This weekend I made the time for some personal reading. I found a report that described the motivation of many leftist protestors who wanted the US to stay out of Iraq.

The situation is extremely dangerous and uncertain. The Peace Wagers, brilliant, unwearied by the heaviest responsibility that anyone else may bear, are not bought traitors, but a phenomenon brought on by the Americans' creation of plenty beyond previous dreams of wealth, and their simultaneous minute dividing of experience into numerous parts, so that one man knows on the right paw of an animal, while another spends his life studying the root of the upper left tooth--this, and the withholding of responsibility for long periods of time, act as a rot on the sources of judgment, and here we see the result... These people are no part of any plot; but the plotters rely on the unwitting help of these brave cowards, these moronic geniuses...

These words were actually taken from some old science-fiction stories written in the late sixties and early seventies by Christopher Anvil (a scholar, who like myself, sometimes preferred writing under a pseudonym). These stories have been compiled into a book, Pandora's Legions - a delightful tale of what happens when Earth is conquered by aliens and starts exporting ideologies. Pretty soon, the tale is wagging the dog as the conquerors try to handle communism, mass protests, unbridled capitalism, and all of the other delights of Pandora's Planet (Earth).

I merely substituted Americans for Earthmen when I copied a report on the motivation of protestors from the book. While Anvil was obviously being tongue-in-check, it sounds very familiar, doesn't it? Anvil never mentioned human shields, but I don't think he would be surprised.