I like the hopefulness of Robert Koehler's conclusion to his recent essay about President Obama's response to the Syrian situation:
It’s [i.e., the unwillingness of the American public to wage war with Syria] written off as war weariness or Republican spleen toward Obama, but there’s another factor as well: an intelligently angry slice of the American public that sees through war itself and will no longer buy into the sales job that precedes it. As this constituency grows, the public imagination will begin to open to the endless possibilities for conflict resolution and transformation that exist beyond war.
Maybe. I hope so. I hope there's an increasingly vocal "intelligently angry slice of the American public" that won't buy the justifications for one war after another that our presidents and Congress keep trying to spoon-feed us. And I hope that constituency is growing, as Robert Koehler thinks.
Meanwhile, as Charles Pierce says in Esquire, it's high time that Mr. Obama and the other powerbrokers in D.C. start listening to that growing and intelligently angry slice of the American public and not to the people they're accustomed to listen to. I think I've had about enough of the Kissingers, McCains, Kerrys, and their ilk (along with their cheerleaders in the beltway media) to last me now for the rest of my life.
The graphic is from IZ Quotes.
