Before you go off halfcocked to stage a protest for or against a war with Iraq, you should make sure you know who the underwriters are. The John Birch Society (an organization of which I am not a member, nor have I ever been) is a formerly prominent association of right wing Americans. [The John Birch Society was the only organization to warn of the potential dangers of Synanon in the 1960s.[a] ] The Communist Manifesto makes a simple, but threatening statement for Americans, "Communism and Capitalism can not coexist. Our aim is to work for the overthrow of Capitalism." I remember as a young teenager watching on television Nikita Krushev addressing the United Nations, banging his shoe on the table, declaring, "We shall bury you [America]!!!!" I will never forget that. Obviously, many Americans, older than I, felt threatened too. Some of those citizens formed the John Birch Society on a simple premise, "Communism and Capitalism can not co-exhist. Our aim is to work for the overthrow of Communism." The Soviet Union was so concerned about American's who took their overt statements of domination of America seriously, that they used national defense funds to smear the name of the John Birch Society. It was cheaper to spend millions undermining the JBS than billions in building armaments to stay on par with Western armies. This was in the hootenanny days of The Kingston Trio, perceiving PP&M ever so slightly. And the Communist succeeded too. Thanks to the Communist's public relations campaign our image of the John Birch Society became one of a gun-toting, redneck militia not unlike the skinheads of today.

When Carl Sagan and his group of Concerned Scientists pushed for the enslavement of the Western world by suggesting that we unitarily destroy our nuclear weapons because "somebody needs to take the first step." His point being that if we show the Soviets we mean them no harm, then the Soviets, the Red Chinese, the North Koreans, the Pakistanis, the Indians, the Iranians and the Iraqis will all, in turn, destroy their weapons of mass destruction--wanting to do the right thing. I used to get literature from Sagan and his cabal of fools all the time. They wanted me to write my congressman and they wanted money. You don't have to be an astronomer like Carl Sagan to realize that Communist front groups were stuffing those envelopes with cash left and right--pardon the pun. There was a non-governmental group trying to warn us about the dangers of such absurdity, but Communist money had been used to descredit the John Birch Society so no self-respecting man or woman would listen to those "rednecks." And so it went with "Concerned Mothers Against Nuclear War" and "Concerned Catholic Priest Against Nuclear War" who laid down before minutemen trains and trucks hauling nuclear weapons to try to impede their movements. These organizations, though founded by well intentioned American citizens, were financed, unknowingly, but also uncaringly to the do gooders, by the very people who would burn their children and enslave them.

The civil rights movement is another example from history. The movement was just and has done much to correct the social injustices done to African Americans. Yet 1960s civil rights protests, the burning of Watts, the civil unrest was much publicized on Soviet television. The American civil rights movement was underwritten, in part, from funds from the Soviets. It was in their best interest. The war was lost in Vietnam, not to the might of the North Vietnamese Army, but to a few thousand American protesters. And while Jane Fonda and her fellow Hollywood leftist may have had the financial means to help fund the protests outside the White House, not even all of Hollywood has the resources of a nation--not even a war-torn nation like North Vietnam. The Vietnam War was lost by the well-meaning Americans, supplemented in the ranks and files by Communist infiltrates, funded by Red China through North Vietnam. In an interview on Sixty Minutes tonight veteran correspondent Christianne Amanpour asked French President Jacques Chirac to respond to rumors that Iraq had contributed to his presidential campaign chest. Chirac chose to laugh the matter off.

War is a terrible thing. Innocents get killed--including American soldiers. All I am saying is that if you should protest against war, just realize that your rally may be subsidized by al Qaeda and Iraq. It's in their best interest. Just think before you leap is all that I am suggesting. This is very serious business here.

Footnotes:

a. Keeping this editorial on point with Straight, Inc., it should be noted that when Dr. Dan Casriel and Father William O'Brien setup Daytop, the world's first successful Synanon imitator, they hired a Synanon director named David Deitch to direct it. They apparently did not know that David Deitch was an admirer of Ernesto Che Guevara--Fidel Castro's right hand man. Later Casriel and O'Brien would claim that Deitch was trying to use synanons to turn Daytop into a left wing commune, and they managed to have Deitch removed.