Protesters, the 70’s are over,deal with it

Gregory Lay layg@bu.edu 617-680-0388 COM ’03

I personally have nothing against war protesters and I believe that freedom of speech and assembly are rights never to be taken for granted but i just can’t help but think that all of the demonstrations taking place in recent weeks have a similar psychological impetus. Could it be that in our desire to be a part of something, to stand for something, to speak out against something, we have overlooked what is perhaps the real motivation behind recent student protest? This is either here nor there but more importantly, i simply do not understand what all the fuss is about. It’s quite simple. Evil and inhumane man, oppressed people, 400,000 dead children via preventable malnutrition (which by the way is a direct result of the current Iraqi regime.) Solution: Remove evil man and change regime. It seems that the central argument behind anti-war protest is something about letting iraq live. Exactly. I don’t like war and I know there’s a fair chance that not many others enjoy the idea of it either but for god’s sake people, have some common sense. Saddam is a bad person, has bad intentions and will lead his people to do bad things. Meanwhile you can be assured that he will keep on using his countrymen for target practice. Basically the only reason i see for obstaining is cowardice. We are capable of neutralizing the next serious security threat to the world and of course nobody wants to be the nation to start the fight, but it simply has to be done. What kind of cowards are you, preaching isolationism. All you bleading hearts speaking out about saving the iraqi people, that’s exactly what we are doing. Iraq will be our reponsibility after this is over and i damn well assure you their lives will be better once that’s the case. You simply do not want to be involved, well I’m sorry, we have a moral responsibility to stop a man with a psychological obsession for weapons of mass destruction and Stalin, before and not after he kills anymore people. It’s stopping people like this before they build arms against us that keeps us where we are, keeps money in your pockets and allows for all the neo-hippies in the world to blaze up at anti-war protests. Look, i understand your resistance, yeah war is bad and people will die but ya know what, your asses are all being saved in the process. And answer me this, why didn’t you start the protests prior to the war. Oh wait, I have a brilliant plan, let’s pull out now, yep, let’s just yank the armed forces from Iraq and tell them we have changed our minds. ARE YOU INSANE!!! Those soldiers don’t want to be there any more than you do but they are there and they are fighting and dying so that maybe one day, you won’t have to worry about dying at breakfast. There are obviously going to be some economic motives behind the government’s intervention but that’s what happens when the world’s most powerful nation takes it upon themselves to stop Hitler. Does this not make sense becasue he hasn;t done anything yet. We remove those who upset the balnaceof peace in the world. Saddam Hussein will cause pain, lots of it, and he doesn’t deserve to live, he detracts from peaceful existence and he should be erased, well, Bushy is gonna erase him! We are far away from this war and we tend to see things in black and white. The world works in grey folks, we just try to fit it into a black and white category. If i ever finish my time machine ill be sure to go into the alternate future to see if Saddam would have done anything really atrocious and then i will hold a meeting and tell you all “I told you so!” This brings me back to my first point, Protesters: This just in, the war has already started and yes, I wish i lived in the 70’s too but unfortunately, it’s not in the cards baby.