Thursday 16 April 2009

Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State

by Norman Solomon

When Richard Nixon became president in January 1969, I was a seventeen-year-old who wanted peace and love, social justice and marijuana, by then common agenda items for increasing numbers of Americans. The day before Nixon raised his right hand and solemnly swore, I was in the "counter-inaugural" march down Pennsylvania Avenue. ("Tomorrow the old gray buildings will smile at another parade as it marches in the other direction, with soldiers and guns and military bands, thousands already uniform and uniformed," I scribbled in a notebook.) Standing next to me under a big tent while Phil Ochs sang "when I've got something to say, sir, I'm gonna say it now," a guy my age expressed disdain: We've been saying that for a long time, he complained impatiently.

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