Stop-Loss Protest Unpersuasive, Futile

By: Rob Casapulla

Posted: 3/28/08

It was interesting to read about the Students for a Democratic Society's "Funk the War" protest in The Daily Campus on Friday. Apparently the only thing that got less attention than the release of the MTV movie Stop-Loss, was the fact that a bunch of college students served the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate with stop-loss notices telling them they were not to leave their posts (go on vacation, visit family, etc.) until all U.S. troops fighting overseas have returned home. According to the report the protestors were laughed away by some of the staffs of the members of Congress while others grew angry at them but luckily Dennis Kucinich stopped to talk to give the protestors 20 minutes of encouragement for their position. In other news the homeless guy who lives outside the capital was spared another daily Kucinich lecture about the war and UFOs.

The student-run protest received "advice and support" from Code Pink and Iraq Veterans Against the War. It's almost sad to see Code Pink sinking to new lows, remember the good old days of vibrant activism when they could almost turn one or two thousand people for a protest, that could almost make a difference and could almost get the Congress to almost pass a resolution that would almost require the troops to come home sometime soon? Speaking of Code Pink - where is good old mother Sheehan? The fifth anniversary of the War in Iraq has come and gone and Sheehan didn't whore herself out to the media to call Bush a war criminal she didn't even bother to get arrested this year? What gives? It's sad to say but I almost miss the old bat. And what about the days when Code Pink members used to pretend to be on a hunger strike until the war ended. By the way, I'm still waiting for the first "hunger striker" to keel over. It's quite amazing that they can go two years now without eating and still not be dead, maybe they don't consider tofu food.

So members of Congress were served with stop-loss orders and should remain working until the troops remain home. I totally agree with the protestors, if for no other reason members of Congress should have to stay in Washington just so I can stop reading news stories about where in the United States Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are this week. They'll be in Washington and the media will actually have to report on something different for the first time in six months.

So the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War came and was marked by protests, like the one above demanding what the anti-war movement considers to be an "unjust and unnecessary war for oil" to be ended. After the fifth anniversary of the war was marked, the number of U.S. dead in Iraq reached 4,000. Each life lost was a brave sacrifice given for all of us who can remain back here at home. The sacrifices of these soldiers illustrate how the War in Iraq is progressing, despite what liberals would have us believe.

To put the Iraq war into perspective - in the 17-year span American troops were in Vietnam 58,000 soldiers were killed. If the War in Iraq continues at its current pace and we are in Iraq for another 12 years 14,000 American soldiers will have died in a 17-year war, that is less than a quarter of the troops lost in Vietnam. We lost 4,900 American soldiers in the Normandy invasion of D-Day. Each year in America approximately 7,600 people die from "non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs." For those of you not following, this means almost twice as many people die every year in the United States from aspirin or ibuprofen than have died in the five years we have been in Iraq.

I don't know how else to say this - 4,000 dead in five years in Iraq does not mean we are losing the war, however this is just about the only thing liberals have to complain about. Granted they complain about everything but they've always done that. Before the war started we were hearing about how Iraq would be worse than Vietnam, with more American soldiers killed in urban guerilla warfare, than had been lost in jungle guerilla warfare. Then as we "rushed to war" for 14 months we had to sit through the liberals' blathering about how it was unjust and unnecessary and we should have gone into North Korea. Once the war started liberals blamed U.S. troops for interrupting the lives of the kite-flying children in Iraq, at the same time they were instantly angry that a new Iraqi government had not taken control of their own country. As the Iraqis were holding elections we heard from the liberals about how democracy was incompatible with the Middle East. Now we hear complaints about how every area in Iraq doesn't have consistent electricity, when a vast majority of these areas had not enjoyed electricity for at least five years before the fall of Hussein.

Now liberals are left with military deaths and trying to rewrite the arguments for going into Iraq in the first place. They claim that the sole purpose was to find weapons of mass destruction. In his 2002 State of the Union Address President Bush laid out his reasons for going to Iraq they were that Saddam Hussein had a history of defying the United Nations sanctions and weapons inspectors, he had a history of using and pursuing biological and chemical weapons, he had killed large segments of his country's population, he operated rape rooms and torture chambers for political dissidents and he had a history of harboring al Qaeda operatives in his country. Today this has been boiled down to Bush went into Iraq for weapons of mass destruction and oil.

According to The Daily Campus the participants from UConn returned "empowered" from their spring break in Washington. One even told The Daily Campus "You don't really need a critical mass of people to get things done," meanwhile Congress went on Easter recess a week later, apparently their orders need to be re-issued.

Associate Commentary Editor Rob Casapulla is an 8th-semester political science major. His column appears on Mondays. He can be contacted at Robert.Casapulla@UConn.edu.