The tide is high, body counts keep rising, coming to the box office soon, Rome is on fire. Three years after 9/11 and the triggering of the new imperial wars, on the home-front, at long last, the anti-war movement (rallying around Cindy Sheehan) has reached the barbed-wire fences of the Emperor's Texas ranch. Captive to his self-declared steadfastness, the commander-in-chief has just announced that 1500 more foot soldiers (however no Harvard freshmen) will be dispatched to the oil-rich desert sands of Iraq. Too few to fill the depleted ranks, as US casualties are already pushing on 2000 dead. Unofficially, perhaps over 3000 have died but they aren't being counted as they might have died of sustained injuries while being treated in the US military hospital in Landstuhl Germany or back in a homeland hospital. US and Iraqi bodies alike are counted at www.iraqbodycount.com, but has anyone yet tried to count how many children have lost their parents in this war?
Since the average US American refuses to listen to any critiques' voice on alternative radio or to read non-mainstreamed online content, the "polls" are beginning to fill the void. And the polls do not look good for the top brass of the new empire. Gallup has asked for some public opinion (informed or not) on "Iraq versus Vietnam". At least 50% of Americans are said to now believe that the war is a mistake. Three quarters of the polled public were in support of US war both at the beginning of the one in Vietnam and now in Iraq. The drop in support this time around, has been much faster, 25% fewer supporters of the Iraq war after one and a half years, compared to three and a half years it took in the case of Vietnam (
http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/login...
Could there actually be a genuine change of heart happening in the USA? Hard to say, but maybe another poll does give rise to a mild bit of optimism. When polled by the PIPA program (1) on issues of world poverty shortly before the Scotland G8 summit in June, a large majority of Americans favored the US committing to 0.7% of its GDP to development aid (65%) and to support the United Nations Millennium development goals (MDGs)(71%). This is a surprising result at a time when the Bush administration is aggressively trying to exclude itself from commitments made by the US to address global poverty. Just a few weeks after UN-hater John Bolton was installed as the new US ambassador to the UN (through a political manoeuvre that allowed Bush to bypass Congress confirmation), the US administration is preparing to undermine UN reform. Renegotiations of a draft agreement are being sought, including "striking of any mention of the MDGs." This comes just three weeks ahead of the September UN summit in New York. International irritation with such unilateralism is widespread and in combination with the above noted national public opinion trends in the US, political dissent to the US neo-imperial agenda may be approaching a new rallying point.
