This is too completely hysterical: interpretations of government 'readiness' symbols. I laughed so hard I cried.

Ah, here are photos of this morning's protest, which was over long before my arrival at work today. When I arrived at the office, it really did appear that only police were causing any disruption to the ordinary fabric of the morning commute!!

Probably because the police were the only people at that point causing disruption. But still.

Here is the Chron's version of the story.

About 70 protesters have been arrested. Most were held for minor charges but a handful allegedly resisted arrest, San Francisco police said. Among those in custody are the former president of the Pacific Stock Exchange, Warren Langley, Sister Bernie Galvan of the group Religious Witness for the Homeless, and Father Louis Vitale of St. Boniface Church.

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A useful link: San Francisco Indymedia's Anti-War Feature.

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Police state, continued: The SFPD engages in domestic spying on war protestors!

The San Francisco Police Department has been monitoring a radical Web site, using undercover officers to spy on antiwar protesters, and apparently collecting personal information about political dissidents, the Bay Guardian has learned.

A confidential police memo, part of a dossier obtained under the Sunshine Ordinance, acknowledges that at least some of the activities appear to violate the department's own rules....
Directed by Lt. Kitt Crenshaw, a group of four officers assigned to the Violent Crimes Task Force - a unit that normally handles gang killings - carried out the undercover operations. Dressed as protesters, the squad videotaped the demonstrations and marched along Market Street in the large antiwar parades as well as in the smaller, riotous "breakaway" marches....

The SF Chronicle also reports on SFPD's spying on peace marchers. Favorite quote: "Asked whether police were planning surveillance at Saturday's anti-war rally in San Francisco, Crenshaw said, "Do you think I'd tell you?" "

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And speaking of spying, Secret document details American plan to bug phones and emails of key Security Council members. [Should I change the title to not-so-secret document?]

The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York - the so-called 'Middle Six' delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the US and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for UN inspections, led by France, China and Russia....
The disclosure comes at a time when diplomats from the countries have been complaining about the outright 'hostility' of US tactics in recent days to persuade then to fall in line, including threats to economic and aid packages.

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On the lighter side, a variation of something I'd swear I read at The Onion first: from Satire Wire: ANGERED BY SNUBBING, LIBYA, CHINA SYRIA FORM AXIS OF JUST AS EVIL "Cuba, Sudan, Serbia Form Axis of Somewhat Evil; Other Nations Start Own Clubs."

It's a police state downtown!!! Traffic is being redirected off Bush, there are police cars parked all up and down my block, and our building is extending the after-hours sign in procedures to require us all to use our key cards to prove that we work here.

In addition to all the police, there's a news crew, but all I can see on the web is from KPIX's traffic advisories.

San Francisco Traffic show
(first reported at 7:42 am)
advisory in san francisco's financial district, war protestors have montgomery street blocked between pine and bush streets... bush street is closed between kearny and sansome streets... and market is blocked at first street. (updated at 8:58 am)

This is actually part of a direct action to shut down the stock exchange that had been planned for today, which I was blissfully unaware of.

S called me up and told me that 20-40 protestors sat down on Market Street blocking traffic, and that a news crew which had happily been reporting how peaceful the event was turned nearly giddy when the police van arrived. (Presumably, because the police can cure a peaceful protest??)

So for 20-40 people, there are about a DOZEN police vehicles, and officers passed me holding onto the back of their arrest van wearing RIOT GEAR. With all we office workers wondering what the deal was over a few people waving signs that say "French Kissing Not War."

Spooky.

It's a strange time, historically. Looking back on many of the big horrors of the past, I wonder how people at the time felt, suspecting that something very bad was going to happen, and yet feeling powerless to stop it.

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I've been thinking of a lecture by a bible scholar that I attended during the Gulf War. He was asked to confirm that the Bible tells people that they must go to war in support of their government. His initial response was something like, "What section would that be in, Opinions 9:13?" And then went on to quote the many sections of the bible that forbid killing.

Yet so many people of faith say it's okay for the US to kill people in Iraq, because we have to demonstrate that it's wrong for Saddam Hussein to kill people in Iraq.

The U.S. likes to kill people to show that killing people is wrong. Which seems flawed, as a technique and logic, until you factor in oil.

