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  • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    there was SOME public pushback against Iraq

    A bunch of street protests that did nothing. A Presidential campaign that was "for the war before I was against it" and still lost, because of the opposition's focus on vilifying gay marriage. Am upswell in anti-war organizing that never managed to coalesce into a full blown party system. A plunge in military recruitment that has never recovered.

    One could argue that the whole reason we're just air-mailing Ukrainians our military surplus rather than putting troops on the border is because we destroyed the appetite for foreign wars with the last two conflicts. One could argue that we were already dragging our feet into Iraq, from a popular standpoint, thanks to Korea and Vietnam.

    I mean fuck the Dixie Chicks did it.

    They did it then.

    Roger Waters did it now.

    shrug

    Now you basically HAVE to be a fucking Leninist to have even one iota of nuance about the conflict.

    No you don't. Plenty of libertarian conservatives are as disgusted with the Ukraine conflict as they were with Iraq, and for all the same reasons. Plenty of liberals have more nuanced opinions, but get straight shouted down if they try to draw any kind of parallel to the last war. Plenty of moderates tap the "Debt Clock" while frowning dourly, because Deficit Spending Bad.

    The support for the war is confined almost entirely to the NPR liberals and their need to wear their own Yellow Ribbons.

    It just doesn't matter. The policy is being written in the State Department, wholly removed from any kind of popular input.