"The Decider" or "The Dictator" -- What's the big difference?

Lots of great protesting went on yesterday and continues today. My friend in San Diego just called to tell me that he attended an Out of Iraq rally at Horton Plaza yesterday along with some 2,000 others to hear Daniel Ellsburg speak. Later Saturday night, Ellsberg spoke on "Truth-Telling In A Time of War: A Call to Civic Courage." From the Activist San Diego page:

"Daniel Ellsberg will speak on the need for a “Pentagon Papers” of the Middle East, a new ethic of patriotic whistle blowing, a resolution to the constitutional crisis due to the president’s abuses of power, and an enlightened and effective policy to prevent nuclear proliferation and further U.S. aggression.

Background Information

Daniel Ellsberg was former official in the Defense and State Departments, he released the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971. These top-secret documents revealed that official accounts of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam were deliberate deceptions. His courageous act helped bring about the resignation of President Nixon and the end of the Vietnam War.

For the last 35 years Daniel has continued to be a leading voice of moral conscience and warning. "

Yes, we certainly could use some speaking truth to the lies that are destroying life and limb in Iraq. What do you do when the top official of the country you live in refuses to listen to the people's will? How many carriers must arrive in the Gulf region with missiles trained on Iran does it take before The Decider is carried off in a strait jacket? What does it take to get the congress and senate, our duly elected officials to understand that WE the People, want the war to end now. That's now, not later.

There are plans afoot to mass once again in Washington DC on Saturday, March 17. If that is the case, everybody who can get there ought to start making arrangements now.

Here's a portion of a stirring manifesto for the proposed March 17 march (tragically, the 4th anniversary of the Iraq War) from the New Hampshire Independent Media Center:

IN MARCH – WE MUST BE READY TO STAY IN WASHINGTON

We will be in Washington on January 27 and we will come back on March 17. And when we come back in March, this time we must be prepared to stay there in the thousands to force Congress to vote NO on more war funding. If Congress tries to rush a vote on war funding before March 17, this time we must be prepared to come to Washington in mass to make sure that the war funding is voted down.

PAY THE PEOPLES’ BILLS - NOT FOR WAR & OCCUPATION; BRING YOUR BILLS WITH YOU TO WASHINGTON

We are asking people to bring their medical, rent, heating and utility bills; student loan bills; credit card bills, and food bills that they can’t afford to pay as well as shut-off notices, mortgage foreclosures, eviction notices to the march on Washington. It must be made clear to Congress that feeding more money to the war while more and more people cannot pay for their basic living expenses is a crime. The cost of the war is not the only reason why we oppose the war. We oppose the war because it is an imperialist war for colonial conquest and plunder. Yet the cost of the war is important because it’s paid for by money stolen from providing social needs. The money that has paid for death and destruction in Iraq could have gone towards reconstruction in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

In his famous speech declaring his opposition to the Vietnam war almost 40 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “It is disgraceful that a Congress that can vote upwards of $35 billion a year for a senseless immoral war in Vietnam cannot vote a weak $2 billion dollars to carry on our all too feeble efforts to bind up the wound of our nation’s 35 million poor. This is nothing short of a Congress engaging in political guerilla warfare against the defenseless poor of our nation…”

Everybody knows it -- Bush is gunning for Iran next and will not listen to reason. He is either trapped by his own irrational brain or else is protecting the huge profits for those Big Business interests that backed and bought his presidency. Perhaps both forces are intertwined in a stranglehold of Bush's brain. Perhaps if he sees masses of citizens screaming oaths outside his White House barricades, he or his handlers might step back from the brink of outright nuclear war.

Or the elected officials might grow a spine. One of the Daily Kos diarists RenaRF has some great pictures of the giant spine paraded in front of the Capitol yesterday. Let's hope a bunch of our elected officials start growing them immediately.