[The BBC said it's mostly U.S. protestants that want war, while Catholics are largely against. I've heard differing explanations for this...]

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The business news is full of talk of war. There's some indecision by the US stock markets about it. While it's been reported that the threat of war has made stocks dip lower, whenever the markets go up reporter's can't decide if it's because war has again been postponed, or whether businesses think that the war will end quickly.

The Airline industry is concerned.

"As a war would inevitably have a detrimental effect on the whole of aviation, it goes without saying that everybody in the industry wants the Iraq situation to be resolved peacefully, and as quickly as practically possible," said Rod Eddington, chief executive....

But, from the same article:

Leaked reports suggest oil multinationals are already jostling to win concessions in any post-war reconstruction of Iraq.

ExxonMobil, Unocal, BP and Shell are all reportedly involved in informal negotiations with US officials and the Iraqi exile community....

As Mr Carey points out: "There is no business upside to war. In the long-run we may benefit from increased [military] spending, but it will average out in time."

This reminds me of the NATO bombing campaign in the former Yugoslavia, which I'd read was very precise. But then I read in a construction magazine about all the lucrative contracts American companies were getting to rebuild the hospitals and schools we'd bombed.

WHAT hospitals and schools we'd bombed? Hey! Wait a minute!!

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The costs of war may be quite high. From the BBC:

Chancellor Gordon Brown has already almost doubled his provision, to £1.75bn.But economists are a lot more gloomy. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) has suggested £3.5bn is a more likely price tag.

But that's just for the actual conflict, which they are estimating will last a maximum of six weeks.
That's before the cost of getting the country back into shape.

Where are we going to get the money from?
Essentially, from nowhere. The UK Government will just add the cost to its public sector debt.
There is a chance that longer term, however, spending in other areas such as the public sector will be cut.

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The Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq and the division of contractual spoils is prematurely being made.

U.S. military and civilian officials also are plotting strategy for rebuilding a post-Saddam Hussein war-torn country. Such a strategy will take almost as much careful planning as the military campaign. It could also mean billions of dollars in work for engineering and construction firms....

...In late February, USAID also asked a select group of U.S. engineering firms to bid on a contract that could be worth $900 million to rebuild a postwar Iraq. Special procurement laws allow for the select bidding and also prohibit the government from discussing details about which firms were asked to respond.

...U.S. companies shouldn't expect a monopoly on the work. After the last Persian Gulf war, many contracts went to non-U.S. firms. "I would expect that if these contracts are related to an aid program that the U.S. is going to finance, then those contracts would go to U.S. firms," says one lobbyist.

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In the same vein Nael Al-Qattan, a 38-year-old civil engineer from Kuwait City with a masters degree in construction management,
predicts a successful war with Iraq will trigger a tremendous business and building boom in the entire Persian Gulf region. He expects prosperity to stimulate growth in the seaport of Kuwait...

But in the short run, Al-Qattan is frustrated by a lack of contacts with the American forces and their purchasers supplying the buildup. The Americans' isolation from the Kuwait business community means purchases of local materials and supplies are being put together through their contacts with an emerging group of middlemen, the small construction and maintenance contractors, painters and carpenters -- mostly foreign nationals -- who have access to the Americans because they are doing small jobs on base. They speak English and they know how to reach the wholesellers like Al-Qattan, while the Americans have yet to develop their own ties. The middlemen are turning many a fast buck the Americans could save simply by dealing direct, Al-Qattan says.

Those pesky Americans! Why aren't they preparing to spread the war loot around!

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Rumsfeld's speech about going to war without stalwart ally Britain has caused some trouble. "If this was Donald Rumsfeld trying to help Tony Blair, he had better not consider a career in the diplomatic service.
...he allowed the dissenters to claim he had finally let the cat out of the bag and shown what they had been saying all along - that the US is determined to go to war on Iraq with or without the support of any other country."

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Is war legal?

Could George W Bush and Tony Blair one day find themselves facing criminal charges for going to war against Iraq? A British academic, Professor Nicholas Grief, says this is not as far fetched as it may seem. He cites the Nuremberg charter of 1945, which established the concept of a crime against peace.

"There is a school of thought that going to war without the express authority of the Security Council would violate the UN charter," says Professor Grief.

