For me and many others that was a radicalizing experience; I’ll never trust “sensible” opinion again. But for those who stayed “sensible” through the test, it’s a moment they’d like to see forgotten. That, I believe, is the real reason so many want to let torture and everything else go down the memory hole.
I'm proud to say that I was one of those crazy hippies who opposed this whole imperial adventure from the very beginning. I'm not so sure that the numbers of us were that few. I remember marching in at least 2 massive demonstrations in New York of almost a million people BEFORE the war started. A lot of us could see this for the fraud that it was. None of us were experts in any kind of foreign policy, yet we could all see that invading Iraq after 9/11 made about as much sense as invading Peru after Pearl Harbor. We could all see that Congress and the media were getting hustled. We could all see that Cheney and his little wizards were using the shock and outrage over 9/11 to gin up the war passions. We wanted revenge. We wanted to punch someone, anyone, in the face. And we did. Cheney managed to distract Junior from the pursuit of Osama and his little wizards, and focus his, and our, attention on a war that the New American Century crowd had been planning since 1996 (about the same time that Osama began planning 9/11).
That whole period from 2002 to 2006 we will come to regret more and more as time goes by.
The build up and the shoddy execution of that invasion and occupation radicalized a lot of us who were not radicalized before. Some of us woke up and smelled the coffee, and realized that our country got sold out from under us quite some time ago. The Wise Men of Washington do not work for us, and haven't for a long time.
Indeed, the high priests of the Conventional Wisdom want the torture memos and the documentation of the decision to go to war to vanish down the memory hole. They don't want to face their complicity in the deaths of thousands of Iraqis and Americans.
I stood with you, Counterlight, as an aged, crazy hippie. I lost a friend over it. We speak, but the relationship is not the same. The last straw was my mocking Bush in his sexy flight suit in the "Mission Accomplished" stunt. That was too much for her to bear.
ReplyDeleteKrugman is right. Many folks want to forget that they fell for the lies and stupidity.
Hippies of all ages, unite!
ReplyDeleteMaybe you lost one friend, but I hope you gained a few more.
Virtual friends, yes. None on my home ground.
ReplyDeleteRemember Christmas 2001? All the Xmas decorations were Red, White and Blue (I remember lots of roof-size flags made from RW&B lights).
ReplyDeleteWe'd kicked Taliban butt in Afghanistan, and all was "U-S-A!" w/ the world.
But I had an uncomfortable feeling there were other shoes to drop (not more terrorism, necessarily, just that we couldn't be sure Our Great Victory was All Dat).
...and THEN came indescribably STOOPID run-up to the War On Iraq. It was like watching a slow-motion train-wreck, that all my agonized disbelief (and marching in Lansing, MI, on a numbingly cold day in Feb. 2003) couldn't stop.
Could the US *ever* turn to a Wise Queer? >:-/