Is it just a coincidence? This week, which saw what could be a definitive turnaround in US public opinion against Bush, is also likely to be a week when the whole sorry facade of US-imposed Iraq "democracy" became an incontrovertible shambles.
In the USA, there is an almost palpable sense of change. Joseph L. Galloway recalls the spirit of the 60's and the old song, "There's something happening here..."
Those of us who are old enough have seen this movie before were reminded of other presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, who were haunted by another war and dogged by war protesters and a nation that lost confidence in their leadership and wound up divided against itself.In Iraq, the change this week is definitively for the worse, or so it would seem as Constitution deadlines demanded by the USA prove impossible to meet and violence flares anew. Juan Cole has a new Salon piece looking at the debacle.
Will history remember this week as the tipping point for George W. Bush and the Republicans who control Congress? Can they stay the course as they head into mid-term elections next year?
One more question: Will our children and grandchildren and their children harvest a bitter crop of budget deficits, higher oil prices, Islamic militancy and a broken Army and Marine Corps that was seeded in Iraq by this president, his vice president and his secretary of defense?
Will that bitter harvest, not a cakewalk, a mission accomplished and a Mesopotamian march of democracy, be Bush's legacy?
PS: Even my good friends at Iraq The Model are covering the latest violence: I assume that means there is no "good news" left?
1 comment:
For The Record:
The song you quoted is called "For What It's Worth". It was written by Stephen Stills and originally recorded by Buffalo Springfield. Here's the full lyric:
There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away
We better stop, hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
Some years later, and working with a different band, Stephen re-worked it into a slightly different piece which he called "America's Children", and in which he expressed the need for non-violent protest as well as I've ever seen it expressed:
But you know we gotta do it
we got to keep on keepin' on
'cause if we don't do it, nobody else is gonna
But you know if we can't do it with a smile on our face
You know if we can't do it with love in our hearts
then children we ain't got no right to do it at all
cause that just means we ain't learned nothin' yet
and we're supposed to be some kind of different
Some kind of different, indeed.
Hats off to Stephen Stills.
Hats off to you too, Gandhi.
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