ON THE STREETS

They say tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens took to the streets today calling on the U.S. to "quit" the country. That expression was the one that Gandhi used in India during the campaign to have the British "quit" their colonization. In the end Gandhi was successful. In the end the Iraqi's will drive the U.S. out of their country. The only question that remains is how many more must die and how much more money must be wasted until the inevitable happens.

I read with interest a quote from some U.S. military brass in Iraq about the protest. He said that the protest goes to prove that the U.S. has brought democracy to Iraq. They couldn't do this four years ago he maintained. Ugh.

Today I went to Portland to offer support for a group called Maine Lawyers for Democracy as they held a news conference to call for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. The group, made up of 65 lawyers across the state, did a good job of articulating the strong legal case to support impeachment. They called on the Maine legislature to pass a resolution supporting impeachment and they requested Maine's congressmen also support impeachment in the House of Representatives.

After the news conference some of us went out on the street to gather signatures on an impeachment petition that will be presented to Maine politicians. The goal is 10,000 signatures and so far over 6,000 have been gathered. (See the web site linked in the headline above.)

While I was on the street I ran into Jon Hinck who was just elected to the Maine State House of Representatives in the last election. I had interviewed him a couple of years ago on my cable TV show. At that time he was working at the Natural Resources Council and I interviewed him about environmental issues.

Hinck defeated the only Green Party member in the Maine legislature after the Portland newspaper did an extended trashing campaign to get the Green member, John Eder, ousted.

I asked Hinck, a Democrat, to sign the petition and he refused and then we had an intense 15 minute discussion about impeachment and the occupation of Iraq. His basic position was that our "strategy" was all wrong and that we needed to back off, stay quiet, and let Bush just collapse on his own weight. He said organizing against the war and calling for impeachment was a mistake because it only gave "right-wing radio" the ammunition to organize against us.

When I asked him if he meant that the Democrats were just intending to lay back and use the anger against Bush to take the White House in 2008 he said yes. He told me "you people are nuts" to criticize the Democrats around the war and impeachment.

He told me that criticizing our local congressman Tom Allen, because he keeps voting to fund the war, was a mistake. He said that Rep. Allen is against the war. When I asked him to explain how Allen's votes to fund the war were different from our Republican senators Snowe and Collins he maintained it was different though he never gave me any solid reasoning as to how they were different.

This very emotional, but restrained, conversion between us was a real wake up call for me. It confirmed that the Democrats have absolutely no intention of ending the war. And probably most importantly, it told me that the Democrats have absolute contempt for the peace movement as we push them on this war. They think we are nuts.

They think we are nuts because they believe that we are their minions. They think we should blindly vote for them because they are the Democrats and we have no other choice. They think we are nuts because we publicly criticize their deception. They think we are nuts because they could never imagine themselves standing up in public to take a moral stand on the Iraq occupation.

For them it is a purely political equation. No heart and no morality is involved.

To me this is confirmation that the Democratic Party is a bankrupt political institution.