This response is not political. It's not meant to be.
But I think this tea party stuff is meant to be political - which is why I brought up #3. Someone who's been to a war protest and today's tea party could, IMO, be consistently concerned about their tax dollars and govt. spending. My purely unscientific guess is that you will not find the same people at these tea parties as at the war protests.
From a purely fiscal POV, a lot of people saw Afghanistan and Iraq as an opportunity to profit the nation a la WWII. While I wouldn't necessarily expect anyone under the age of maybe 70 to understand why WWII helped better the U.S. economy, I do expect the 540+ elected people - not to mention their highly paid and educated advisors - running our country to KNOW it was for two major reasons which were not present in 2001 or 2003:
1. American manufacturers and farmers profited off of supplying other nations with clothing, machines, food, and weapons before 1941 - when we were not yet involved and throwing money at the war - and then from selling to their own government between 1941-45 for the same purposes. We came in toward the end (and got a major boon from Hitler being deterred by that good ol' Siberian winter) to do cleanup, which doesn't cost nearly as much as starting a war.
2. The Marshall Plan. People yelled then about all the credit we were "giving" overseas nations for reconstruction - until they realized the stipulation was that those countries had to spend that money with American suppliers. (I sort of see the current tax reduction and stimulus plan in that light; time will tell if I'm massively wrong. But at least it's not going into Cheney's, Bush's, and Rumsfeld's pockets through private contracting.)
Both of these were predicated on America having the capability to meet manufacturing needs. We had plants, tools, and personnel in 1935; now we just have an excess of potential personnel and defunct plants. My point is that THIS is the lie a lot of war supporters were resting upon, and why they've become so disillusioned and puzzled in the past three years by our going deeper into the hole and getting nothing for it.
(As for the moral aspect of the wars? At least in Iraq, our actions were based on lies. I'd love to be noble and stick around and help finish rebuilding what we tore apart, but unless someone can come up with a way to magically make all our manufacturing plants jump back into production, I don't see how we could possibly avoid sinking even more money into the effort with no return. And we have so many problems here at home we need to fix - we cannot break our own economy to fix somebody else's. (It's the same principle as fastening on your own oxygen mask in a plane that's lost pressure, before you help the child next to you do the same thing - if you're passed out or dead, you're not much help to them.)
So, yeah. If I thought all these people were consistent between presidents/parties in their protests, I'd look at them a lot less critically.
no subject
But I think this tea party stuff is meant to be political - which is why I brought up #3. Someone who's been to a war protest and today's tea party could, IMO, be consistently concerned about their tax dollars and govt. spending. My purely unscientific guess is that you will not find the same people at these tea parties as at the war protests.
From a purely fiscal POV, a lot of people saw Afghanistan and Iraq as an opportunity to profit the nation a la WWII. While I wouldn't necessarily expect anyone under the age of maybe 70 to understand why WWII helped better the U.S. economy, I do expect the 540+ elected people - not to mention their highly paid and educated advisors - running our country to KNOW it was for two major reasons which were not present in 2001 or 2003:
1. American manufacturers and farmers profited off of supplying other nations with clothing, machines, food, and weapons before 1941 - when we were not yet involved and throwing money at the war - and then from selling to their own government between 1941-45 for the same purposes. We came in toward the end (and got a major boon from Hitler being deterred by that good ol' Siberian winter) to do cleanup, which doesn't cost nearly as much as starting a war.
2. The Marshall Plan. People yelled then about all the credit we were "giving" overseas nations for reconstruction - until they realized the stipulation was that those countries had to spend that money with American suppliers. (I sort of see the current tax reduction and stimulus plan in that light; time will tell if I'm massively wrong. But at least it's not going into Cheney's, Bush's, and Rumsfeld's pockets through private contracting.)
Both of these were predicated on America having the capability to meet manufacturing needs. We had plants, tools, and personnel in 1935; now we just have an excess of potential personnel and defunct plants. My point is that THIS is the lie a lot of war supporters were resting upon, and why they've become so disillusioned and puzzled in the past three years by our going deeper into the hole and getting nothing for it.
(As for the moral aspect of the wars? At least in Iraq, our actions were based on lies. I'd love to be noble and stick around and help finish rebuilding what we tore apart, but unless someone can come up with a way to magically make all our manufacturing plants jump back into production, I don't see how we could possibly avoid sinking even more money into the effort with no return. And we have so many problems here at home we need to fix - we cannot break our own economy to fix somebody else's. (It's the same principle as fastening on your own oxygen mask in a plane that's lost pressure, before you help the child next to you do the same thing - if you're passed out or dead, you're not much help to them.)
So, yeah. If I thought all these people were consistent between presidents/parties in their protests, I'd look at them a lot less critically.