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Peeve Farm
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  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Tuesday, March 18, 2003
11:21 - Rise Up, California
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030316/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/vandenb

(top) link
NPR this morning interviewed the very well-informed and erudite leader of the effort to infiltrate Vandenberg Air Force Base and patriotically prevent the Aerospace Command data from reaching the aircraft operating in Iraq. He had all kinds of historical facts and logistical data to support the logic behind putting thousands of American soldiers' lives and the entire precarious Iraq military enterprise at grave risk and calling it "legitimate non-violent resistance".

The lieutenant at the base that NPR interviewed afterwards made it sound as though the only thing the base would do to protect itself against treason and fifth-column activities-- even while she identified them as such-- would be to use the minimum possible necessary force to protect critical military equipment.

Emboldened by this wussiness, the protesters think they're going to be able to go in there and disrupt transmissions, block personnel movements, and throw the war effort into chaos, and all the base commanders will do is send out a spokeswoman with a clipboard to try to shoo them away.

There are going to be some dead bodies right here at home before this is over.

If anybody sane is in the area of VDB once the war gets underway, I think it would be an excellent idea to gather together and form a defense of the base-- anybody with muscles and the willingness to use them should form a shoulder-to-shoulder block in order to prevent the useful idiots from getting so far in their relentless pursuit of insanity that they end up dead. Civilians can be non-violent; the base guards won't.

A big part of what we're doing in Iraq is showing the world that we're a resolved nation, dedicated to taking swift and decisive action to neutralize the evil that caused 9/11 and remains a threat today. But every time a protest group feels so unchallenged as to stage a raid on its own country's military bases, and the "silent majority" doesn't stand up to lay them flat, that statement that we're trying to make as a nation is dulled. Do we really want the impression we leave from this conflict to be "the US military versus the US people"?

Or is California really just that far gone?


UPDATE: CapLion thinks so. Although in response to his "But don't take my word for it, just spend a few days in San Francisco..." I'd have to say that I don't have to take his word for it-- I live here. :) I just bought a house here. I signed the bleedin' papers this morning.

And while I know most of the population of California is concentrated in the cities, one shouldn't discount the massive numbers of people who live in rural areas or small towns throughout the state. I grew up in one. You're as likely to find Young Republicans or Harley dudes in any of these places as hippies-- hell, I grew up behind the Redwood Curtain, and it wasn't until I moved to Pasadena and lived next to Dabney House that I first smelled marijuana.

This may be the state that saw to Jerry Garcia's ascendancy; but it's also the state that gave us Ronald Reagan.

And with 75% of the public supporting the war (a record in recent memory!), even in the face of more-strident-than-ever protests, we would do well to remember that just because the few are louder here than elsewhere, it doesn't mean that the many deserve to be flushed. There are still a lot more of us than there are of them. Even here.

I have a better idea. Shoulder-to-shoulder block, yes. Non-violent, no. Beat them into frigging pulp.

Well, yes. I have no doubt that that's what it would come to-- these are peace activists, after all. Hardly the least violent of nature's beasts. But what I mean is, non-violently is at least how the blockade ought to start. Even if just to play out everybody's scripted role.



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© Brian Tiemann