By Deirdre Griswold
How relieved the war gang in Washington would be if ordinary people were to go back to discussing nothing more dangerous than "Have a nice day" and "Kind of warm, isn't it?" in their daily encounters.
Instead, a different kind of discussion, one long delayed but thus all the more necessary, is bubbling to the surface. Tentatively at first, people are asking each other, "What do you think of this war Bush is talking about?" And, perhaps to their surprise, they are finding that their friends, neighbors and co-workers harbor the same doubts they do.
They haven't heard this on television or read about it in the newspapers. As far as the corporate media are concerned, there's only one viewpoint out there among the people: unswerving loyalty to President George W. Bush. But more and more there is concrete evidence that people are thinking for themselves.
Major demonstrations planned for Oct. 6 and Oct. 26 will be one gauge of popular sentiment. But there are also the millions of people who, for all kinds of reasons, will not be attending demonstrations but are starting to weigh in with an opinion against the war.
It is starting to come out that the offices of congressional representatives and senators are being bombarded with letters, faxes, e-mails and phone calls running overwhelmingly against a war.
The title of a story filed Oct. 1 by the British news service Reuters--"Opposition to Iraq War Fragmented, United"--seemed deliberately worded to obscure this point.
The dispatch revealed that, of 5,000 letters and telephone calls about Iraq to the office of Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) in the last week of September, only about 100 supported an attack.
The office of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) received almost 35,000 letters, e-mails and telephone calls in the last two weeks of September. It reported about 99 percent were against the war.
And it's not just liberal Democrats who are reporting this new grassroots opposition to a war. Even Republican senators Jesse Helms of North Carolina, John Warner of Virginia and Charles Hagel of Nebraska say their mailbags are "running substantially against military action," reports Reuters.
The Bush hawks are trying feverishly to launch their war before this mass sentiment can gel into a formidable movement of opposition. They have little to fear from the Democratic Party, which has shown plenty of energy when it comes to seeking out rich campaign donors but appears frozen in Bush's headlights.
Meanwhile, the real opposition is gathering in the streets, at union halls, on campuses, in churches, mosques and synagogues, and in meetings and protests across the country, looking for ways to unite and maximize its effectiveness so that this war really can be stopped.
Source: Worker's World News Service
