The People Strike Back Against the Empire

About the only people left in America supporting a war against Syria are the Obama administration, its friends in the Congressional leadership, its friends in the corporate media, and an ever-dwindling number of diehard partisan Obama Personality Cultists. Oh, and rich people.

Meaning, the war will probably commence once the pretend-democracy debates are finished, and regular people can safely be ignored once again, and your feckless reps can whine that you shouldn't let the perfect peace be the enemy of the military good. And anyway, what about the dead children whom they will make sure weigh upon your consciences because you, you the selfish people of America, just sit there and care only about such petty concerns as the imminent bipartisan cutback in the federal food-stamp program (Never mind that the gassed Syrian children will stay dead, no matter how many other children they kill to demonstrate that when the USA does it, it's for a good cause.)

According to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, the poorer you are, the more likely you are to oppose the president's plan to launch missiles against a country for reasons that the White House is increasingly becoming muddled about. The children.... the red line.... core values.... international norms.... the credibility of the Temp Emp and Superpower. Here in the USA, a country where one in three people is a paycheck or an illness away from financial ruin, where one in four families is "food-insecure", where per capita income has sunk to 24th in the civilized world, where government-subsidized private health insurance will still leave many millions uncovered and underprotected and bankrupted, the vast majority are dead set against our involvement in any more military adventures. The lower the income, the greater the opposition.

Only a third of respondents reporting income of under $50,000 are open to Obama's war plans, while 43% those making over $100,000 are gung-ho. Could it be because the children of poor people are more likely to join the military for lack of any better economic prospects, thanks to criminal bipartisan neglect of the employment crisis? Could it be because the children of the rich are highly unlikely to ever be sent into battle? Probably.

In his New York Times column today, Charles Blow examines other polling which shows that the American people are fed up with both militarism and the politicians obsessed with it to the point where other pressing problems are being neglected:

Now here we are with another administration coming to Congress and to the American people, asking for approval to strike another Middle Eastern dictator over weapons of mass destruction.

But this time, the facts on the ground in America have been altered. The aftertaste from Iraq still lingers. Trust in the government to do the right thing at least most of the times has plunged to just 19 percent. Congress is divided on how we should proceed. And the international community has yet to rally in favor of intervention.

Striking Syria has given Americans a chance to exhibit and exercise the caution that they eschewed in the lead-up to the Iraq war, and they are doing just that.

The paper of record's news division has also abandoned its bellicose cheerleading at least long enough to prominently place an article on the home page that documents how the "rebels", so celebrated by the American chickenhawk class, are not above using WMDs themselves.

President Obama seems to be losing steam by the minute.

On a related note, the Washington Post is also now publishing a running tally of Congress Critters' stances on supporting an attack on Syria. So far, the "Nays" and "leaning Nays" have it. Interestingly, Senate progressive heroine Elizabeth Warren is still listed among the wafflers. (Her new Massachusetts colleague, Ed Markey, has already courageously pulled a Barack, merely voting "present" in order to get the war plans out of committee. He is apparently awaiting his own private secret briefing from the secrecy brigade, to which regular people are not invited because learning the truth would probably make our heads explode from the secret awesomeness of it all.) It looks as though Warren may already have been captured and herded into the Obama Veal Pen. We'll just have to wait and see.