Several thoughts on this MSNBC story. First, we’ve come a long way toward extrication when the mainstream media are asking when, not if, we are withdrawing. Framing it in terms of public opinion is problematic, though. My most potent reaction to the news that public support for the continuing US troop presence has fallen so far was to be enraged at the powerlessness of public opinion to have an influence even though Bush’s popularity is at a record low for this point in an incumbent’s second term (Yahoo! News) . One could argue that it is the numbers in the polls that are causing the Bush dysadministration to discuss their contingency plans for withdrawal at all, but this is a megalomanic leadership cabal with contempt for what the American people want… certainly when that is in disagreement with their own aims but even when the sheeple agree. Shouldn’t the withdrawal of public support turn into a demand to put a stop to the madness now? During the Vietnam era, as public opposition rose even to a far greater pitch than anything we have seen with respect to Iraq, we still had to blockade government buildings and troop transport trains and facilitate an underground railroad to spirit conscripts and deserters away to Canada to make the war stop. What is to be done simply because the tide has turned? Our elected representatives could at best waffle on appropriating funds for the war effort, but do you think that would stop the executive branch maniacs from finding a way to continue to prosecute their autistic intentions? Our ‘representative government’ is an oxymoron, it is clear.

Apart from whether the people have a right to have a war stopped when their opinion turns against it, though, I struggle with the fact that attacking Iraq was no more justified when it was a glint in Baby Bush’s eye and more like 1% or 2% of us, not 30, 50 or 60%, were declaring that it was not in our names. The measure of this immorality is not really a matter of the weight of public opinion, ever, is it? And especially not when public opinion itself has been so debased, when the powers of propaganda are so refined and the public mentality so execrably malleable as they have become in 21st-century Amerika.

So if we can’t reasonably expect the arrogant and autistic Bush cabal to pay any attention to the polls, why bother? The simple answer — the voting public themselves should be chastened by their own shift in public opinion. As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” To put it another, oft-quoted, way — “a people get the government they deserve“.