Burning without end

It's got so I'm afraid to click over to Riverbend's blog anymore. I wonder every day if she's still okay and her family alive. I felt bad in 2003 when I was writing her "please please get out" emails, to be encouraging her to abandon her country... but I feel like writing them again.... as her friends get shot in the head.

Our country should get off its ass and get protesting and get our army out. It's not helping anything. The war continues... I am amazed and disgusted every day that I open the newspaper or go online and the war isn't the top news. Hello. It's a WAR. That we started and that we're still in. And we don't even bother to report on it. How fucked up can this country be? How can I have gone on with my life as usual for the last few years while all this happens?

Comments

[squid]

It is more difficult to keep the public angry about this war than it was with Vietnam, as that administration didn't so blatantly manipulate the media and hide statistics or other information.

I would love to somehow arrange a protest across from the White House in which we had one warm body for every soldier and civilian killed in this war. Maybe find out how to arrange a temporary memorial--also as close to the White House as possible--like the hallways in BSG in which people posted photos of dead loved ones. But I can't so instead I talk about war, peace, etc. with Iz and my parents, etc.

If you were to take action, what would you do?

[Melanie]

I HATE being out of the country now because I can't see my people protesting. It's never on the news. But I know that Americans must be, right?

In my tiny podunk hometown my mother told me about anti-war protestors standing on the street corner. Of course there was no write-up, no TV, no record. Just my mom witnessing. And because of things like that happening all over, people outside of the U.S. (here in The Bahamas and other Caribbean countries) think that all Americans are now either A) for the war or B) just don't care anymore.

And this despite the polls that have been showing falling support. I guess if they don't see people out in the streets it just doesn't hit home.

Are there still protests, however small, going on in CA?

[severin]

In my opinion (saddly):

> Are there still protests, however small, going on in CA?

Alas, it doesn't really matter. Without extensive national TV news coverage 90% of the folks you want to see the protest (i.e. poorly educated folks in the middle of the country who vote republican), the protest is meaningless.

TV news has become so shallow, the situation in Iraq must get much worse before the networks pay attention.

Alas.

[noria]

I wonder if there were a draft if everyone'd get up off their apathetic asses. Not that I'm suggesting there should be a draft. But if the people dying came from a wider (and whiter) socio-economic spectrum, and if this became an issue for ALL men between 18 and 26, then maybe people would finally get riled up.