SAN ANTONIO (U-WIRE) — It was a well-mannered suburban cocktail party, the kind where people make nice-nice and discussions usually center on the latest “Sopranos” episode or the high price of college tuition these days.
One gentleman, however — a college professor — happened to be wearing a bright yellow sticker on his shirt pocket. It read “No War With Iraq.” It wasn’t long before another gentleman sidled over to him and commented on the sticker. Not, shall we say, glowingly. Before long, the two were trading back-and-forth opinions about whether the United States should bomb Iraq (one pro, the other decidedly con) and the tension got tight. Faces got a tad red. It was like watching one of those Sunday morning news shows.
I decided to go check out the munchies in the den.
As a latter-end baby boomer, I was born too late for the cultural tumult of the ’60s — my generation got disco instead, what a rip-off — but that night I felt something vaguely familiar, even nostalgic: American citizens caring enough to get involved in public debates. Even heated ones. It was, I must admit, a bit thrilling. Could this be the ’60s all over again?
As Congress is basically rubber-stamping President Bush’s desire to attack Iraq last week, it looks like our country will be whistling bombs-over-Baghdad soon. But a Vietnamesque murkiness surrounds the issue, as reflected in a recent poll that found public support for military action has cooled slightly in the last two weeks.
Sure, Bush still has majority support for going medieval on Saddam — especially in conservative states such as Texas. But even here, not everyone is jumping on the let’s-bomb-Iraq bandwagon. And this is surely making for some interesting debates around the watercooler, the kid’s soccer game, the dinner table, the bar.
According to a waitress at Espuma, a trendy coffee shop here, nary a public fight has broken out over the espresso. “But the other day, someone did come in and put peace signs all over our bulletin board.” At the Esquire, a downtown destination for stalwart drinkers, a bartender says lively argument has erupted along the famous bar. “Usually it’s all the older veterans who say we should go to war,” he says. “The younger crowd doesn’t really give a crap.”
A friend tells me he was at a restaurant recently and one male patron who had overimbibed started loudly proclaiming his disdain for Bush’s war stance. (Perhaps it takes a buzz to get folks to speak out in these parts.) But all politics is local, as they say: Word has it the war/anti-war debate has even seeped into neighborhoods. Ann Ivone, an executive secretary at a local nonprofit group, says she has found herself in verbal skirmishes with a neighbor, an ex-Air Force man.
“This thing with Iraq started and he was all gung-ho about going to war,” she says. “And then we started to discuss it, to really take a look at what proof there is (Hussein) has really done anything. And my neighbor said, ‘Come to think of it, there is no proof. Nobody has really made a case of why we should attack.’ What we’re looking at here is a smokescreen for the economy, some deal with oil. My neighbor has totally turned around.”
Ivone says she believes it’s her right as an American to voice her dissent. (“We’re not part of a totalitarian government — yet.”) I wonder how many people feel that way?