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Tomgram: Nick Turse on the War Intel from the Streets

[Note for Tomdispatch readers: This is the second of two Tomdispatch pieces dedicated to shame and honor in the Bush era. The first was Bush's Wall of Shame.]


Get a Clue
Who Had the Real Intel on the War
By Nick Turse

On November 2, 2005, I found myself in a familiar situation -- at a protest. This time, it was the New York version of the World Can't Wait nationwide protest on the first anniversary of George W. Bush's reelection. In some ways the scene was typical. Heavy police presence for the rally. Lots of police vans. The ubiquitous metal barricades. And that vestigial gift of the August 2004 Republican National Convention in the Big Apple: the NYPD scooter brigade -- complete with flexi-cuffs informally used to weaponize the scooters by lashing billy clubs to them.

The police had been called out in force because the kids were out in force. While I saw many of the usual suspects (including my rapidly aging self), the day belonged to throngs of high-school and college kids -- some of whom walked out of class, braving suspensions. Many were too young to vote or buy alcohol, though not to enlist in the military. (Go figure.) It was a fired up, diverse crowd that grooved to the excellent musicianship and furious lyrics of the genre-bending Brooklyn quintet, Outernational, and gave it up for speakers ranging from fiery City Councilwoman Margarita Lopez to former diplomat Ann Wright, who called on the crowd to spend Thanksgiving with her and other hearty activist souls at Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas.

Then they took to the streets. Carrying a creative mélange of signs, clad in "Resist Or Die!" t-shirts, and wearing green stickers bearing the words of their signature chant -- "Drive out the Bush Regime, The World Can't Wait!" -- they commenced a two-mile march through Manhattan to Times Square. They yelled or sang familiar call-and-response chants. "Whose streets? Our streets!" "What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!" They implored passersby to join the march -- and I even saw an elderly man do so. Many drivers in cars smiled or honked horns in support, while office workers in windows above flashed peace signs, cheered, or gave thumbs-up. Then there was the fellow, high above in dress shirt and tie, who held his own home-made sign to a window: "Get a job." He was met by the expected opprobrium and a chant just for him: "Get a clue! Get a clue!"

Finally, he mouthed back -- at least it looked that way to me -- "You, get a clue!" And I was reminded of something that is almost never mentioned anymore. I remember well the huge rallies and marches in New York, Washington, and elsewhere as the Bush administration rushed headlong into war, claiming the need to find weapons of mass destruction that were never there and strangle a threat that never existed. It should make you think about who had a clue, and who needed to get one.

In a recent column in the New York Times, Maureen Dowd called attention to a striking Los Angeles Times op-ed by retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff. He wrote that American "foreign policy had been hijacked by ‘a secretive, little-known cabal' [headed by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld] that hated dissent." At the end of her piece, Dowd suggested that President Bush ought to take back the Medal of Freedom he gave to former CIA chief George Tenet and instead award one to Wilkerson.

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

Tomdispatch.com

** Note: All of Tom Engelhardt's wonderful, eye-opening, thought-provoking, informative Dispatches and Tomgrams are re-printed on this site with the kind, explicit permission of the author.

posted by Annamarie at 11:33 PM