Clicking Their Heels Three Times Together

The Right-wing response to protest against the Iraq war is often puerile, and sometimes substantitive, but always fascinating for its insight into the right's disregard for protest and disagreement.

Some Right-wing blogs concentrate on how many communists, hippies and socialists demonstrate against the war. As an old democratic socialist bastard, I understand their upset. We can be really irritating. I only wish I could have been in Washington DC yesterday to add to their anger.

Some patriotic bloggers use photos to get across their point about how stupid, wacky, and moonbat-like all the protesters were. Not pictured are the middle-class, middle-American parents who have lost children in Iraq.

Some were outraged that there were calls for George Bush's impeachment for his being a war criminal. Of course, it's not really important that those calls have something to do with Bush's lying about contravening the Geneva Convention by torturing prisoners and by invading a sovereign country based on a series of lies. But then again, these are the same people who were screaming in the streets for Bill Clinton's impeachment for his lying about getting blowjobs.

And, of course, size matters to the right, and they worry about it constantly. How many people actually showed up at the protest on Saturday is actually proof for some of them that there really aren't that many people opposed to Bush's war. This is really important to them. If you can say it enough times, it becomes true.

Directly related to the size-matters theorists, there are those who twist themselves into ugly little balloon animals with wishful thinking about how there really is not "an intellectually and morally serious antiwar movement." In one fell swoop, the opposition to the Iraq war is neither serious, nor intellectual nor moral. How convenient.

The neocons and pro-war Right want to believe that all is well. They have their eyes closed tight and they are clicking their heels three times over and over again, and wishing for a return to the halcyon days after 9/11 when all was right and when everyone was flying an American flag. Unfortunately, Dorothy, we're not in Kansas anymore.

In the face of all reality, these people wish for something else. Like George Bush, they simply live the illusion, dream the dreams, and avoid the real world.

All the polls demonstrate that the American people are opposed to the war in Iraq.

The latest Fox News poll shows that 55% of Americans disapprove of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq. Even among Fox News viewers, commonly thought of as very supportive of Bush's Iraq war, 58% of the respondents say we should finish the job in Iraq, while at the same time, 61% also say we should bring our troops home within the next year. How's that for being delusional?

The CBS News poll says 57% of Americans disapprove of the war, and that 61% say that the costs are not worth it.

The CNN/Gallup poll says 59% of Americans disapprove of the way George Bush is handling the war. 52% say that it was a mistake sending troops to Iraq in the first place .

The Harris poll says that 61% of Americans want Bush to bring home most of our troops in the next year. 58% of Americans say that the Iraq war has NOT protected America from another terrorist attack.

Now, having used all these polls as evidence against those who hope against all hope that there is no credible anti-Iraq war movement in the United States, I will concede that polls are crap. Let's give the poll doubters the benefit of the doubt. Put aside polls and just use your senses.

Don't we all have eyes and ears and hearts and minds? Don't we sense shifts in people's opinions, in their feelings, in their guts? Don't we all know people who hung flags out after 9/11, who supported President Bush in that time of national crisis, who supported our going into Afghanistan, but who now oppose his war in Iraq? Don't we all know anti-Bush people who rallied 'round the flag and supported him fighting terror in Afghanistan by going after al-Queda and the Taliban, but who are now very opposed to his war in Iraq? Doesn't each of know at least one conservative with serious doubts about the war? Can't we trust our own senses?

Can it be that the Right would have us believe that a heartwrenching split in America is neither "serious," nor "moral," nor "intellectual?" Johnson and Nixon, both were faced with an opposition at home and abroad, and both responded poorly to it, As a result, they, and America, paid a terrible price. Bush is now behaving the same way, clicking his heels three times, wishing it would all go away, and encouraging his followers to do the same.