[scarecrowbob]

As a person who organized and participated in the ultimately useless protests against the Iraq war, I think that you're correct- we had a couple of months to watch the BushII folks lie their way into getting wide support for the war.

As far as I can tell, these current assholes don't really care what the folks in the US think about their actions, so they don't spend time making cases- they just go do whatever dumb shit they want to do. Hell, I suspect that even they don't have a firm idea of what they are doing.

[MattPalmer1086]

I don't think the protests were useless even if they didn't stop the war. It allowed the anti war opinion to solidify, particularly when there were no WMDs found (surprise).

Tony Blair is now widely reviled in the UK, and you can hardly find anyone who will admit to have supported the war.

[scarecrowbob]

Fair enough. It was certainly a learning point for me, personally. And it was probably an on-ramp into understanding imperial and neo-liberal politics that set a lot of folks of my generation into Occupy.

At the same time, I wish that protesting felt effective; the stated goals weren't achieved, and that is a fact. I've never been satisfied with being "right" about these horrors, even if I've been "right" a lot in my life.

And protesting is way more fun and less risky than the direct actions that seem to be for more effective in having measurable effects on efforts around ICE.