WTF is right!

Okay... So I was going into my blogspace to make a post at Quicksilver Amusements only to find that Joe had FINALLY made a post... SO like he said, "let the pillow fight begin!"

First thing I had to do was find the story, which is here at FOX, where you can even find a link to a 24 hour camera watching the Berkeley recruiting station. I'm not even gonna start on Fox News at this point (I'm sure we'll have plenty of time for that).

Wired magazine's blog site is even covering the 24 hour webcam. So how much more of a NON-story can there be? I must say though, I am particularly amused by this guy's slogan "Make Out Not War" a seemingly less committed slogan than that from the 60s, "Make Love Not War." Times change I guess... sso now we have faux witchcraft and "Make Out Not War." Personally... I'll take the former.

And herein lies the problem! Protest, REAL protest, IS important. Whether it takes place in the streets, in churches, on housetops, in the halls of Congress, or in front of recruiting stations. When I sat down in the middle of a Livermore road with 2,000 other people in 1982 and 1983 outside the Lawrence Livermore Labs to protest nuclear proliferation people said the same thing about us. "What good is this!? You're just keeping people from going to work!" To some extent that was exactly true. In addition to creating a situation that forced the lab, the people at the lab, and the government (then led by Ronald Reagan)to face the fact that business would not go on as usual, these protests were a way of saying that business as usual is NOT acceptable when that business is directly concerned with planning the slaughter of thousands, and perhaps millions, of people.

The same goes for locating a protest (albeit a stupid protest) outside a recruiting station. Yes! These people all volunteer. Yes! In a world like this, one would be hard pressed to make an argument that we can get away with not having a military. However, as we move into the 6th year of a war that was begun on lies and is maintained by lies for the enrichment of a few at the expense of the lives of men and women who we should (as a nation) respect more than to send them off to fight, kill and die for no cause (or a BAD cause), I believe it's important, AND PATRIOTIC, to protest. Whether these protests have any effect at all... well, that too is probably for another discussion.

Stopping evil - for I do believe it is evil to send people into harms way on the basis of failed policies and greed driven lies - is not done nicely, it is often not done effectively, and it can even be undertaken stupidly and messily... but the attempt must be made, to quote Malcolm X, "by any means necessary." So let the witches and their friends keep going. I personally wish they would do something more sensible and intelligent and less seemingly ridiculous, but as a former Baptist preacher, I don't think I'm going to start splitting hairs about other people's attempts at apprehending the divine.

The thing that is most significant to me about all of these things is that the "anti-war" protestors and the "support the troops" protestors are really trying to do the same thing... Stop the War and bring the men and women who are risking their lives back to the safety of our shores, our arms and our homes. Those who VOLUNTEER to protect us DESERVE our respect. They DESERVE our allegience. They DESERVE a citizenry that takes responsibility for decisions that are "made in our name." They DESERVE a population as concerned with protecting them as they are about protecting us.

As for Roger Waters... Well... it's still a damn good song!