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From the weed towns of Texas to urban Houston and Galveston, from the Rust Belt to the Bible Belt, Americans have taken to the streets to besiege.

Waving large Chinese-made American flags, effortful T-shirts near pictures of Donald Rumsfeld, and holding banners proclaiming, "Destroy Iraq, Save Civilization," they apply for that America judge the "augmentation" of military personnel in Iraq.

"How can you bid for lasting war?" I asked one of their body.

"Because if we sign out Iraq," aforesaid Thelma Lou Pitbottom of Whelping Falls, Mo., "we'll have stood fluff and the terrorists will win because we can't shelf the Iraqis, so they'll either stand for up or lint. Or possibly sit. Or peradventure they'd be lying fluff on the streets." Mercifully, I cut her off.

"Most Americans now say they were song to by the Administration, that the war was wrong, that it has been inefficiently predetermined and atrociously executed."

"That's solely the ones who have never been in Iraq. Or went to Iraq. Or knew cause who went to Iraq. The component part of us know improved."

"More than 3,000 Americans and as more as 100,000 Iraqis, most of them unsophisticated civilians, have died in this war. At smallest possible 20,000 American soldiers have been wounded, whichever lame for duration."

"So what's your point?" she asked. "Besides, we meet can't cut and run same the defeatists deprivation. There's motionless a war to win, and monetary system to be interpreted by Halliburton, Bechtel, and Exxon."

"The war profiteers have indeed gotten more affluent because of this war," I said, hoping she'd see my component.

"And that's how we hold the economic system as well brought-up as it's been. More net income means more jobs and the exactly of all clan to be able to store at Wal-Mart."

"It besides way much deaths."

"There you go beside that change piece again," she said. "At smallest 5,000 soldiers haven't yet had any possibility to win a medal?"

"Even if the medals are Purple Hearts?"

"Wounded. Dead. Helps their profession. They get promoted. Makes for finer unfortunate benefits."

"You're mindful that lonesome nearly 28 per centum of all Americans even consider in this war?"

"That makes us a minority, and we have rights!"

"A yr ago, you were in the majority, and you said the minority were un-american traitors. Said they should be colorful for high treason."

"And we were truthful then, too." She paused a moment, reflective upon what had happened in the gone yr. "Besides, we'd immobile be in the bulk if all those funky politicians who substantiated us didn't spin outgrowth and try to get re-elected. At least Thomas Jefferson is on our line-up."

"I hesitation Jefferson would have aforesaid that political war is the longest course of act in any warfare."

"Maybe it was Washington. Or Cornwallis. I get all them Founding Fathers an assortment of up. But, organism aforesaid that no one has the authority to besiege the administration. That's honest unAmerican!"

"None of our Founding Fathers aforementioned that silencing doubt was all right. That's why they gave us the First Amendment."

"Don't you of all time examine FOX News?" she demanded. "Our elysian leader, Bill O'Reilly, has asserted that in dictation for Americans to be invulnerable from camels reordering taxis in New York, we must outshout all different views and drape the Constitution. Except for the Second Amendment, of range. No one messes beside the exactly to fastener and load!"

"How perennial do you will to be on the streets?" I asked.

"Until the last enlisted person is killed on your deathbed for this rustic. That's when we'll know the war is completed."

"Don't you touch any shame?" I asked.

"All we are asking," she said, "is contribute war a chance."

When ending I saw the protestors, they were retaining safekeeping and singing "Okie from Muskogee."
-JANUARY 2007
[Walter Brasch's popular books are America's Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Government's Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights; 'Unacceptable': The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina; and Sex and the Single Beer Can: Probing the Media and American Culture.]