Does anyone know what the Guinness Book's record is for fluorescent orange anti-war bannering on a footbridge above eight lanes of moving traffic? What is the record number of "honks for peace" in an hour? If peace with Iraq and Iran has not been achieved by September, will the record honks we received today be broken when "Bomb, bomb Iran" crooner John McCain accepts his party's presidential nomination a couple miles down the road?
If the response of some 15,000 of St. Paul's mainstream motorists this Mother's Day was any indication, there IS a way around the power of the special interests and corporate media for those of us who can't bear to passively watch as the Bush-Cheney-McCain neo-conservative express expands the disastrous war on Iraq to Iran.
We thought we'd banner another warning since, by all accounts, the administration's plan to attack Iran does not involve getting congressional or public approval this time but hinges on stealth (certainly with assistance again of "message multipliers" in the mainstream press). Bush, after all, is still the Decider for another eight months and as such, undoubtedly believes it would be a simple matter to manufacture a "casus belli" after the fact, given the tense, confusing circumstances involved in the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The NIE made public last December, refuting the Administration's claims of imminent danger from Iran's nuclear program, has turned into nothing but a small speed bump in the road for committed neo-cons. In addition to DNI Michael McConnell's and CIA Director Michael Hayden's constant backpedaling and discrediting of their own NIE intelligence product, Bush was successfully able to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (QUDS) as a "terrorist" group. The fact that news stories are published daily about "proof" of "special groups" of Iranian QUDS helping the Iraqi "terrorists", indicates a shift in what the rationale for a strike would most likely be: from pre-empting Iran's nuclear threat to countering Iran's "terrorists".
The good news, (little as it is), is that the plan of a year ago which called for massive bombing of hundreds of sites may have morphed now to a more limited one designed to "send a message". The problem, however, is threefold with such a plan for a more limited strike on Iran: 1) the significant chance this method of sending a message won't work; 2) it could then escalate quickly and 3) it's easier to start.
Our banner brigade's warning methods are both legal and effective. Julia Ward Howe would have been proud we celebrated Mothers Day in the same true way that inspired her proclamation -- and not by waiting in line at a busy restaurant!
Psssst....let's try to do something!