On resistance and marches

Posted on January 22, 2017

These are photos from the 2003 world-wide marches and protests that occurred as the Bush Administration –operating on the lie that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction – moved inexorably towards its war on Iraq:

On March 20, 2003, the United States started bombing Baghdad.

We marched a little more.

But our government did not stop and has not stopped bombing Iraq (which we do now for different reasons that trace back to the original lie). We will probably continue to bomb Iraq over the next four years.

Like those anti-war marches, our marches yesterday were powerful. We pledged our resistance to Donald Trump, the GOP, the administration that is shaping up, and the policies that they hope to inflict upon us.

Trump and the GOP, however, don’t give a damn about our marches. Like Bush, they intend to bomb anyway – bomb health care, bomb social security, bomb civil liberties, bomb the Treasury, bomb reproductive rights, bomb the poor, bomb immigrants….

In addition to Iraq, they intend to bomb some other country, most likely Middle Eastern.

The only question, then, is what resistance will we offer that will not prove as impotent as our resistance during the Bush years?  Will we walk away from these marches, giddy with the delusion that they are the only work that we need to do?

Or have we learned the lesson of Iraq (I have great hopes that we have), which is that the world pays a huge price for – that children, women and men suffer and die because of – our political quietism and submission to those in power, of which our anti-whatever marches have too often been the first phase?