The Unpopular Anti-War Movement In America

Those of us grey hair well recall the large anti-war demonstrations during the Vietnam War that steadily grew larger as the war grew longer. It was not uncommon for anti-war demonstration to number over 100,000 -- The ones in 1969 and 1970 in Washington, D.C. come to mind.
In marked contrast, the Global War On Terrorism seems to be drawing fewer anti-war demonstrations as the war progresses. Even at its height in 2004, the anti-war crowds were small in comparison to the Vietnam War protests and the crowd more elderly. The American college campus, a focal point of anti-war fever and base of operation for the massive anti-war demonstrations in the '60s and 70s, remains quiet and students focus on education and not on demonstration.

What is at work here? Many factors. The most important being that our Homeland was attacked on September 11, 2001. This was not the case in the Vietnam War where the reasons for USA intervention went back to the Second World War and American support for French colonialism. The public realized that South Vietnam was a place where we could walk away from without serious after shocks; whereas, after 9/11 the public realized that it would suicide to retreat from an enemy willing and able to mount attacks on the Homeland.

The best defense was a forward defense that would have to go on for years.

THE NEW YORK POST

AN UNPOPULAR ANTI-WAR

March 21, 2006 -- For all the supposed mounting public outrage over the continuing U.S. involvement in Iraq, the nationwide protests on the third anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom turned out to be more sputter than substance.
In New York, barely 1,000 people turned out Saturday to protest the war; another couple of hundred showed up on Sunday.

Frankly, there are longer lines waiting to buy tickets at the half-price booth. Even the Naked Cowboy in Times Square probably draws bigger crowds.

Around the nation, turnout wasn't much better. A few dozen showed in Baltimore, a couple of hundred in the antiwar hotbed city of San Francisco, maybe 1,000 or so in the nation's capital.
Only Chicago and Portland drew sizable crowds - and even there, the turnout was significantly smaller than in past years.

Celebrity "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan boasted to one rally that "support for this war has dwindled dramatically." But it looks more like support for America-bashers like Sheehan & Co. is what's dropping off.

Yes, Americans have concerns over the situation on Iraq. But they know better than to listen to the crowd that would condemn any and all uses of power to defend this country from terrorist attacks.

Or perhaps, as President Bush noted yesterday, Americans are coming to understand that there is much more to what is happening in Iraq than the nightly news' reports of gloom and doom.

Bush yesterday cited the Iraqi city of Tal Afar, whose mayor recently wrote to the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq to offer thanks to the 3rd Cavalry Regiment for liberating his people from the terrorist insurgents. (Except for The Post, the national news media have notably overlooked Mayor Najim Abdullah Abid Al-Jibouri's letter.)

Progress in Iraq has been slow - painfully so. U.S. leaders have made mistakes, as the president conceded in talking of "trial and error." Yet, in Tal Afar, he said, "we see the outlines of the Iraq that we and the Iraqi people have been fighting for."

That's a reality that the anti-war crowd refuses to accept.

Little wonder that even the usual crowd of America-haters and Bush-bashers don't even bother turning out anymore.