War fan supporters of Bush motor around with yellow or red/white/blue 'Support The Troops' ribbons stuck to bumpers, trunks and back windows of sedans and SUVs.
Peace advocates do the same.
But making a distinction in that the way to 'Support' our guys and gals is to 'Bring Them Home'. The message that the deaths that matter are those of Americans, is almost universal.
Much of the American Left and miniscule slivers of the American Right have opposed the Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation since their inceptions. Hundreds (thousands?) of demonstrations have been held throughout the U.S., a collective "no" to the militaristic policies of those wielding power in current administrations, federal and state, regarding the Iraq policy.
There have and continue to be myriad arguments around what should happen surrounding Iraq, troop numbers, gov't sovereignty. However, one aspect of this equation isn't nearly as complex.
Irregardless of political affectation, if one can agree that Iraq was a sovereign country and that the US invasion of such a country contradicted US, international and moral law, logic necessitates support of the Iraqi domestic opposition. US troop levels. Religious factions. Sectarian squabbles. Bah. Finally, an aspect of this that is straightforward.
If the invasion and thus the occupation, are wrong, implicit in this is support for the Iraqi resistance to US occupation. How is this not as obvious as opposition to a ban on abortion meaning support for abortion on demand, support for a woman's right to choose? Opposition to NSA domestic spying is support of a right to some degree of privacy.
Finally something easy.
Except it's not so easy. If one searches among the ranks of the American peace movement, locating those in support of the Iraqi resistance is a difficult task. The propaganda system of the US is arguably the most effective apparatus of persuasion in human history. How relatively seldom it is written about or mentioned inside the US is testament to this. With the exception of serious pacifists, the degree to which US opposition to the war in Iraq refuses to support resistance fighters in Iraq is the degree to which US propaganda has been effective in its aim of enabling and maintaining the current order in Iraq. The fact that those in opposition to the Iraq occupation refer to themselves as the peace movement, when viewed through the lens of emperium, is a win. It makes it very difficult for those bound by that moniker to assume the natural position of support for the Iraqi resistance.
As a thought experiment, try to imagine those who opposie the Iraq war and refuse to openly support the Iraqi resistance-imagine them refusing to support Americans fighting an unprovoked Chinese bombing campaign and invasion of the US.
Ridiculous? Yes. Just like the current scenario of Iraq war opposition within the US that refuses to support the resistance inside Iraq.
Non-combatants, children, always die in war. No matter what cause or what gov't one supports or opposes, war sucks. So people will always resist. The distance between what we, the US opposition to this war, are doing and what we would most certainly do if our country were under attack, is filled by a sea of crocodile tears condemning the US war on the Iraqi people and condemning the Iraqi people who violently resist the war of occupation being waged on them, risking and often losing their lives in a very literal fight for their freedom.
The US Democratic Party is not within shouting distance of understanding (or perhaps admitting) how morally bankrupt is is as a self-identifying opposition ;party of the people' refusing to oppose a war of imperial occupation waged on other people. Unfortunately us Americans farther to the left of the Democratic Party find ourselves in a similiarly morally indefensible position denying the validity of Iraqis to fight back against invaders robbing them of land, liberty and life.
If we oppose the war we should, first and foremost, stand in solidarity with those opposing the war in the country being destroyed. What could be more obvious?
AOL Pays Google For Better AOL Search Results
In a move perhaps signalling the beginning of the end, AOL hands over a 5% stake in the company to Google in exchange for a billion in cash and 300 million in advertising credit.
The New York Times reports.
The beginning of the end of what? Google now owns 5% of AOL. With as much cash as Google has to throw around, this foot in the door for the mergers and acquisitions arm of Google will not be static. This is the beginning of a huge and very important merger/acquistion/takeover.
And that, of course is the least discussed component of the 'deal' by the New York Times report. Given much more attention is the issue of Google, always known for its search engine's unobtrusive ads, allowing pictures to accompany the text ads. Any of you that ever venture over to places like moviefone.com or any other portals made spectacular by ad graphics that overwhelm the screen, know where this addition of graphics will eventually lead. And that is about the only positive thing in this deal because the addition of obtrusive graphics will make offend users leading them to other search engines with less ads. Not to mention no spying. So while crazy ads suck, giving us a reason to opt out from Google, in the long term, might work out for the better.
Another point in this 'deal' that's not as innocuous as ad graphics, that the Times does its readers a disservice by glossing over is that AOL seems to be buying better search results. Since the advent of the search engine, one of the fears has been that it would become a tool for controlling the internet by way of steering users in certain directions and by default, away from other sites.
The Times writes:
Is Google gonna throw a sweetheart deal like that my way? The potential ideological, censorship and political implications of this type of business relationship are obvious. And the Times, as usual, does the reader a disservice by doing all it can in its reporting to make the obvious obscure.
The New York Times reports.
The beginning of the end of what? Google now owns 5% of AOL. With as much cash as Google has to throw around, this foot in the door for the mergers and acquisitions arm of Google will not be static. This is the beginning of a huge and very important merger/acquistion/takeover.
And that, of course is the least discussed component of the 'deal' by the New York Times report. Given much more attention is the issue of Google, always known for its search engine's unobtrusive ads, allowing pictures to accompany the text ads. Any of you that ever venture over to places like moviefone.com or any other portals made spectacular by ad graphics that overwhelm the screen, know where this addition of graphics will eventually lead. And that is about the only positive thing in this deal because the addition of obtrusive graphics will make offend users leading them to other search engines with less ads. Not to mention no spying. So while crazy ads suck, giving us a reason to opt out from Google, in the long term, might work out for the better.
Another point in this 'deal' that's not as innocuous as ad graphics, that the Times does its readers a disservice by glossing over is that AOL seems to be buying better search results. Since the advent of the search engine, one of the fears has been that it would become a tool for controlling the internet by way of steering users in certain directions and by default, away from other sites.
The Times writes:
Google also agreed to provide technical assistance to AOL to help explain how to make its pages easier for Google to find and include in its index of the web.This pay-for-play kind of relationship in a word is scary. Google is going to explain to AOL how to make AOL pages show up at the top of the list more often. If AOL can make a deal with Google for this, others can(have?) too. AOL can afford to. Maybe the DNC or RNC or their funders, maybe they can afford to pay for play.
Is Google gonna throw a sweetheart deal like that my way? The potential ideological, censorship and political implications of this type of business relationship are obvious. And the Times, as usual, does the reader a disservice by doing all it can in its reporting to make the obvious obscure.