Republican lemmings

White House press secretary Tony Snow was in College Station, Texas tonight giving a lecture at the Annenberg Presidential Conference Center adjacent to the Texas A&M University, and I was among the 50 or so anti-war protesters there who greeted the gullibles folks who came to hear his speech.

In fact, I was the first protester to show up and from the first moment I held up my "Stop Bush's Endless War" sign I started getting disapproving glances from many of those arriving for the Snow Job. "Go 'W,'" said the first person to see me. "Go down 'W,' said I in response. "Go home," said another. "I am home," I responded.


My homemade sign

And so it went, rolled eyes, raised eyebrows, frowns, scowls, tsk, tsking, and much heading shaking.

One guy walking in by himself heard our chanting, looked our way, read our anti-war signs and immediately put a huge scowl on his face and continued on his path without saying anything. "Hey, mister," said the young woman standing next to me, "you dropped something." No response from the frowner, noteven a look back to see if he dropped his car keys or something. "You dropped your smile back there," finished the woman. That drew chuckles from our crowd, but only more head shaking from the elder, white, well-groomed, well-dressed Republican lemmings right behind him going in to hear the "Flautist at the Gates of Dusk." "Some of you folks are too old to be on that side," said one of the elder, white, well-groomed, well-dressed Republican lemmings as he and his companion came up to the barrier separating us patriotic folks who believe the best way to Support Our Troops is to get them the hell out of Iraq from the send-in-more-troops crowd who disapprove of those who actually use their First Amendment rights to protest an unjust war. "Well," said one of the older protesters off to my left, "given that wisdom usually accompanies aging, we were thinking the same about you folks." The elder lemming, who appeared to me to have had downed a couple of bourbons and water earlier in the evening, struggled a bit to respond intelligently, but all he could come up with was, "Do y'all have wisdom?" "Enough to know that sending more of our families into the paths of bullets and bombs in Iraq isn't the answer," I said. And before he could respond I said: "Now let me ask you a question. As President Eisenhower once said, 'When comes the end?' When is this war going to end?" "When it's over," yelled his male companion angrily. Ah, the wisdom of Republican lemmings.

For me, and I think many of the half-dozen or so of us who arrived early, the high-point of our anti-war demonstration was when a group of about 40 A&M students joined our ranks, albeit a bit too tardy to be noted by the main crowd of Republican lemmings. They had assembled on the A&M Campus and marched, chanting and singing all the way, about a mile or so to join us. As you might imagine, those of us old enough to have been there had emotional flashbacks to the Vietnam War protests as we watched the A&M students marching up to our location, holding anti-war signs, beating drums and bongos, and chanting, "Hey hey, ho ho! This Iraq War has got to go!" (I forgot to bring my camera with me to the protest, so I don't have any pictures to share here, but if I can get a copy or two from one of the other demonstrators that took some I will post them.)

This was the largest turnout of anti-war A&M students that I've seen at any of our local Iraq War protests and I damn sure hope that their public showing will serve to draw out yet more students at the next anti-war demonstration.