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Readers Are Unanimous: No To War |
Current rating: 2 |
by Mike Bailey
(No verified email address) |
01 Feb 2003
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People are asking why cities in Illinois are being asked to go on record opposing Bush's rush to war. While the local media are just waking up to the fact that there insignificant opposition to a war in Iraq, it seems that the idea of peace plays well in Peoria. |
In a brave if breathtakingly risky attempt to quantify the readership of this column, I stared into the beastly eyes of potential irrelevance last week by inviting central Illinoisans to weigh in on war with Iraq. The response was . . . well, let’s just say I stopped counting at 40. Not since tackling the digestively delicate subject of Krispy Kreme donuts have I had this much feedback. Saddam is serious stuff.
Anyway, among the 41 readers I can now officially call my own, the verdict was, incredibly, unanimous. (That I have my stethoscope placed firmly if coldly upon the pulse of central Illinois goes without saying, but that is ridiculous.) No to a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, no to an attack without U.N. backing, no to trading one Saddam for 10 Osamas in this year’s game of global Strat-o-matic. No war, no way, no how.
Granted, this sampling of the locals probably wouldn’t pass the exacting polling standards of CNN/USA Today/Gallup. But they’re mine, dammit, and from where I sit, what they say goes and God bless ‘em. One might describe these folks as "peaced off," except most don’t strike me as the type who show at the federal courthouse humming John Lennon.
Indeed, there was the "retired Naval officer" and "member of the so-called Greatest Generation" from Washington who wrote, "Bush’s obsession with Iraq makes no sense to me. . . . It will be the first time in history that we will have attacked a sovereign nation without provocation," not counting LBJ’s Gulf of Tonkin lie. Allusions to Vietnam were common.
"Americans don’t start wars; we finish them," declared Dunlap. "Morally and strategically indefensible," proclaimed a Peoria attorney. The emperor is naked, maintained Morton. "I am 49 years old, married, with two grown children. I wish I had been on one of those buses to Washington." Strange behavior for a pro-life president, proffered another Peorian. "I can think of nothing more anti-life . . . than a war."
"Is there some law in this country that says we have to have a war for every generation?" asked "Thank You for the Soapbox." Iraq is "not worth one ounce of blood spilled by our boys." "Dubya’s folly," Canton called it. "Where is the evidence? What happened to bin Laden?" asked a "55-year-old voting" Peorian who punches GOP "85 percent of the time." Maybe not, next time.
"Bush reminds me of a runaway train," moaned Macomb. "If this war kills thousands of innocent Iraqis, their blood will be on my hands," lamented another. "If I do not do enough, may God forgive me."
From Goodfield: Who’s next? North Korea? How many more sacrifices must Americans make on behalf of Big Oil? How ‘bout the economy? "Our role in the world should not be that of the biggest bully but rather ... the greatest benefactor, offering the hope of prosperity and peace rather than threats of war and annihilation," wrote a Princeton truck driver’s wife.
From the "83-year-old veteran of World War II": "The only way I could favor such a war would be for the warmongers - Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush and Blair - to personally lead the ground forces against Baghdad."
"So Saddam shot at Bush’s daddy," wrote a 77-year-old, now former Republican stalwart. "Well, tough. They missed, didn’t they?"
The Pekin "wife of an Army Reserve captain on active duty" has gone back and forth but concludes: "I say we get out and stay out and use all that money to make our country as safe as possible." A first strike "actually makes us terrorists," adds "Will of the American People." "I’d like to be prouder of my country again," remarked "Love Not War."
Pansies, pinkos, partisans? Each and every one? Doubt it. Virtually to a person they had the same gut reaction to what seems to be the president’s - what’s the word? - eagerness for armed confrontation. Dubya does himself no favors when he becomes "sick and tired" of those who won’t shut up and take this war like a man or a patriot or a Texan. Yeah, democracy can be messy.
Frankly, I am flummoxed - not another word for gastrointestinal distress, I assure you - that nary a soul went to bat for war. Strange, because central Illinois has never suffered any shortage of "bomb ‘em back to the Stone Age" testosterone. Surely someone feels it’s Saddam or the Fall of Civilization, Baghdad or No More Bowling (ie., the End of Life as We Know It), them or us. A columnist relies on conflict for his very sustenance, doggone it. Can’t be messin’ with a man’s equilibrium like this.
Or maybe there really is little support for Bush’s war here in the heartland. If political mastermind Karl Rove isn’t on a flight to Peoria pronto, is Dubya saying no more in ‘04?
Finally, I hate to do this to a president who’s done nothing to me - it’s the rhetorical equivalent of a nuclear first strike - but desperate times call for desperate measures. For the good of the nation and the world, I invoke the president of battle-tested presidents, Abraham Lincoln. As a gesture of good will to the White House, I’ll fly Lincoln Lite with a lesser-known quote (it just wouldn’t be right to go Gettysburg on him just yet):
"Public sentiment is everything," Lincoln said at his 1858 Ottawa debate with Stephen A. Douglas. "With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed." Sixteen years earlier, Lincoln also noted that "a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall." Bet my entire readership - at 41 and counting - is nodding its head to that.
Mike Bailey is an associate editor with the Journal Star.
Copyright 2003 The Peoria Journal Star
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See also:
http://www.pjstar.com/news/bailey/g136010a.html
http://www.pjstar.com
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Re: Readers Are Unanimous: No To War |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
01 Feb 2003
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One of Nixon's pet phrases on public opinion, when asking whether the public would accept his rationale for this or that, was "Will it play in Peoria?"
Well, this war is not playing in Peoria any better than it's playing on Wall Street. Sometimes you just gotta ask -- what is that man _thinking_?
@%< |
