WHAT WOULD THE EAGLES REALLY SAY?

There is a right-wing group out there called the Gathering of Eagles. They have been put together to pursue and harass anti-war protests across the country, particularly those held in Washington DC. The logo above is from their web site. They maintain that those now opposing the occupation of Iraq are threats to order and the American way of life.

These "eagles" have been holding rallies in Washington in recent years and top level Pentagon brass come and fire them up. Lacking a strong and active citizen base of support for the Iraq war the Republicans and the military industrial complex have needed to create their own appearance of grassroots support for the war. The photo at the top, also from their web site, shows one of these war supporters holding a sign with a photo of Cindy Sheehan's son. To say they are crude is putting it mildly. They like to call peace activists "moonbats". Their goal is to taunt peace activists into arguing and ultimating fighting with them.

Not all of the "eagles" are veterans. I read a message on their web site from one of their supporters who talked about how he was thrilled to join their counter protest recently in Washington. As he stood on a bridge he said, holding a sign with the wind blowing in his face, he claimed he came to realize the suffering a soldier must go through in Iraq protecting the U.S. from the evils of the insurgency. The wind-blown warrior wanna-be was quite good at romantic embellishment of his "big moment" in time.

Some would say these "eagles" are harmless. I feel otherwise. I fear they are the first volley in the current effort to pit American against American as the corporate globalists move us into this cycle of endless war. The goal of the militarists is to make peace activists afraid to assemble and march in the streets. Maybe even more importantly, the militarists want to create enough tension and fear that the general public might too become afraid to join the protest movement. The chilling of a growing movement is their hope.

One of the saddest things is to see how the "patriotic eagles" treat anti-war veterans like those that belong to organizations like Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans against the War. Even these vets, who have served and know the truth about war, are vilified by the "eagles" as dupes or terrorist sympathizers.

You know that the military industrial complex is desperate when they have to create groups like the "eagles" to defend a war and an occupation that is now opposed by over 70% of the public. But there is a lot of profit at stake in this Iraq debacle - profits from weapons and major profits from the control of Iraq's oil. These multi-national corporations will stop at nothing to keep their dirty hands on these profit making schemes.

Some years ago I was invited to a different kind of Gathering of Eagles in the Black Hills of South Dakota. There Native American elders decided to invite white people of good will to come and hear their prophetic warnings about how we were killing the Mother Earth with our way of life. The white man's cars, houses, consumerism, and wars are draining the Earth of its life blood they told those of us that assembled in the sacred land of the Lakota. Go home and tell the people that we must change the way we are living or else there will be nothing left for the future generations they told us.