Wednesday, September 14, 2005

 

Freedom Walk not so full of freedoms

Pictures in this Monday's Post (Washington that is) showed 'thousands' participating in the "Freedom Walk" Sunday.

This was a Pentagon sponsored event. You had to preregister over 24 hours in advance and make it on the list before you were able to enter the march. Press were restricted to only certain areas and could not enter the march path. From the Post - "What's unusual for an event on the Mall is the combination of fences, required preregistration and the threat of arrest ."(for anyone acting out of the ordinary)

Everyone who marched got a free T-shirt. Picture it, one big Pentagon photo op with Donald Rumsfeld walking through as the grand poobah.

Doesn't sound to much like a Freedom Walk to me. The staged PR event was essentially a Party Parade. I've seen plenty in Communist China and Vietnam and other places run by authoritarian regimes. All that was missing were the uniformed school children chanting the name of their Good Leader.

While I took my daughter to the Sackler Museum to view relics of Yemeni art, when Yemen was at the height of its power (around 400 CE) , I saw a few people with the 'Freedom Walk' shirts on. No one seemed particularly inspired, as they do at traditional, true-marches, on Washington. And, most seemed to be military. I inferred, as it is with Party Parades in other countries, the people who attended were requested to.

PS - Does the Pentagon really have the time to stage a "Freedom Walk"? Shouldn't Donald Rumsfeld be too busy on the Gulfs to attend this? Aren't we in a war? And those T-shirts, why not spend thos $'s on Tank Armor for the troops being maimed and dying, or for buying needed clothes for people displaced by the storms.

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