"That could raise serious questions about the personal responsibility of President Bush and Mr Blair, and they could have a case to answer.

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"The FBI is looking into the forgery of a key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program, including the possibility that a foreign government is using a deception campaign to foster support for military action against Iraq."

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Ergin said
U.S. threats that Turkey would have no say in the future of northern Iraq if it did not allow the U.S. deployment have backfired, serving only to make Turkish officials more suspicious of U.S. intentions.

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You don't see me quoting many pro-war positions here, though I'll quote from this one: an essay by Frank Van Riper , a photography writer special to the Washington Post, who is very concerned about the fate of journalists now "embedded" with the US military in the Middle East. After making an impassioned argument FOR war (yes, I read the whole thing even though he gave that away in the opening paragraph), he then goes on to express something few on the pro-war bandwagon have:

In this current perilous endgame in the Bronx - we'd call it "chicken" - there is no comfort in the fact that the leaders on each side of the conflict, George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, profess near-messianic faith in the rightness of their cause. Hussein has long seen himself as the latter day Saladin who unites the Arab word against the western infidel. My old colleague Tom DeFrank wrote in Sunday's New York Daily News of a George Bush eerily serene as war nears, so convinced is he that he is doing God's will by smiting Saddam.

Each leader, so it seems, is willing to go it alone.

And each is wrong.

Perhaps unfairly, perhaps not, the biggest onus for this foolhardy behavior falls on the President, precisely because no one in his right mind views Saddam Hussein with anything but horror. Even the much quoted "Arab Street" - and certainly many Arab diplomats and political leaders - prefer Hussein gone, or worse.

But in fact we have managed to blow apart the coalition that once supported us - a testament, not to any perceived goodness in Saddam Hussein, but to our own political clumsiness in not being able to close the deal that would have sealed Hussein's fate.

Give the administration credit for applying the military pressure that is forcing Iraq, however slowly and reluctantly, to comply with the unanimous wishes of UN resolution 1441.

But give credit, too, to our opponents - including the damn French - for making us confront, also slowly and reluctantly, the terrible folly of acting alone.

The Judge in the Jose Padilla case is optimistic. He has required that the federal government produce some convincing evidence to keep Padilla, and has ordered that the "enemy combatant" have access to lawyers, and believes that this case is an isolated event, and does not foreshadow WWII-like detention camps.

Oh, I wish I could hope so! If only this didn't come out at the same time: Detainees not entitled to a hearing -- Guantanamo prisoners have no Constitutional rights, court rules.

The court seemed to endorse the administration's view that "Guantanamo is the legal equivalent of outer space," said Michael Posner, executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

The ruling "gives a green light to United States officials to imprison foreigners outside the rule of law," said Thomas Wilner and Kristine Huskey, lawyers for 12 of the plaintiffs, Kuwaitis held at Guantanamo for more than a year.

"We are all foreigners outside our borders," they said. "This decision endangers every United States citizen who travels abroad."

Prisoners from 43 nations, captured in Afghanistan, are being held under military custody in Guantanamo, a U.S. base leased from Cuba a century ago.

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Just say no to war!

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A double article in the NYT on the Beastie Boys' new anti-war song. They released it for free on the web.

"I think a big part of wanting to do the song was just hearing Bush make these speeches, seeing how the rest of the world was reacting to it, and feeling like Bush doesn't represent us," Mr. Yauch said. "One of the purposes is to let people in other parts of the world know that the messages he's sending out aren't necessarily the view of all Americans. And it's also to say to people in the United States who might be uncomfortable protesting that it's all right to do that. One thing that the U.S. administration has been trying to do is give the feeling that it's un-American to protest."

Later, in a second portion of the article, it is revealed that an artificial intelligence computer in Spain is analyzing songs to identify future hits, and that the big labels are beginning to seek out such feedback. Yes, a computer is judging music quality. I like this part:

Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist and musician who coined the term "virtual reality," said that the science side of the application seemed sloppy. "As for the music side of things," he continued, "I doubt pop music could get any worse, so using even a meaningless tool like this might result in some improvement."

