I'm with Joe on this. The goal is to persuade those not committed to 
vote for antiwar candidates. If the people on our side are talking 
about how offended we are one can imagine how those who still need to 
be persuaded would talk. Actually, one doesn't have to imagine--we've 
been here before. The weather underground, if it had any impact last 
time around, was probably to make it harder for the uncommitted to do 
what was needed. They didn't make those folks aware of the dying, 
they made them aware of their acting out.Theatrics has to be geared 
to the audience.

But hopefully this is just a thought born of anger, not a strategy 
that anyone is likely to enact. Me, I think George Bush could help us 
all if he announced he's converted to Islam and appealed to al Sadr 
et al as brothers in the faith.

Mark

At 07:35 PM 7/29/2007, you wrote:
>I don't think any suggestion is "dumb" that gets people talking, and me
>thinking more, too.
>This regime does not want to acknowledge the dead or wounded of this war.
>The belated news of the travesty of Walter Reed speaks to the latter. The
>regime certainly does not want to acknowledge dead or wounded Iraqis.
>
>The temporary conflation in awareness of the Iraqi dead with those of the
>"Coalition" forces is not without consciousness of an ethical sort. I do not
>propose it lightly.  A valorization of one set of dead over the other is at
>the root of much misery and historical repetition of one disaster after
>another. Drawing attention to both, and not one at the expense of either, is
>at core of this "proposal".
>
>Stephen
>http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > If memory serves, the right wing and a lot of other people protested
> > the war memorial not because of the names but because it lacked the
> > traditional statuary--the hard-right types thought its understatement
> > was an expression of shame, and the rest that a sort of decorum had
> > been violated, although the names have been enormously successful as
> > a sight for the expression of personal and generational griefs.
> > Myself, I think we should be ashamed that anyone dies in any war, no
> > matter how just. The resistance to adding statuary was largely on
> > aesthetic grounds, and the solution, to have the statuary somewhat
> > apart, seems to have worked for most.
> >
> > In every small town square in the US and Europe--I can't speak for
> > the rest of the world--the names of the dead of this or that war are
> > inscribed on monuments, whether the town was on the winning or losing
> > side. All over Britain the walls of churches are lined with the names
> > of those who died for the Empire, that evil sham. Who's trying to
> > keep the names from anyone?
> >
> > The problem, I think, is that governments and political activists of
> > right or left tend to treat those names as abstractions, just as they
> > tend to treat the living as abstractions, so many eggs that may need
> > to be broken to make an omelette. Neither the dead nor those who
> > loved them ought to be abstractions.
> >
> > I know you well enough to know that you're not on the side of that
> > distancing. You made a dumb, offensive suggestion. We all do that,
> > especially under the kind of stress we're all under. Let it drop.
> >
> > Once the juggernaut starts it's hard to derail it. The American war
> > in Vietnam began in 1950, when we began supplying the French as our
> > surrogate. By the end of thge French phase we were paying 80% of the
> > bill. Resistance in the US began, if memory serves, in 1966. The US
> > withdrew its forces in 1973 and most of its money in 1975. Why did it
> > take so long? I hate to think that all of my facing nightsticks and
> > tear gas had no effect on the war, but US forces were on the ground
> > for five years after Lyndon Johnson threw in the towel. The present
> > war would stop today if it were a matter of the people's will. So
> > I'll keep on protesting, but I have limited faith in the efficacy of
> > my presence as theater, no matter how offensive I were to make
> > myself. What pressure we can exert, and it's what will get us out of
> > Iraq, is at the ballot box. We're only delaying the unrestrained
> > bloodbath that will almost certainly ensue--removing the apex from a
> > pyramidal power structure without a replacement on hand is usually
> > disastrous, no matter how vicious the apex is. But it's not going to
> > be fun to watch the results of what our leaders have wrought in our name.
> >
> > Mark
> > At 05:55 PM 7/29/2007, you wrote:
> >> As you rightfully point out, Ken, those who are dead by State 
> means (mainly
> >> war), they are constantly with us. The dead person is not a sole, private
> >> family matter. I remember well the way in which the right wing in this
> >> country protested and resisted the creation of the Vietnam 
> Memorial - which
> >> brought the names of America soldiers back into the public light 
> of day. The
> >> right did not want us - as a nation - to cope with the origins 
> and terrible
> >> consequences of that miserably conceived war.
> >>
> >> Such will also be true of the dead in Iraq. (Pity the well paid
> >> mercenary/contractor/ soldiers who don't get no acknowledgement).
> >>
> >> It is an interesting query to wonder if the dead are ever completely
> >> released from their public contract into a purely family matter. 
> Say whether
> >> German, Israeli, Cambodian, American, Iraqui, Palestinian - I am sure most
> >> of know the 20th Century list of offenders and offended.
> >> Greek plays wrestled with this often enough.
> >>
> >>
> >> I am not sorry, Ken, if my proposal blew it all back up in your 
> face, or if
> >> it gets in the way of removing yourself from 'outrage fatigue.' Such as it
> >> is for those of us who might want to pretend we are not 
> implicated in all of
> >> this, and somehow can gratuitously disengage from this or any other
> >> disaster at will.
> >>
> >> No matter how silent, inevitably, we remain implicated
> >>
> >> Stephen V
> >> http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> Stephen Vincent wrote:
> >>>> Dear Ken and Laura:
> >>>>
> >>>> It's curious, Ken, that the first image your mind is a 
> 'Swastika'! It does
> >>>> not surprise me, or I find it 'predictable", as I suggested,
> >> that you would
> >>>> confuse or equate an act of compassionate acknowledge for the Iraqi dead
> >>>> with Nazi behavior on my part. I would go a little deeper into your
> >>>> 'analytical well' before making such a knee-jerk, offensive assumption.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> Fine.  Temporary or permanent, what is the qualitative difference
> >>> between Krylon and envelopes.  Both acts are incredibly disrespectful.
> >>> Next step: I would never have gone to Bitburg the way that
> >>> jellybean-fressing moron in the White House did back in the 1980s.  I
> >>> would not treat their resting places as sacred ground in the sense I
> >>> would the unmarked graves of Dachau or Buchenwald.  But neither would I
> >>> use those graves to make some political point.
> >>>> The war is the real outrage - and so many of us - among the dead and the
> >>>> living - have been silenced. How to make art and poems that move
> >> beyond the
> >>>> silence is the issue.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> Yes, it is an outrage, but to be perfectly frank, I am
> >>> outrage-fatigued.  If you have any left, fine.  I don't.
> >>>
> >>> k
> >>>
> >>> --------------------
> >>> Ken Wolman                rainermaria.typepad.com
> >>>
> >>> There's a lot of wisdom here among the employees,
> >>> Some of us have street smarts and some have Ph.Ds.
> >>> We're all bored and tired but we've all learned ways to cope
> >>> Some of us drink after work, the rest of us smoke dope.
> >>>     --Austin Lounge Lizards, "Industrial Strength Tranquilizers"