You still p---ed off at Johnson? He's dead you know. Nixon too. Sure we can argue about the value of sticking folks face in death and destruction and making it somehow productive.

I think it would be counterproductive and I'll tell you why too.

There are two types of responses to blood and guts. The first response cringes and avoids and abhors violence for the rest of their life - the other becomes numb to violence - can kill and not be horrified at all about death, in fact may become callous about it.

First person shooter games are blamed for feeding the second mentality, even though their blood and guts are not real - they conveniently leave out the stench and the bloated bodies or the flies and carrion feeders - they still condition a numbness to massive violence.

In the first part of this century news magazines were big on violence during the depression. Photos of dead bodies still bleeding were commonplace. The gangster was a celebrity. Death was a fact of life.

In the late 30's it changed somewhat and during the 40's with the war - the periodicals and papers didn't want to frighten the sweethearts or parents of Johnny who went off to war.

As the fifties rolled on and with the Korean war, a few more images were shown but basically it was cleaned up for public consumption.

Only with the Vietnam conflict did the images flow freely, this may have helped to create a larger antiwar movement, but it also helped to let the North Vietnamese win and has resulted in 28+ years of pure cr-- for the Vietnamese who live in Vietnam.

Here are two images from my collection:

Here we see the antiwar protesters of September 1939. Note the placard: "Revolution Organizations fight against IMPERIALIST war!" Nothing is new under the sun, except perhaps today's protesters look even more antisocial than did the ones of 1939.

This one shows that Tom and I certainly aren't the first to realize that it was American Communists who always seem to organize and sponsor antiwar movements in America. This Cartoon first appeared in July of 1939, before our entry into the war. You wont find these images in high circulation - many liberal press organizations have long since destroyed them - or conveniently "lost" them. The media also acknowledges the German-American Bund as supporting Hitler, yet really it was the communists who were far more active in protests and antiwar demonstrations.

We enlightened and educated conservatives are simply following the rational judgement and honest assessment already figured out by others like us over 64 years ago.

Should we stop the war and leave a dictator on the loose, terrorizing the people of Iraq and with belligerency towards the US?

Violence begets violence - Saddam's violence now has met its match in US violence. Sooner or later his karmic debt would be start to be paid.

Civilian casualties are awful and no one wants them to occur.

Let's keep some perspective:

In 1942-45 we killed millions of civilians so that France could be free and a dictator would be gone. You are already ranting after a few hundred casualties - probably the amount Saddam's goons kill in a month throughout Iraq anyway.

In the case of Vietnam, the commies at home used the kids to thwart our efforts to secure freedom for the South Vietnamese.

It's easy to take a bunch of kids and hippies and get them to protest. Many of them were ready to burn down buildings, rioting and were being violent so that we could have "peace."

I have some choice interviews with California students (aged 15-19) in 1969 who were full fledged supporters of anarchy and blowing up government buildings.

These are the lovers of "peace!"

Today, you rage at Marcia (For shame!!), talk about "forcing" people to see blood and guts. Chri--, you're just like these violent "peace-advocates" - who are all walking, breathing examples of hypocrisy!

If non-violence is the answer how does violence to the supporters of war help?

You have fallen into the Bolshevik mode:

"That filthy oppressing Tsar, I will take him and rub his privileged face in the dirt so he sees how we have suffered! Then I will kill him and his whole family so that peace will reign."

Sure Lenin, good idea, and while you're at it pave the way for millions of deaths that would not have occured even under the bloodiest days of the Tsar.

I know you don't see it. There's not much I can do about that though. In a nutshell - the mirror principle applies to all of us. I watch people lashing out at the conservatives with violent vituperation and animosity - and why?

For peace "doncha know!"

Arf

LOL! Grabbing a bottle of Windex so that we can polish those mirrors.

SDAI-Tech1