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So, if the US starts a war on its own, should the international community have to pay to pick up the US' mess? The EU doesn't think so Sensibly, "The European Union would be more willing to spend money on postwar reconstruction and relief aid in Iraq if the legitimacy of the war was clearly authorized under a Security Council mandate." Duh. It's sad they had to say it. Also of note, comments from Chris Patten, the European Union's External Relations Commissioner:

"As a general rule, are wars not more likely to recruit terrorists than to deter them?" he said. "It is hard to build democracy at the barrel of a gun, when history suggests it is more usually the product of long internal development in a society."

"What I'm absolutely sure about," he added, "is that to invade Iraq, while failing to bring peace to the Middle East, would create exactly the sort of conditions in which terrorism would be likely to thrive."

The fun Guardian link of the moment: an an imagined debate between George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein. Sample:

Bush: First of all I would just like to welcome my evil friend to the UN, one of the great American institutions for the propulsion of freedom throughout the world.

Saddam: Thank you, Great Satan. I hope that in today's debate we may find some common ground between the Iraqi people's commitment to peace and human progress and America's desire to destroy the Middle East.

Here's an interesting, [completely humorous] money saving alternative to bombs: Operation Penny Drop. Ouch.

This came to me as a forwarded e-mail, but I found the original at this Veterans for Peace site.


****************************************
Quick Political Scholastic Aptitude Test:

This test consists of one (1) multiple-choice
question (so you better get it right!).
Look at this list of countries that the U.S. has
bombed since the end of World War II, compiled by
historian William Blum:

China 1945-46
Korea 1950-53
China 1950-53
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-60
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Peru 1965
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Grenada 1983
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991-99
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999

Question: In how many of these instances did a
democratic government, respectful of human rights,
occur as a direct result? Choose one of the
following:

(a) 0
(b) zero
(c) none
(d) not a one
(e) a whole number between -1 and +1

-------------------------------------------------------

This quiz compliments of Vietnam Veterans Against
the War.
****************************************

I haven't been posting, because I have been sleeping instead. Sleeping lavishly, for HOURS. It's GREAT!

Let's see. Random link: Bush Speaks: The Top Pro-America Anti-Bush Web Site consists of various altered photographs and captions. Some are pretty good. Some are just so-so.

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1984, the sequel: I never cite to Fox News, because it's far right wing, screaming tripe. (Note: I don't like tripe. Not just because I'm a vegetarian.) But a friend sent a link to this Fox item: Man Arrested After Refusing to Remove Anti-War Shirt in Mall. No, really. He'd even BOUGHT THE SHIRT AT THAT SAME MALL.

By this evening, the mall had been embarrassed enough to drop the trespassing charges. The mall received some assistance in making this decision.

Earlier Wednesday, about 100 anti-war demonstrators marched through the mall to protest the arrest. They told a mall manager they would stop only when charges against the shopper were dropped and when the mall outlined its policy.

``We just want to know what the policy is and why it's being randomly enforced,'' said Erin O'Brien, an organizer of the noontime rally. ``It's only the people in the recent months who have anti-war or peace T-shirts that are being asked to leave the mall.''

A mall spokeswoman did not return repeated calls for comment.

Of course.

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I'm so thrilled I received a link to the photograph of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam Hussein's hand. I'd heard that this photograph existed, and feared it would be suppressed. But no. It's featured in this fabulous National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book on US Policy toward Iraq. It discusses the great lengths the US went to in support of Iraq against Iran, including removing Iraq from a list of nations supporting terrorism, intervening to get credit for Iraq to buy more arms and US grain, and providing intelligence to use against Iran.

And as for all the US' current insistence that the use of chemical weapons is an evil that we must avenge? Well, the US didn't mind before.

When asked whether the U.S.'s conclusion that Iraq had used chemical weapons would have "any effect on U.S. recent initiatives to expand commercial relationships with Iraq across a broad range, and also a willingness to open diplomatic relations," the department's spokesperson said "No. I'm not aware of any change in our position. We're interested in being involved in a closer dialogue with Iraq"

Links to documents from the National Archive are provided. This is one of those few absolute must-read sites out there, full of great stuff. The rest of George Washington University's National Security Archive is also well worth a visit. It's highly, highly, highly informative.

A photo representative of the current paranoia in the US: child-friendly security searches. Oh dear.

I've seen a few versions of this, but like this collection of pro-peace, anti-war, witty slogans more than others.

