Bush's Nightmare on Main Street: Wisconsin Says, "Out of Iraq"

The votes are in and Wisconsin spoke clearly.  From Madison to wealthy Milwaukee suburbs, from northern Ladysmith to Evansville, Wisconsin voters made it abundantly clear that the Second Bush picked the wrong war at the wrong time.

These were not tepid resolutions that allowed for staged withdrawal dependent upon the vagaries of Bush foreign diplomacy negotiations. They were clear and articulate statements to end the war, now.

For three years, persistent reporters asked me to compare the opposition to this war with the opposition to the war in Vietnam. There are significant differences:

• The war in Vietnam took years to develop a groundswell of opposition off the college campuses.
• Vietnam generated a perception of greater urgency among its opponents because of the draft. The opposition to Iraq is just as great, but the personal threat to more Americans is not as great and the sense of urgency is not felt as strongly.
• The absence of large demonstrations should not be interpreted as acceptance of this war.  Public sentiment manifests itself in different ways.  This is a new era with new technology and voices are expressed in places other than the streets.

But there are some important similarities:

• Like Vietnam, the President will find that once the American people oppose the war, the tide cannot be rolled back.
• Like the Vietnam conflict, the American people are ahead of the politicians, and soon elected representatives will scramble to lead the public as they challenge the President.

The success of this anti-war movement is in part due to the use of the Internet and the Left's fledgling use of talk radio.   These successful referendums were pursued through old fashioned organizing and a communication system that provided two messages: the government lied, and it is OK to question authority.  How novel.

Just wait till the time arrives that the Left has radio and television access that is only one half the presence of the right wing.

For Jessica McBride and her witch-hunting buddies, who were concerned about appearance over all else, the problem has mushroomed and grown out of control like the Bush runaway war.  The tide has begun to turn.

Now every hawk running this fall is vulnerable.

Comments

[ALR]

Could people finally be coming to their senses?
Paul Soglin has always been a 'patriot'...that's right, a 'patriot' because he doesn't spontaneously march to the drums to which his government wants him to march. When things aren't right, a patriot doesn't need an 'act' to help him/her announce that things aren't right. And that very announcement is democracy. America has it simply because America exercises it. The day we stop exercising our democracy - taking it out for a brisk walk now and then - is the same day we begin to lose it.
America...love it or leave it?
I say, America, love it and prove it.

[Dave]

Fewer than 2% of voters in Wisconsin voted, fairly evenly outside of major liberal centers, to bring troops home. How is that "clear and articulate statements to end the war, now."?

[Richard]

You forgot a couple of things.
1)The total number of votes to abandon the war equalled less than 10% of the population of the united states most of the votes were in towns of less than 10000 people. So Wisconsin made a statement because Draper: 41-22, Couderay 18-4, Edgewater 38-35, Ojibwa 25-16, Frederic 92-82, Exeland 18-16, Winter 0-27, Casco 55-50 voted to leave Iraq. 25% of the referendums could not even muster more votes than in most high school class elections. That speaks for the state does it?
2) The reason why there was no time lag in opposition to Iraq vs Viet Nam is because the same students that took time in opposing Viet Nam didn't wait this time. No real new opposition is occurring just the same old protesters getting a new cause to get behind.

3) The only real similarity to Viet Nam that I can see is that the Arab Street is partially correct. There is a large segment of the US population that are truely cowards(sorry I think Osama and others refer to us as paper tigers) We bomb from afar and cower when the fight comes home. Just like my years in the mental health field, we cannot let civilians see the raw data in files or the field. They do not understand and do not have the ability to digest what is going on. You say civil war and I see what happened for years after WW1 and 2. You see a quagmire and I see better results than most historic training missions. You see too many deaths for nothing and I see less hardship than the 10,000+ that died of the flu at Great Lakes Naval Training base during their basic training in one year. You see torture and I see more pleasant conditions than what I experienced during my basic training. You see US military men and women dying in droves in a war zone and I see a higher mortality rate in your average American city. More people died by drunk drivers from Thanksgiving to New years in 2004 than American Military died in the entire conflict(more than 4 years).

I grew up in the adult world where you could not solve a problem by just saying you're wrong. You have to come up with an alternative. I have yet to hear a viable alternative. By viable I mean more than "we need to use a diplomatic approach" like what Kennedy is touting in his new book when he compares the Cuban Missle Crisis approach his family took to the current Iraq situation. Yup 50 years later the diplomatic approach has improved the situation in Cuba to the point where it certainly stopped people from risking life and limb to flee.

While I admit that the referendums were clever, I hardly think that they actually mean that Wisconsin says "Out of Iraq"

OK, Dave, go on, keep telling yourself and Jessica McBride: "While I admit that the referendums were clever, I hardly think that they actually mean that Wisconsin says 'Out of Iraq'"

Denial on your part is what I prefer when the fall elections come up.

[Richard]

No anonymous, that quote was from Richard not Dave. See this is where you fail. I challenge you to put these referendums in an election where people will actually show up. It is clever in a way that most lefties and school boards function. Lets put something on a special ballot during an election on a holiday when most of the population is away and then lets not really spread word about it that way only our supporters will show. Look at the numbers I gave you. In one of the areas a total of 22 votes were cast. How is that representative of the population? Lets ask the reserve centers around the State(you know they men and women that are the ones that actually have to do the work, suffering, and dying) and see what they say. I am certain that we could get about the same number of votes from them as we did from these 32 communities. Also how do you explain that even in areas that went resoundingly liberal in the last November election(Madison, Shorewood, Whitefish Bay) they could not muster the same spread for this massive movement that is sweeping the state? I mistyped in my above entry. I had typed "The total number of votes to abandon the war equalled less than 10% of the population of the united states" I wanted to say equalled less than .1% of the population of the state. Hardly representative.

