"What Korea was to Truman, and Vietnam was to LBJ, Iraq will be to George W. Bush," Arthur Schlesinger told me last week. In all three cases, the public grew weary of a drawn-out war with no end in sight. History shows that there is nothing sacrosanct about wartime presidents. There is no guaranteed immunity for them. Rally round the president when the nation is at war is the American tradition--but only for a time. The Korean War forced Truman to pull out of the 1952 race. Vietnam forced Johnson to pull out in 1968.
Bush was able to keep Iraq at bay long enough to get re-elected, but the debacle threatens to derail his second term. Just look at the latest polls. According to Washington Post /ABC News, for the first time, a majority of Americans feel that the war has not made the United States safer. Fifty-eight percent disapprove of Bush's handling of it. Fifty-eight percent say the war was not worth fighting. And 73 percent consider the number of casualties unacceptable.
But poll numbers are not the only figures the White House should be worrying about. Dick Cheney's "last throes" delusion is being rebutted by the figures coming out of Iraq every day. May was the fifth-deadliest month of the war for U.S. troops. And in just the first two weeks of June, 41 Americans have been killed and 75 wounded.
The above excerpt is from Arianna Huffington's "Not Your Father's Anti-War Movement" at TomPaine.com. Lloyd e-mailed it in and asked that we note it. That's the opening, click the link to read the full essay.
It's Thursday. We are doing the Indymedia roundup but there are 1,296 e-mails and I wanted to post somethings before I got lost in the e-mails in case anyone felt, "Hey, where's the posts?"
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
