Some people who are outraged by anti-Obama placards have forgotten that, only a few years ago, many people were condemning George Bush in terms as harsh or harsher.
Here is a picture I took at an antiwar rally in Washington in January 2007. The sign – “What’s good for the goose….. gandar” – refers to the recent hanging of Saddam Hussein had been hung after a kangaroo trial. (Saddam was guilty as hell of many things, but the trial process was a disgrace to the United States and to Iraq). The Bush administration was in such a sweat to use the Saddam trial to influence the US congressional midterm elections that the Iraqi government announced Hussein’s sentence – death by hanging – even before they had officially released the sentence (which was not released until after the US election).
The artist’s representation of George Bush could have been better, but so could the photograph itself. Some people may have been offended by the title I added to the photo: “Bush Swings by Congress.” (The full size version of the photograph is available at my Flickr site here).</a>
Hey….. What a good ifdea…Yeah…. Letz just spend our time on the lunatic fringe… an
forget about whatz goin on…….
Obama's first few months at the helm of d'Eempire…… Not skipper,mind you, captain…
Bush was rightfully condemned for starting a war of aggression and assorted other crimes. Obama can be rightfully condemned for continuing many of Bush's abusive and stupid policies. It's quite another thing for angry morons to be worked into hysteria over things that are completely imaginary and products of race baiting. ("Obama has a deep-seated hatred of white people.") For you to gloss over that ugly element is irresponsible.
Look at the placards in the photograph above. "Peace now." Is that offensive? Saddam Hussein was hanged by Bush for crimes against the Iraqi people. You don't get the point of the effigy figure?
There is no equivalence and it angers and disappoints me that you are appeasing irrational persecution complexes.
Which persecution complex?
The persecution complexes fed by Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck who want their warped audiences to believe that white people are under attack. Was there really a need to ask?
I don't remember people, aside from secret service and law enforcement officers, showing up at Congressional town halls and presidential appearances with guns strapped to their bodies when Bush was president. And what could have been harsher than making an equivalence between Obama and Hitler? Sure, there were some who made such an absurd exaggeration about Bush, but it wasn't such a routine, prevalent staple of antiwar protests. And there is a distinction between protesting a war and protesting a person.
Dangerous lunacy needs to be called out, refuted and condemned, not dismissed with a facile claim that "the other side does the same thing and worse." Your impulse may be to go on the defensive, but I am not trying to belittle you. I read your blogs. I respect you. I'm trying to get you to acknowledge important distinctions. Why you would try to equate the antiwar movement with delusional and racist mobs ranting about Obama wanting to kill old people and destroy the country is puzzling–especially on a site named antiwar.com. Am I simply misreading you here? I hope so.
A little comic relief can sometimes defuse the tension.
Or not….
"…White people are under attack…" Are you aware of interracial crime statistics?
Google THE COLOR OF CRIME.
There was plenty of personal invective hurled at Bush. The dems are using the race card to shut up the opposition. I was at the Washington March on 9/12. Mostly ordinary people of all colors who don't want their health care hijacked.
That said, personal attacks are just focus folks on the front men. The key is to focus on the men behind the curtain who are bank rolling these candidates. Audit the Fed, expose globalizers who lack compassion and respect for local communities and solutions. If banks are too big to fail, they are too big to exist. The crucial thing is pulling the plug on these trans-nationalist, internationalist elites. Bush worked for them; Obama works for them too -Stop kidding yourself.
Hey Bovard. Do you have any photos of people bringing guns to International Answer marches?
Didn't think so.
Open carry?
In DC?
I think Mr. Bovard has a lot of pictures of such people, the local brute squad and the stormtroopers are always packing.
Oh wait, did you mean pictures of armed peasants instead of the Imperial Guards? My bad.
You are right.
Some people may have been offended by the title I added to the photo: “Bush Swings by Congress.”
LOL! I love you Jim–when is Scott going to have you back on?
Positively! If you still support bush now and are a cathoilic please go find another GOD because the chimp god is not the correct GOD to worship.
You are going to lose everything soon
The handcuffs on the hanging Bush up there would be enough to warrant a stern lecture by Jimmy Carter for their slavery connotations, let along the lynching analogy.
Has Carter spoken out abut BDSM?
Nah. Carter doesn't want to take any flak from his base.
The handcuffs on the hanging Bush up there would be enough to warrant a stern lecture from Jimmy Carter for their slavery connotations, let alone the lynching analogy.
I don't recall that President Obama has ordered people tortured to death yet though. Nor used forged documents and domestic propaganda to start a war of aggression. Those crimes actually DO call for a death sentence. So your comparision is just stupid.
Just give Obama some time. He still has between three and seven years to out-MurderDeathKill BushCo. Af-Pak will help him in the mass-murder department, and we have to remember that Obama had had a head start, and had already beaten Bush's mass-murder high score for a single strike before his first Sept. 11.
Umm, actually – Obama is using forged documents to foment a war of aggression against Iran right now. That's the source of all the scare reports hitting the propaganda — er, I mean news outlets this week. As to torture? Surely you jest. Do you really think we'd know who is being tortured to death so long as the kidnappings and black sites still exist? He's altered the army field interrogation manual to permit torture, then he claims he goes by the book. As for crimes – last I knew it's still illegal to cover up war crimes, making Predator O-bomb-ya a criminal accessory after the fact, at the very least. And that's just US law, never mind international treaties. Overall the comparison is hardly stupid, although it is inconvenient and perhaps a bit fuzzy. Folks have been writing nasty things about whichever president my whole life, so I don't really see the shock value of it for either of the criminals under discussion here. Never have, actually. The outrage over the name calling, etc. does make me think perhaps "the lady protesteth too much," to quote a way better writer than me.
what is highly irksome about the current "anti-government" protestors is that they suddenly get up in arms over supposed death panels and Nazi-ism, yet had no reaction to the same government that tortured, lied, scrapped rights and started illegal wars under Bush. Why is health care reform – a subject that is actually being debated in Congress quite forcefully – the line in the sand that's suddenly got all these former authority worshippers declaring the government has gone too far, whereas the Patriot Act and the Iraq war, which were rubber stamped thru congress without barely a peep of protest, A-OK? In my opinion the current crop of "anti-government" activists are a hypocritical and pathetic lot indeed.
It is their "leaders", e.g. Peasant Herders like Glenn Beck. Nothing Beck does can negatively affect the stock prices of companies like News Corp and GE. Just ask Keith Olbermann and Bill O' Reilly.
Yet I'm supposed to believe that News Corp employee Glenn Beck is going to do something that could be "bad for the interests of the corporate parents", using Dick Armey's Tea Party "Movement"?
that's a good point – the orchestrators of the current crop of "anti-government" protestors are basically on the corporate media's payroll. What's funny is the way people like Beck are worshipped like rock stars by their gullible followers, who express brand loyalty to Fox News and haze CNN. It's like the line between politics and entertainment has become completely blurred.
The “teabaggers”, “birthers”, and Sarah Palin fans are essentially those people who believe that four some thousand years ago, the Earth was totally submerged and one family built a big boat and gathered up millions of species of animals and insects and billetted them on-board.. This same incestuous family repopulated the Earth to please a God up in the Sky. Now, why in Hell would you expect rational political ideas from this group? America has become one big institution for the insane.