What we have is a well orchestrated attempt to make news. Here is the logic.
1)Put referendums in a couple of large highly liberal communities. Then fill in with tiny areas where nobody is going to show up.
2)Do not post the total votes but rather the referendum numbers. In total with all of the votes counted out of all of the referendums across the whole state of Wisconsin with a total population of 5.3 million, about 40,000 people voted for the referendums. That is less than any of the populations of any of the top 12 cities in the state including 2 of the cities where the referendum was held. Sad showing really.
3)Release to the news that 25 of the 32 passed across the state. That shows support right? In reality, this broad support is nothing more than a smokescreen for failure. If the people wanted to see what statewide support looks like then put it on the ballot in november as a statewide referendum. Let everybody vote on it. What we have is an attitude attributed to the state when in reality out of 72 counties, 190 cities, 395 villages, and 1,265 towns in the state 25 communities voted for abandoning our military.

[Peggy Wireman]

Many Republicans are running away from their connections with Bush. But the truth is that the Republican White House and the Republican Congress are like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. You'd have to look at a sign around their necks to tell the difference.

Below is a humorous episode from Peggy Wireman's Alice in Bushland: Fact and Fantasy in the Bush Administration. Please send to friends, blogs, etc. Also check web site aliceinbushland.com and order the book for more fun and facts.
Fantasy Four: Alice Meets Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

Alice followed a path marked Right Wing Republican policies but stopped when she saw two strange men. They were short, round and fat. They looked exactly alike. One had a label on the back of his collar saying Dum and the other had a label saying Dee. "Oh," thought Alice, "They must be Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum."
ALICE: "Hello Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum."
TWEEDLE DEE AND TWEEDLE DUM IN UNISON: "You must address us by our new proper names."
ALICE: "What are they?"
TWEEDLE DEE: "Can't you read? Don't you follow Fox News?"
ALICE: "Read what?"
TWEEDLE DUM: "The signs around our necks."
Alice looked again and saw that each man carried a sign with a big symbol of an elephant. Each sign had a picture of the American flag. Tweedle Dee's sign said "Bush's White House." Tweedle Dum's sign said "Republican Congress."
ALICE: "Now I know how to address you. But before I read the signs, I couldn't tell you apart."
TWEEDLE DEE: "That's good. I expect my Republican Congress to follow everything that I do. A good Republican Congress follows its leader. And they do."
ALICE: "How do you get them to do that?"
TWEEDLE DEE: "I threaten them. It worked best when my lieutenant Tom DeLay Walrus was in charge. He knew how to twist every rule that the House of Representatives has ever had. When he wrote that Medicare Prescription Drug bill, he kept the vote open into the wee hours of the morning until he could twist enough arms to pass it. Some Republicans didn't want to vote for the big tax benefits to the drug companies, but DeLay convinced them that they wouldn't be able to get their own bills passed until they did."
ALICE: "Is DeLay still in charge?"
TWEEDLE DEE, FROWNING,: "No, some idiot commie, pinko, liberal Democratic prosecutor indicted him for illegal campaign contributions."

ALICE: "Was he guilty?"
TWEEDLE DEE: "Who cares? Those campaign contributions and his tricks in redistricting Texas gave us five Republican Congressmen. We might need those five to keep control of Congress."
ALICE: "Is keeping control of Congress so important?"
TWEEDLE DEE: "Of course. How could I proceed with my agenda to make America strong in the War on Terror? Why some Democrats thought Congress ought to exert oversight on things like why Halliburton got to spend billions in Iraq without considering any other firms or what they did with the money. Surely, knowing that Vice King Cheney used to run Halliburton ought to be enough of a recommendation."
ALICE: "Besides avoiding oversight is there any other reason that you want to control Congress?"
TWEEDLE DUM: "I want to make sure that the Christian Right's Family Values rule all family decisions in this country and that the rights of big business are considered first in all government decisions."
ALICE: "What kind of decisions?"
TWEEDLE DEE: "Whether big businesses should pay workers a living wage. Henry Ford had this ridiculous idea that his workers should be paid enough to buy the automobiles they were producing. Now we're structuring the work force so that employees will only be able to afford to shop at the stores paying them low wages and purchasing most of their merchandise from China. That will keep those stores in business and raise their stock prices. We wouldn't want to stop progress by requiring businesses to pay more, provide health care for their employees or cleanup environmental damage. That would hurt the economy."
ALICE: "Are there other reasons you need to control Congress?"
TWEEDLE DUM: "We want to cut health programs for the elderly, Veteran benefits, food stamps and other programs for the poor. Republicans want to make sure that people inheriting estates worth over two million dollars don't ever have to pay taxes on the money. Only people who work for a living and can't afford to hire lawyers to figure out tax dodges should pay taxes. And we certainly want to make sure that Congress doesn't have the power to hold serious hearings about what King Bush has been doing in Iraq or how he spends the taxpayers' money. Clearly, as King, he has a divine right to spend it for the best interest of his loyal followers."