Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Last day of protests

I will miss the protesters who greet me every Monday outside the Pentagon. I walked by them for the last time (this tour anyway) yesterday, and it made me kind of sad. I haven't seen the bald, buddist drumbeater in a while, and there were only 4 protesters there to see me off. All had their standard signs…nothing interesting.

In other news, a great embarrassment for the Air Force, and for the US: Military wildly overreacts, bans personnel from London.

I think the Daily Mail said it best:

It was business as usual in brave and resilient London yesterday - though not if you were a member of the world's most powerful military machine.

The 12,000 US airmen based in Britain have been ordered not to go anywhere near the capital on security grounds.

So much for Mr Bush's encomium yesterday when he said that the 'city that survived the Nazi blitz will not yield in the face of thugs and assassins'. And what a contrast with the defiant way the British continued to flock to New York after 9/11.

We trust the four million Americans who come to London each year are made of sterner stuff than the US Air Force.

OUCH! There are some great comments at the bottom of this story.

I see that this order has now been rescinded...Still...sigh

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you permitted to thank them for providing content for your blog?

-Nathan

max said...

Isn't that what I just did?

Anonymous said...

Do they know your blog's address?

I meant personally, face to face, possibly with a handshake.

-Nathan

max said...

Well, no, not exacty. I didn't want to catch anything from them, or risk my clearance, or anything like that. Cameras are everywhere, you know, and someday a picture of my standing by a sign that said "Bring them home now" would appear and the NYT would make a big deal of it, and it would become a topic for the evening news, and I'd get all sorts of book and movie offers...Wait! I should have! Oh well... But I did have a chance to talk with the nice ladies who stood and waved flags and said "we support our troops".

Anonymous said...

That makes sense. They probably smelled better, too.

-Nathan