WARNING! Very long, meandering rant ahead. Read at your own risk.

I actually thought about going to an anti-war protest earlier this year. Eventually I couldn't bring myself to associate myself with such extremist hippies. Shortly before the war started, I resigned myself to its inevitability, and rationalized that at least some good would come of it with the liberation of Iraq from an oppressive government. But I am very unhappy with the entire situation; especially how it was handled from the Bush administration. I don't like their reasons, their timing, their methods, their propoganda, or their diplomacy.

At the same time, I've become increasingly frustrated with the anti-war movement. They've managed to expand their hippie base with impressionable young minds who soak up their own brand of propoganda. Now the berkeleyites who were protesting our murderous war in Afganistan are joined by high school and college students who are, in my opinion, brainwashed by their liberal teachers.

Don't believe me? Rebecca, Kat's younger sister who is living with us, had to write a 3 page report on an article about how the Bush administration was spending so much money on bombs and not enough on education. Nevermind that education funding cuts have come from the state and local level. Nevermind that she pays $12 a credit hour. Nevermind that the two are not all that closely related. The military establishment was clearly conspiring against the poor community college where she attends. And Becca soaked it up, ripping off a scathing admonishment of the Bush administration. Was my mind so malleable to those who taught me in my younger years? I hope not.

Her next assignment was to write a paper on the significance of the slogans and chants of the anti-war movement and to write her own slogan. It didn't end there though. Her teacher cancelled class - the class Becca paid for with her own money - to attend anti-war protests last week. I'm thinking of demanding a refund from the school. Granted, it's only a dollar or something, but it's the point that counts. And there was even an elementary school which had an entire class-sponsored anti-war protest. If parents didn't want their kids to participate, they were "welcome to keep them home." I'm not litigious by nature, but that's a lawsuit if I ever heard of one. Passing on values is one thing, political brainwashing of 11 year olds is another.

And what's with protesting AFTER the war has started? As if Bush and Rumsfeld are sitting up in Washington saying, "Dang, all those hippies in San Francisco are still getting high and chanting inane war slogans. Maybe we should just say screw it, and stop the whole damn thing." The best part is the protesters say, "We're against the war, but for the troops." I'm sure that's very comforting to a soldier who just watched his close friend die, and just killed a man he's never met, who will never see his family again. And after all the horrors of war, he'll come home and get a resounding "It's okay, you were just following orders when you murdered all those innocent Iraqis." Warms the heart.

And of course, the anti-war protest has a great PR firm working for them (apparently they hired Mike Tyson's old PR firm). Every morning I drive under a pedestrian bridge (yes, this is the same bridge that cost 2 million dollars because they didn't want to SHARE a bridge with cars) where protesters hang big white sheets saying "No blood for Oil." Now I'm pretty cynical about the Bush administration and their shady goings-on, but I don't think any reasonable person thinks we're fighting this war over oil. No wonder they're having community college English students writing slogans for them. And of course they have a brilliant planning for rallying larger public support to their cause by lying down in traffic and keeping hundreds of thousands of people from getting home from work. Man these people need a consultant.

I've thought about stepping into the debate and overwhelming them with logic, but I'm shy after Kat's experiences with two of her close friends. Twice she has gotten into arguments with friends where it has come to the point of them saying that any war is unacceptable, no matter what. (And they're not even French). The first time Kat said, well what if we had to deal with Hitler again? The answer was that Hitler wasn't so bad.

Hitler wasn't so bad.

Hmmmm.

She didn't ask the question to her second friend.

I'm thinking it's something in Berkeley's water supply. After all, Kat is turning into a vegetarian. Pretty soon she'll start wearing paisley head scarves with tie-dye cotton shirts and laying down in traffic to bring attention to the plight of the South Alaskan Bush Frog.

Okay I'm done now.