Draft The Bush Twins

Don't Mess With Mesopotamia

War Is SO 20th Century

When Bush Comes To Shove

Brains Not Bombs

War Is A Dick Thing, Peace Is A Heart Thing

George Dubya: Weapon Of Mass Distraction

Beat The Bushes For Peace

Weapons Of Mass Destruction: Look Under The Bushes

Drop Bush, Not Bombs

Save America, Spare Iraq, Make Texas Take Him Back (my favorite)

Who Would Jesus Bomb?

Stop Mad Cowboy Disease

Make Love, Not W

Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld: Axis Of Weasel

A Village In Texas Has Lost Its Idiot

How Many Lives Per Gallon?

How Did Our Oil Get Under Their Soil?

God Does Not Bless Only America

Has Anyone Seen Our Constitution Lately?

What If God Blesses Iraq?

Born To Kill, Born To Drill

Fight Plaque, not Iraq! (and the guy was carrying a toothbrush).

Today's virtual march against war was covered in the NY Times. ("...32 groups are involved, including the National Council of Churches, the N.A.A.C.P., the Sierra Club, the National Organization for Women and MoveOn.").

Another entry for the thou shalt not kill file from the SF Chronicle:

"Nothing I understand about Jesus Christ leads me to believe that support of war and violence are necessary or tolerable actions for Christian people," said Jim Winkler of the United Methodist Church.

Winkler was among several church leaders from France, Germany, Scotland and the United States participating in a prayer service and briefing organized by the National Council of Churches.

Edward Gomez's World Views column (appearing Thursdays in the Chronicle) suggests that protestors messages thanking France got through: Le Monde was touched by signs of support in New York.

Though shalt not kill continued: the UK Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops oppose war. Oops. Poor Blair. Once again, they point out that "the moral alternative to military measures is not inaction." They demand Iraq's disarmament and cooperation, but aren't allowing the US/UK to claim moral high ground.

The country's two most senior archbishops say "inaction, passivity, appeasement or indifference" cannot be embraced and instead urge for all sides to give UN weapons inspectors more time.

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Fascinating tidbit on Iraq of the afternoon, from Democrats.com: Iran sues U.S. in World Court for Helping Saddam Kill Iranians, as reported in the German magazine der Spiegel.

A strange spectacle in court: As the USA prepares for a war against Iraq, it is being sued by Iran for its previous close relationship to Saddam Hussein. At the International Court of Justice, Teheran is accusing the United States of delivering dangerous chemicals and deadly viruses to Baghdad during the eighties.

[Der Spiegel now offers English translation of key features, for those of us who doubt our deutsch. One of the current features has the subtitle: In the highly religious United States, there has rarely been such a deep connection between national power interests and fundamentalist false piety. Christian fanatics are calling for a crusade against Islam.. It has such interesting lines about Bush's abandonment of drink for religion, such as, "The insecure drinker has become a president with whom mainstream Americans can identify, precisely because of his mediocrity, fallibility and devoutness." Thanks so much, Spiegel! Also, "religious presidents can make the world a worse place by spectacularly failing in their efforts to improve it."

For eventual addition to the list on my peace page: the Progress Unity Fund, distributing tax-deductible funds to programs promoting peace, civil rights, civil liberties, economic justice and social justice.

There's also Target Oil, attempting to point out that the US' abrupt interest in the fate of some Middle Eastern people while disregarding others, has its roots in black gold, Texas Tea.

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Diplomacy: a word you can look up in the dictionary. But perhaps this Administration doesn't have a dictionary, as suggested by implied threats to the Security Council as reported in this Washington Post article.

In meetings yesterday with senior officials in Moscow, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton told the Russian government that "we're going ahead," whether the council agrees or not, a senior administration official said. "The council's unity is at stake here."

A senior diplomat from another council member said his government had heard a similar message and was told not to anguish over whether to vote for war.

"You are not going to decide whether there is war in Iraq or not," the diplomat said U.S. officials told him. "That decision is ours, and we have already made it. It is already final. The only question now is whether the council will go along with it or not."

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Last two items before I go back to bed to nurse this cold/headache/general malaise: a Guardian UK article by Peter Arnett on how the US loved his positive Gulf War I reporting, but decided he was an evil mouthpiece of Saddam when he bothered to report when US attacks went wrong. Oh, the truth hurts.

