So, you want to protest the looming war in Iraq?

Good for you! It’s a nice day outside, and you just got a new pair of cargo pants.

But this isn’t about you, it’s about the looming war in Iraq, which you’ve already decided is wrong, thus your interest in protesting. But what if you’ve never protested before? How do you know you won’t wind up in the wrong protest, and next thing you know, you’ll find yourself in jail, covered in a paper-mache mask of the sun, and spray painted with the words “Death to Denny’s”? That would blow. You actually *like* Denny’s!

Don’t worry, protesting is easy. You may have protested things and not even known it! For example, Maybe you protested the IMF and the WTO? That counts! But that was almost 2 years ago! You can barely remember what it stands for (“International Monetary Fund” and “World Wrestling Entertainment,” respectively.) If you’ve ever trashed major parts of Seattle, and gone home and felt smug about it, odds are, you were at that one.

You also may have protested against sweatshops. And that was very hard work. You should be proud of yourself. And maybe you’ve shouted back at FOX News reports from time to time when, you know, “Fair and Balanced” translated to “Ari Fleischer wrote our news copy.” Yelling at the TV isn’t protesting, by the way. It’s what’s known in the protest-industry as “creepy.” And Ari Fleischer isn’t a writer. He’s what’s known in the protest-industry as “frighteningly creepy.”

But this is the big kahuna. This is a war. And it’s a particularly protestable war, in that wars are usually fought over some kind of pretty explicit provocation, like an invasion, human rights travesties, the stamp tax, uppity peasants, or the U.S.S. Maine blowing up in Havana harbor. That by the way, was what started the Spanish-American War, with which the U.S. got lots of territory and hemispheric superiority over the European superpowers, despite the fact that the Maine blew up not by Spanish bombs, but it’s own poor construction, which surely was Spain’s fault. My guess is they got the ship builders drunk on sangria and full on tapas, so they got groggy and whammo! Thirty odd years later, engine room blast.

And that’s where the war against Iraq, Part Deux comes in. Because it, like the Spanish-American war, is one of those oh-so-rare “Wars by request.” You know, like a radio call-in show where folks ask to hear “Freebird” so many times that eventually they change the station’s format to all “Freebird” all the time, despite the fact that North Korea just restarted a prohibited “Stairway To Heaven” reactor and could start handing out 70s rock classics to any rogue pirate radio station that asked for one.

This isn’t to say there aren’t plenty of reasons for declaring war against Lynrd Skynrd. Like that “Sweet Home Alabama” movie. Peeyoo, what a dog! But back to Iraq, which, because it is a “war by request” there are just as many reasons offered for this war as there are diplomats who disagree with the all those reasons war. That’s because the Bush administration needs allies in this war, and to get allies, you have to convince them you aren’t just waging war because nothing good in on TV.

In fact, there are so many complex and evolving justifications given for this war that those in favor of it can totally overlook the reasons that contradict each other, don’t stand up to scrutiny, or are blatantly false.

But don’t worry! It is a two-way street upon which the March to War is taking place – and for every reason for war, there is an equal and opposite reason not-to-go to war, and thus protesters are also able to ignore equally contradictory or spurious rhetoric in favor of something more palatable as Susan Sarandon slogan-speak.

So get out there, newbie! And don’t worry, we got your back. In this primer you’ll find everything you need to know to stick it to the Bushman. And if it’s not here, it probably was, and you got too high off your Ashcroft-banned lamp-part water pipe to notice.

By the way, during the Spanish-American war, there was so little combat that more U.S. troops died from food poisoning than from combat. There's a lesson or metaphore in that, somewhere.

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