www.columbian.com/01072005/clark_co/230560.html
Advertise in The Columbian Opinion - Would silent registers make noise? Friday, January 7, 2005 GREGG HERRINGTON Columbian staff writer An unusual, "anyone-can-join" protest of the Iraq war is in the works, mo re or less, for President Bush's inauguration day, Jan. It isn't get ting much press, but it's being talked up on Internet Web pages. It is, I believe, a sign not just of frustration with the military morass but a lso of the helplessness Americans not already part of Bush's political b ase feel about influencing this administration, on anything. It's "Not One Damn Dime Day" and the idea is to protest the war by sp ending nothing. com/node/2289: "Those who oppose what is happening in our name in Iraq can speak up with a 24-hour national boycott of all forms of consumer spending. Not one damn dime f or necessities or for impulse purchases. The object is to remind the people in power that the war in Iraq is immoral and il legal; that they are responsible for starting it and that it is their re sponsibility to stop it." There's also the inevitable verbiage about the administration being t ight with corporations and lobbyists who "funnel cash into American poli tics." But as for the war, "The politicians owe our troops a plan a way to come home. Of course, to counter all that, Bush supporters will buy something on Jan. One critic of the boycott wrote online that Bush is already well awar e of Americans' growing unrest with the war and that the protest will on ly hurt the little guy the waitresses, Wal-Mart clerks and cab drivers w hile "the CEOs, the well-heeled stockholders, and the rich politicians w hom the lefties love to hate aren't going to lose any sleep." "Not One Damn Dime Day," I think, is a sign of growing exasperation t hat transcends the war. To use a prison-movie analogy, it's Americans tr ying to get the warden's attention by banging tin cups on the cafeteria tables. For all they know, he's holed up in his office unconcerned about what's eating them. The war goes on, but the president and his job-secure secretary of de fense offer no hint that things would be different if they had it to do over. In the meantime, Bush pushes ahead with the Next Big Thing and the n the Next Big Thing After That, from the inauguration festivities to ex tending tax cuts even as the war's costs skyrocket to privatizing Social Security to limiting medical malpractice liability. A broader angst in our midst Sometimes, what we need is someone to share our misery. But we get fe w signs that this never-a-doubt president recognizes concerns about the war (and putting it on our children's credit cards) or our other worries about where this country is headed. Iraq's just the most painful exampl e of that broad angst. As Thomas Freidman wrote in Thursday's New York Times, the Iraq war w as well intentioned and might yet lead to the spread of democracy in tha t part of the world. But if it fails, "we are looking at dictators and kings ruling this r egion as far as the eye can see and ... this region will be a cauldron o f oil-financed pathologies and terrorism for the rest of our lives. "What is inexcusable is thinking that such an experiment would be eas y, that it could be done on the cheap, that it could be done with any ol d army and any old coalition and any old fiscal policy and any old energ y policy. That is the foolishness of George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Don ald Rumsfeld."
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