And, on the lighter side, Terry Jones takes Bush's "attack first" mentality to his neighborhood.

Finally! A spot to post all of the news related items of the times that don't relate to food. Blogging is just so wonderfully easy to keep current. And so, onto the clippings:

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This takes a long time to load, but it's worth it: more photos of the international pro-peace demonstrations from 02/15/03. (Yahoo had a great collection, but they re-use the same link every day to update anti-war events, and now include soldiers hauling equipment, which seems a bit off topic.) The peace symbol in Antarctica (yes, Antarctica) is especially "cool." (sorry.) You might want to save this page to your hard drive, since the images of these protests are bound to disappear from the newswires under political pressure.

I like the slogans on the peace sings from India: "no guns in tiny hands - give us books."

It should not be a revolutionary thought that nations can make friends by meeting people's needs rather than using violence to manage through fear.

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Morford's essay "Bush Gives You The Finger", regarding the Administration's dis of massive international protests, is a hoot.

A touching side story: J. Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House and noted hunk of conservative sweating Muenster cheese, was actually considering legislation to ban French wine and bottled water -- for "health reasons," he said, and not because France has smartly dissed poor Shrub on the whole bogus-war thing. Isn't that cute? Hastert claimed that some French wine is clarified using cow blood. Hee. Oh Dennis. As the kids say, are you high?

Read Morford's column, Notes & Errata here.

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Get Your War On, Page 19. (Favorite strip: where it is asked whether the British got their Iraqi weapons dossier from the back of Tiger Beat.)

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You've probably seen it: the Windows-style Weapons of Mass Destruction error message. But just in case you haven't...

The false short list of choices
Recent US policy reminds me of a conversation I overheard on the bus a few years back. A mentally troubled older guy announced that someone on the bus had looked at him funny, therefore he had to kill him. As his friend tried to persuade him to let it slide, the troubled guy announced that 'if I don't kill him, I'll be a coward.'

He saw two choices: kill or be a coward.

The troubled guy's friend had to rather painfully point out that there were MANY choices. And the best one was to go about his business, which was not the same as being a coward: rather, it was a choice to act dignity appropriate to the situation.

And so we come to this: Bush disagrees with protests against his war plans (duh), and says ...such a war remains a final resort, but "the risk of doing nothing is even a worse option as far as I'm concerned." He sees two choices: bomb a nation where half the population is under the age of 15, or do nothing.

This is a false dichotomy. He has a large menu of options: diplomacy, having nations like Russia coerce Iraq into a better posture for the sake of oil revenue, allowing inspections to actually determine what the real problems are, providing political support to dissidents and allowing them to work on their own terms, bringing Hussain to the International Criminal Court (oh, wait, our government doesn't believe in an international justice system, skip that one), swaying public sympathy there by lifting sanctions and offering other economic rewards to the people if they throw off their current leadership, even technical sabotage...

But two options is all Bush is choosing to present or consider. That's not what I would call high-quality leadership.

Do you want fries with that?

Love your country - hate war
There's a great confusion among public, pro-war speakers, and I'd like to clarify things for them right now, since they're clearly not following along with their textbooks. They make the same mistake again and again. They say, inexplicably, that opposition to war is the same as opposition to the USA and is also hatred of the USA's troops.

Perhaps they've never been to church, or at least not a fun church. But there's a saying in church, "Love the sinner, hate the sin." It means that, if a person makes a mistake, they do not become the mistake - their action is separate from themselves. A friend who engaged in illicit activities took my criticisms of those activities personally, insisting that he wasn't a bad person. He may not be a bad person, but he was doing bad things. He is not the same as those things, though he is responsible for them. But they do not take him over.

So it is with the government of the US and its troops. It is possible to love one's country while dissenting from its policies. These seems extremely self-evident, but it's too complicated for some folks to grasp, so I'm spelling it out here.

Likewise, if you notice the parents of servicemen and servicewomen in the military at anti-war protests, they are not loathing their own kids - they are loathing the untenable situation their kids are being put in. They are loathing the injustice of the assignment that their kids are being given. The soldiers and their orders are, in fact, separate things.