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Politics : Attack Iraq? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MrLucky who wrote (3581)	2/2/2003 11:52:27 AM
From: sandintoes	Respond to of 8683

Do they think this will frighten us, and we will become peaceniks, members of the "World Order"? Serenity now!!!!!

To: MrLucky who wrote (3581)	2/3/2003 9:56:00 PM
From: sandintoes	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 8683

Okay, I found another one..they're coming out of the woodwork. accessatlanta.com Ex-Marine's plan to protest Iraq war amounts to treason By LARRY SAMPLER Larry Sampler, who lives in DeKalb County, is a consultant. Ken Nichols O'Keefe, a former U.S. Marine, and his organization called "We the People" have decided they will travel by bus convoy to Iraq and place themselves in harm's way, ostensibly as human shields to prevent the United States from attacking. Nichols was quoted as saying, "The potential for white Western body parts flying around with the Iraqi ones should make them think again about this imperialist oil war." That is an inexcusably jingoistic and xenophobic statement, especially from someone who claims to represent "We the People." To think that "white Western body parts" are somehow more sacred than innocents of other color or origin -- or to suggest that our government feels that way -- is crude and boorish and, it seems, completely in keeping with the intellectually amateurish nature of O'Keefe's mission and organization. This voluntary congregation of antiwar protesters is vaguely reminiscent of a forced detention of Westerners by Iraqi officials in a vain hope to forestall the 1991 Gulf War. Saddam Hussein had Westerners captured and held at various sensitive sites around the country. As a strategy it didn't work then and, as articulated by O'Keefe et al., it certainly won't work now. JOHN STILLWELL / Associated Press "The potential for white Western body parts flying around with the Iraqi ones should make them think again about this imperialist oil war," says former U.S. Marine Ken Nichols O'Keefe, who has organized a protest of people who say they intend to act as human shields. So, when a volunteer from New Zealand crows that "we are on the verge of something big," he can be forgiven for confusing "big" with "suicidal" or even "Darwinian" (in the context of the Darwin Awards, given to those who have chosen the most interesting and clever ways to remove themselves from the gene pool). But for O'Keefe, the question should be a bit more pressing. An appreciable community in the United States remembers the actions of Jane Fonda during the Vietnam conflict as tantamount to treason. She too visited with the enemy; she even posed for pictures sitting on the laps of North Vietnamese soldiers. She is still vilified by veterans of that conflict, and many believe that only the "undeclared" nature of the war kept her from being prosecuted for her behavior. Times have changed. Last year, John Walker Lindh, a confused youth who joined a religious movement and wound up (unbeknownst to him) at war with his home country, is now in jail and will remain there until he's old enough to be a grandfather. While it is true that all U.S. citizens are free to protest the war, we are not free to aid or abet the declared enemy. One can only hope that O'Keefe and any other U.S. citizens who act in direct support of an enemy of the United States are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But in the grand tradition of Darwin, perhaps the greatest justice for O'Keefe and his colleagues would be their successful deployment as "human shields" and their subsequent removal from the gene pool. And, contrary to O'Keefe's artificial sense of importance, the prospect of his body parts flying around Baghdad won't generate a first, much less a second, thought from those in positions of responsibility. Larry Sampler recently returned from Afghanistan where, as a contractor for the U.S. government, he served as director of operations for the Afghan emergency Loya Jirga (Grand Council).