Tom Hayden: The Anit-War Movement Deserves Some Credit

[marmar]

Anti-War Movement Deserves Some Credit
Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2006-11-27 05:56. Media
Some call it marginal, but organized push swayed world opinion
By Tom Hayden, San Francisco Chronicle

Although rarely credited, the anti-war movement has been a major factor in mobilizing a majority of the American public to oppose the occupation and killing in Iraq.

To many observers, the movement seems feckless and marginal, its rallies an incoherent bazaar of radical sloganeering. Yet according to Gallup surveys, a majority of Americans came to view Iraq as a mistake more rapidly than they came to oppose the Vietnam War more than three decades ago. So how could there be a peace majority without a peace movement?

Foreign Affairs, the journal of the foreign policy establishment, wondered about this riddle in a 2005 essay by John Mueller reporting a precipitous decline in public support for the war even though "there has not been much" of a peace movement.

In January, when congressional opinion was shifting against the war, a Washington Post analysis made eight references to "public opinion," as if it were a magical floating balloon, without any mention of organized lobbying, petitioning, protests or marches. That was consistent with a pattern beginning before the invasion, when both the New York Times and National Public Radio reported that few people attended an October 2002 rally in Washington, only to admit a week later that 100,000 had been in the streets.

It is not in the nature of elites to acknowledge people in the streets. Foreign policy is seen as the reserve of the privileged and sophisticated, protected from populist influence. But if anti-war sentiment is truly unimportant, why has there been so much government secrecy and domestic spying?

Two years ago, San Francisco voters supported withdrawal from Iraq by a large margin. Last year many activists sought an anti-war candidate to run against Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Shortly afterward, she shifted from a vague centrism to support for Rep. John Murtha's call for withdrawal.

When Sen. Hillary Clinton was booed at a liberal pre-election rally recently, it wasn't accidental that she chose to begin supporting Sen. Carl Levin's proposal to start a phased withdrawal by year's end. Understandably, she didn't want booing throughout her presidential campaign.

The rest of the article is at: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/15862

[Phredicles]

1. Good article; the press has been surprised by the anti-war movement

because they've been lulled by their own studied ignorance of it.

[Mnemosyne]

2. knr n/t

[Demeter]

3. It Only SEEMS Marginal, Because That's What The Media Say

The election, however, speaks for the opposite point of view.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

4. From the article...important speculation on the Iraq Study Group...

If history is any guide, the recommendations of the elite Iraq Study
Group may well be designed to placate, or divide, the anti-war
sentiment that was a driving force in the Nov. 7 election.

Be watchful, all. Great article, BTW. :kick: MKJ

[Skittles]

5. BUT MARMAR WE DON'T HAVE A PLAN!!!!

:o