Make it stop! Make it stop!

I once heard the actress Linda Blair tell the story of when she was making The Exorcist, and there was a metal bar placed across her stomach to achieve the effect of the top part of her body flopping around violently. Her line for that scene was, "Make it stop! Make it stop!" Unfortunately, in one take the bar got loose and was whacking her in the stomach. And she was yelling, "Make it stop! Make it stop!", and it took a while for the crew to recognize what was happening.

I felt kind of like that when I read the opening of this Cynthia Tucker column, which includes what must be one of the most successful pieces of manufactured political propaganda in the history of the US:

The average American understands that soldiers who fought in Vietnam were unfairly blamed for a war they did not start, for lies they did not tell, for mismanaged battle plans they could not salvage. So we're determined not to make that mistake again. This time around, most of us salute our soldiers.

Even determined peace activists, for the most part, are committed to two things -- ending American involvement in Iraq and honoring the soldiers who volunteered to serve there. In a bitterly divided country, the vast majority of us agree that rank-and-file troops should not be held accountable for the politics that led to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

The idea that antiwar protesters in the 1960s blamed soldiers in general for the war, or that the antiwar movement was generally hostile to soldiers and veterans, is bunk. But thanks to three and a half decades of Republicans claiming that was so, it's become something like accepted wisdom

And they will try to do the same thing with the Iraq War. In fact, the President himself has constantly insisted that anyone who criticizes his war policies is not "supporting the troops". In a not-too-much-later incarnation, it will become "antiwar types called all our soldiers baby-killers" and yadda, yadda.

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