Rally and March

Posted March 23rd, 2003 by Sean Williams

“End The War Now”. That’s what all the signs were saying yesterday when I found myself at Manhattan Theater Source doing a reading for some moderately distant friends. MTS is half a block from Washington Square Park, and we rehearsed and did the reading during the march and tried to leave during the rally.

Oh, and anyone who is reading this because they were steered here by Dan’s pool, I apologize. All I can say about the NCAA is that I seriously thought Notre Dame was going to lose early.

Now, I think I have made it fairly clear that I was against going into Iraq. But “End The War Now”? Now? You mean, you want us to have gone in to Iraq, kill, I don’t know, a thousand Arabs, send a couple of errant bombs into Iran, and then today you want us to say, ‘Y’know, this is wrong, we’re gonna pull out and leave Saddam in power. Sorry about the bombings…’

Five days ago? Sure. Stop the war, I am with you 100%. I went to a rally, I did Lysistrata. Three weeks from now? Okay. Let’s see where we are. But “Today”? This is the worst day possible for us to stop the war.

The world changes, every day. Every day there is new information. As of today, we have launched weapons in to Iraq to try to depose Hussein, who is a crazy mother fucker willing to kill his own people. Does he have weapons of mass destruction? Maybe, probably not. Is he a latter day Hitler? Who knows. But we have already attacked them, we are already at war. So now we have to march for a quick and decisive end, we need to rally for the death of Hussein.

But we can’t stop the war now. You don’t want the war to stop now. Why don’t people think? The rally had between 2 and 3 hundred thousand people, calling Bush a baby killer, asking for Chirac to be voted president in 2004. These signs that were more clever than useful, being used at a time when millions of lives are at stake. Twenty year olds who apparently think that bras were invented by the same guy who started the war, wearing low slung Brittney Spears jeans, chanting and screaming and smoking and being generally fun and cool.

Chirac is French. He can’t run for president. Oh, you were just kidding? You were just being clever and cool? Now is not the fucking time. Now is not the goddam time for you to have fun. It is a time for sobriety.

I am leftist, I am against the war, I cried when I watched Baghdad burn. But this is a new world, and you’ve got to use your goddam head. Think, for God’s sake.