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War Protest in DC – No, Really…

by | 8:40 am, March 20, 2010 | 7 Comments

Hey, remember when political protests used to be about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? You know…back before President Obama was elected, and fulfilled all his campaign promises to end the wars, withdraw the troops, and undo the foreign policy tangle which – like every other problem he has faced in the past year – he inherited from the Bush administration?

Well, it looks like the usual suspects are back in action, unhappy with the Messiah’s handling of the conflicts abroad which – alas – continue:

Organizers say thousands of people are headed to the nation’s capital to protest on the seventh anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

A coalition of anti-war groups, led by military veterans as well as activists Ralph Nader and Cindy Sheehan, are scheduled to hold a rally at noon Saturday in Lafayette Park near the White House and march through downtown…

The protest is expected to draw much smaller crowds than the many tens of thousands who marched in 2006 and 2007. But organizers say momentum is building because many people have become disenchanted with President Barack Obama’s decision to send more troops into Afghanistan.

If protest momentum is building, I suspect it’s not with the anti-war movement. Not when the liberty grassroots can pull together a rally in DC on a few days’ notice, one which I expect to dwarf the zombie shuffle through the District that these well-practiced war-protest organizers have had a year to arrange (it being an anniversary after all).  Apart from mere numbers, the center-right rallies are by and large made up of citizens who until the past year have never been active in politics, but who have discovered a passion that the left hasn’t had since the 1960s. Indeed, the anti-war rally in Chicago on Thursday illustrates how tired and predictable the protests of the left have become:

The usual gaggle of malcontented wannabe hippies, self-hating American citizens, American-hating non-citizens, Marxists, socialists and communists selling their anti-capitalist literature (and not getting the irony of that), 9-11 truthers, conspiracy theorists of all stripes, anti-Israel folks waving Palestinian flags, aging pensioners whose meds have either run out or need to be increased, and a lot of other bitter mental midgets got together in Federal Plaza at 5:30 this afternoon and then paraded up Michigan Avenue. Yawn.

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Comments

  1.   Chris Maj
      March 20th, 2010 @ 9:00 am

    TL, do you think most of the anti-tax Tea Party movement supports a big government, global foreign empire to the tune of over $1T taxpayer dollars per year; or is it more likely that they would prefer our young men and women defend our republic’s borders instead of, say, engaging in middle eastern nation building or protecting modern day Germany with 50-100k troops?

  2.   T.L. James
      March 20th, 2010 @ 9:31 am

    Congratulations on missing the point, Chris.

  3.   Chris Maj
      March 20th, 2010 @ 9:52 am

    TL, was your point as simple as cheering for Team Righty over Team Lefty?

    My target is your underlying premise that the liberty grass roots is devoid of patriots who prefer peace to war.

    Why do you opine that all those on what you call the right take the default neo-con position when it comes to raising taxes and increasing the size of government in the name of more warfare? And why is there neo-con validation of objections to such largesse only when the outcome is more welfare? It’s big government all the way around, right?

  4.   T.L. James
      March 20th, 2010 @ 11:23 am

    Chris, go back and read the post again. I was comparing the energy between two groups, one which was constantly protesting until Obama was elected, and the other which didn’t even exist as such until a year ago.

    It might make your responses a bit more useful and informative if you refrained from flogging the same hobby horse in every single comment you post. There’s only so many variations on “I hate neocons!”. It gets boring after a while.

  5.   Chris Maj
      March 20th, 2010 @ 11:53 am

    TL, your suggestion that those who were questioning the government a couple years ago are radically different than those doing the same today does nothing but divide people opposed to the overbearing state — and it does so needlessly along party lines.

    Yesterday, many in the out-of-power Democrat leadership fanned & fueled the anti-warfare position. Today, many in the out-of-power Republican leadership fan & fuel the anti-welfare position.

    This is precisely the kind of “plague on both their houses” that foments broader appeal of the tea party movement and its arguments for limited, constitutional government.

  6.   Eileen
      March 20th, 2010 @ 12:24 pm

    Chris,

    Perhaps it would help to ruminate on this: those who find and then lose moral outrage over a callous attitude toward human life based on what party is being callous are themselves morally outrageous.

    Rather than another attack, why not contribute your take on the waning anti-war movement in the wake of a shift in Executive power. After all, we are here for debate, not attack, and certainly not the curious strain of patriotism that is the last refuge of scoundrels.

    Yours,

    E

  7.   Chuck Moe
      March 20th, 2010 @ 3:29 pm

    The pathetic showing of anti-war rallies indicate that most of the people who rallied during Bush’s term weren’t so much against the war but really against Bush. Now that the progressives have ‘their guy’ in office….war?…not so bad. Have you noticed how quiet the mass media is about war news since Bush left? The fury over the war seems to be limited to a small number of those on the left, a small number on the right and most libertarians. But don’t worry cause when a republican takes the White House in 2012, the progressives can dust off their anti-war signs again and play the peacenik. For me this is rather sad since I’m against pre-emptive war and nation building myself.

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