voiceofthewhirlwind's Journal: Speculation of the Source of Dissent

The U.S. has invaded dozens of countries before, and protest was been minor (small university groups and small groups in the very largest cities) or slow to arouse (Vietnam). What's going on?

Bush is Politically Incompetent

And treasonably so? Many oppressive governments throw people in jail for saying and doing things that cause international criticism and damage their countries reputation (the WWI Sedition Act made that lawful in the U.S., temporarily), though it would be interesting (fantasy) to see this applied to a government's leader.

If an earlier president had met with this kind of resounding domestic and international opposition (perhaps Bush is insulated from it by manipulative cabinet members?), they would have backed off or pursued covert action. And they had other things to do with their presidency. Bush seems to have found the only thing he's good at is shouting his way through a speech ("Defend the Homeland! Defend Freedom at any cost!"- what does that sound like in German I wonder?) and sending off the military to do its thing.

It's an unfortunate negative feedback cycle in which successful actions are reinforced with reflexive nationalism, and there is a constant need for new actions in the same dead-end internationally militaristic and domestically repressive way

A good politician knows how to chose battles (literally, in this case), while Bush clearly does not.

Oh, there were two other possibilites:

Smart Mobs

More venues for dissent online, better communications for the politically active to organize with.

This Invasion is Obviously Just Plain Wrong To Many People

And their governments take the possibility of lost re-elections or massive government-toppling street actions seriously enough to not support Bush.

It's all of them in combination, and other things I haven't thought of.

It's still shocking how bad Bush is, both in playing and looking the role, dealing with other countries, and running the country (that economic recovering is coming real soon now, right?).

Things are so bad that people forget that source of the troubles probably can be traced back to a single powerful person who never should have been given that power. I'm not going to say any of those conspiracy theories are true, but the president of the U.S. is so powerful that I wouldn't be surprised that if a similarly utterly inept person were handed the role at any other idle point in history, all sorts of bad things just happened indirectly because of their bumbling or Murphy's Law let loose...