In case you didn’t hear, Bush compared Iraq to Vietnam today, bluntly announcing we won’t withdraw as long as he’s president. He argued that pulling out of Vietnam was a mistake. He blamed the hippies for protesting and the leaders for listening to them. So now everybody’s talking about Bush comparing Iraq to Vietnam. But that’s not even the worst part.
The worst part of the speech, BY FAR, is when Bush said that Osama bin Laden and the terrorists want the American people to rise up and stop the war.
From the transcript:
In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden declared that "the American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today."
snip
Zawahiri later returned to this theme, declaring that the Americans "know better than others that there is no hope in victory. The Vietnam specter is closing every outlet." Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility -- but the terrorists see it differently.
We must remember the words of the enemy. We must listen to what they say.
PRESIDENT BUSH SAYS PROTESTING IS DOING THE BIDDING OF OSAMA BIN LADEN.
HOW DARE HE!
The line betrays the White House’s strategy: the antiwar movement is a THREAT to their occupation and the only way they can blunt us is by convincing his base to associate us with the terrorists, therefore giving his allies in Congress enough local cover to continue blocking Democratic and grassroots attempts to stop the war. He wants you to draw a connection between Cindy Sheehan and Osama bin Laden. He wants you to equate activism with terrorism. He wants you to equate Democrats with traitors. He wants you to associate the antiwar movement with al Queda.
He wants you to shut up. He doesn’t want you to use your 1st Amendment. He wants you to go about your daily life, business as usual, and just wait him out. He wants a docile American people who feel powerless to stop him and are unwilling to try. He wants you to keep shopping.
He’s so afraid of us protesting and forcing Congress to force him to stop the war that he’s willing to publicly vilify millions of citizens simply because they desire peace.
Some of you will say this is nothing new, that the White House has been spewing this message for years, and it’s true. But how many times can you tolerate your president insinuating that you’re an ally of a man who killed 3,000 civilians on purpose? No, not even an ally. A PAWN.
Anyway, in the part of the speech the media is obsessing over, our dear leader has taken to comparing Iraq to Vietnam. Well if he thinks this is Vietnam, I say we make it that way.
Let’s give him massive protests on the streets.
Let’s give him a million screaming marchers on the National Mall.
Let’s give him student walkouts.
Let’s give him labor strikes.
Let’s give him boycotts.
Let’s give him sit-ins.
Let’s give him black armbands, chants, letters, LTEs, fliers, teach-ins, vigils, call-in days, protest songs, flooded inboxes and mountains of petitions. Let’s give him organizing on a scale and intensity that not even Richard Nixon had to face. Let’s give him his worst nightmare.
Let’s use the fuck out of the 1st Amendment.
crossposted at Lose the Label