'm not even nice to them anymore. I don't even answer the door if I see it's them.

Instead, the guy pulled out a badge and said he was from the FBI and he wanted to ask some questions about my former neighbor. My older son was playing basketball with the kid across the street. That kid's step mom was sitting on the front porch with her newborn.

When the FBI guy flashed the badge, I leaned forward... and looked up. When I did, the agent leaned back on my porch railing and looked over to a car parked in front of my house. Later someone told me they probably took my picture. I couldn't remember anything about this neighbor... not even if he existed or not!

The agent left and my next-door-neighbor, the totally hot Thai-American bachelor (sorry, but just to distinguish from my other neighbor mentioned... ) came over and asked if the FBI guy questioned me too. I said yep. We speculated about this incident after I went across the street to ask the other neighbor on her porch if the guy in the car spoke to her. No.

It turns out that my hot Thai-American guy neighbor and I are the only two ppl on our street who had marched in D.C. to protest the war. He'd signed a petition while there. I'd written an email.

After a while I thought... oh, we were too paranoid. Sign of the times, the instability, insecurity, the uncertainty that BushCo has created. Then I found out about all the worthless spying on people and thought... well, maybe sending an email telling a prez he's about to take actions that would make him a war criminal might seem like something. It was to me even tho I knew nothing would come of it. I had to have a clear conscience about the horrors that man was about to commit in my name.

I found a video of the documentary Taxi To the Dark Side on google vid. I posted the link in the political videos forum. If the doc is out on shelves, I'll kick some money their way anyway, even if I watched it online.

sooo

what moments stand out the most for you during this five years as a rogue state?

[RainDog]

1. kickin' my

non-copycat
non-kitteh
non-Lee Mercer
non-Heath Ledger
non-LOLCats
non-nipples
non-football
non-breastfeeding
non-Olive Garden
non-cereal crumbs
non-whateverelseIdon'treaddependingonmymood

...so that it can once again drop like a brick among the Algonquin wits.

but honestly, I would love to hear others' thoughts about these last 5 years of an illegal war.

[otherlander]

2. I painted the word "war" on a few stopsigns

last year. Peace through vandalism? :hide:

I think saying this might piss off a lot of people on DU, but I've got to be honest. I've only been to one anti-war march, and it was a while ago. I went and there were a bunch of people marching and carrying signs and stopping at traffic lights when police told them to, and then gathering in Union Square, buying pins and bumper stickers and wearing costumes and paining each other's faces and playing guitar and singing and I wondered...
how did this come to be considered an appropriate response to cluster bombs?
How did parades come to be considered a form of resistance?

I didn't go to any more marches after that.
Now watch as everyone yells at me. It'll stop your thread from sinking.

[RainDog]

4. The Iraq march was my first

tho I was part of a downtown vigil before the war in my town. once the invasion started, I didn't see a lot of benefit or use to it except for anniversaries... and this year I'm not there at all.

however, I do think, if you want to persuade congress, you have to get mainstreamers in your court. I don't mind that - it's good not to see the stereotypical anarchist whatever. (who are really not effective to me, esp. when someone from alf left a bomb at a biz less than a block from where a friend of mind lived. Marches are important in one way because they provide physical evidence of the numbers of others who also oppose wars of aggression.

But I'm like you. I don't think they're effective. I saw a doc Phillip Seymour Hoffman narrated (made?) about the 2000 election and Barney Frank, not exactly a raving conservative, noted that AARP has one of the strongest lobbies in the nation and get legislation passed that they want and they have never marched on Washington to achieve this. They've organized and lobbied as a group.

Now marches seem sort of archaic. Plus, ANSWER, to me, is not an org. I with which I want to be asso.

(so now you can fight with me about activism :) - but I have to go for a while. Fight you later!

:hi:

[LSK]

3. who is your Congressman? If hes a Dem, you might want to write him about this

[RainDog]

5. it's an even more complicated situation...

I didn't go into the whole thing. A few weeks or so before the FBI guy showed up, my thTAbn came over and asked me if I'd heard or seen these planes. So I went outside with him and, sure enough, these little planes were circling over my town. and circling. and circling. day and night for days.

so, my neighbor called the local rag to find out what was up. So someone there asked around and it turned out the planes were from the FBI too, iirc. The newspaper person asked if they were using the stuff that allows them to see the level of light inside ppl's houses (to find pot growers) and they said they weren't, but everyone thought they were. This was in the paper, as well as my thTAbn's name. The flights stopped not too long after that.

A couple of months later, I learned that a local female activist had had a visit (I'm not "granola," nor is my thTAbn - she's major grano)- so the criteria seemed to be people who had spoken out against the war. Then a little after that, I found out a law prof. here had had them buzzing her farm.. really lowly... because she had let someone stay there at one time, or some such... at least that was what she thought. She was really pissed. But she couldn't get anything from the legislators here either.

So it was obviously a concerted effort and my congressman is a blue dog... (who lost to a repuke and then replaced him again) and one senator is an old school repuke and the other a DLC dem. In other words... wouldn't help. The congressman, at a town hall meeting, noted that my town is "different." -It's much more liberal than anything else around here. We're called The People's Republic of by others in this state.

That was the moment, however, when I really thought that I wanted to move out of this country. I'm harmless. They're not.