Peace movement struggling

[question everything]

Peace movement struggling

Several factors keep anti-war protests from matching fervor of Vietnam days

By Michael Stetz
STAFF WRITER

May 9, 2005

Gloria Daviston helps with the crosses. Even with several people working, it takes hours to put them all up. Space has become a problem, too, because they stretch so far.

In short: There are too many now.

Each cross represents a U.S. soldier or Marine killed in Iraq. Daviston belongs to an organization, Veterans for Peace, that erects the crosses in different parts of San Diego County every few months. The San Diego native and former Army drill sergeant is part of the nation's anti-war movement, a small, stubborn band of people who just can't let the war in Iraq go unquestioned.

(snip)

As the conflict enters its third year, the national anti-war movement has yet to match the kind of fervor that erupted during the Vietnam War. The movement has been criticized for being disorganized and fractured and for offering no credible alternative to war. At times, it seems invisible, even though a February survey by the Pew Research Center showed that 47 percent of Americans believe the 2003 decision to go to war was wrong... Nationally, the movement has seen some heady moments – an estimated 200,000 protesters marched in New York at the start of the war – but can't seem to sustain momentum.

(snip)

The lack of a military draft is the biggest reason for the apathy, he said. During Vietnam, college campuses erupted in protests because students knew they could be called to duty after graduation.

(snip)

Experts on both sides say the peace movement also faces another quandary: Many people feel the United States must finish what it started in Iraq. To withdraw troops now would leave Iraq open to civil war.

(snip)

Daviston, 49, served more than seven years in the military and is no pacificist. Nearly 6 feet tall and athletic, she had no problem staring down the male recruits she once trained. She supported the war in Afghanistan. She said she would defend this nation in a heartbeat. But nearly two years ago when President Bush said, "Bring 'em on" in reference to insurgents in Iraq, she was shocked. Young people in uniform, not middle-aged men in suits, have to answer such bravado, she says.

More..

Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050509/news_1n9peace.html

[bennywhale]

1. Today's governments

around the world have gotten far more skilled in the dark arts and the art of propaganda.

They also appear to control the media more

[Atman]

2. No, there are not "several factors," there is ONE...

The media.

For a protest to be effective, people must see it. People must be aware that others share their disgust. Since the protests are never covered, few people know they are going on. If you don't know it is happening, you can't join in.

Plus, mob mentality. In general, we do what our neighbors do. We don't want to be different. Again, with NO coverage of protests, the "joiners" so necessary to build a critical mass are not joining...because they don't know there is something to join. They're told by the Corporate News that everything is hunky-dory, and it takes a bold personality type to buck what they are told is a national approval for BushCo's policies.

In really is just the media.

[TexasLawyer]

4. Plus, we are fed sanitized news by corporate media

People would be out in the streets, mad as hell, if they knew what was really going on in the Whitehouse and how we Americans have been lied to and manipulated.

Take the smoking gun memo leaked in Britain last week. It is a damning document of global significance. But who is reporting on it? No one but bloggers and small-fry publications.

Corporate media has been bought and sold.

[question everything]

8. But a point made was lack of the draft

I think that the anti Vietnam movement really gained momentum when all the college deferments were canceled. I think that when the Civil Rights movement started, one of the concerns was that, just as it is today, minority were unproportionally getting injured and killed, as many whites got a college deferment.

Once the draft was expanded, this was when students went out to the street. And if there is a draft now, we will see many more support to end the war in Iraq - or whatever our presence there is now called.

[gratuitous]

3. The peace movement is always struggling

Peaceniks can't just blow something up real gud when their cause loses popularity, or round up twice the usual number of suspects, or claim 75 more killed come budget appropriation time. Harmony and comity aren't big sellers when there's a hallelujah chorus out there thumping the tub for more bombs, more death, and more destruction as the path to security all evidence to the contrary. And people get really upset for some reason when it's pointed out that the military is simply projecting American empire, not protecting our freedom or battling terrorism.

But the time it takes to put up 1,600 little crosses is well worth it if even one person stops to consider what his or her tax dollars are being spent on.

[CWebster]

5. From an early age

Americans are indoctrinated that our interventions are always honorable and unquestionably moral - which is why the cause is always spun as some savior-like mission. We are liberating the Iraqis or we are bringing Democracy. It is easily exploitable--supporting the troops, by extension, becomes the automatic support of the Invasion, and now, this "we must stabilize" morphs into supporting continuing the Occupation despite the evidence of what we are really up to.

It preys on the belief Americans have that we are so superior to the rest of the world that we have to liberate it, be the beacon of democracy for it or "fix" it.

Our vanity about being "good" is exploited.

[funflower]

6. It's not the number of people who march that counts.

It's the number of people who BELIEVE the war is a disaster and vote accordingly in 2006.

Consider this:

1. This war was launched on the pretext of it being a defensive response to Sept. 11.

2. We've been there only 2 years.

3. As the article points out, there is no draft.

4. We've lost "only" 1600 soldiers (much smaller figure than during Vietnam) so far. Most people don't yet know a young person who has died in Iraq.

And 47% of Americans already think the war was a mistake. Maybe it won't take 15 years before people demand we end this nightmare.

The anti-Iraq-war movement is actually making relatively good progress.

[OneBlueSky]

7. well . . . this may have something to do with it . . .

Regulated Resistance: Pt. 2 - The Gatekeepers of the So-Called Left
http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/articles/40

Last February United for Peace and Justice, the largest representative coalition within the American "anti-war movement", emerged from their second annual Assembly with a 2005 "action plan" that effectively caged the "anti-war" debate exclusively within the Iraq conflict to achieve partisan ends on behalf of the pro-war Democratic Party and their Neoliberal corporate benefactors. Their "action plan" refused to address any of the core issues of US Foreign and Defense policy, which are the root causes of a pervading culture of war and militarism that has taken over the nation in the years since WWII.

These decisions are part of a larger pattern of "regulated resistance", a system by which dissent is carefully managed and constrained by self, overt, or covert censorship; denial-based-psychology; fear of personal or professional criticism and reprisal; and pressure from powers above including elected officials and those establishment foundations which flood millions into the not-for-profit activist sector.

This establishment money, and the access it grants, has caused many ostensible resistance leaders to suddenly and dramatically abandon long-held ideological positions and shift their behavior towards doing what can clearly be seen as the bidding of those in power whose views and values are in direct contravention to the established mores of peace and justice movements throughout history.

These "resistance leaders" of the "Left" act as "Gatekeepers"—influential "progressive" figures who use their resources and visibility to regulate the debate, tactics, and rhetoric of the "anti-war" and other "progressive" movements.

- more . . .

http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/articles/40

ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP: SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
http://questionsquestions.net/gatekeepers.html

The multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation's historic relationship to the Central Intelligence Agency is rarely mentioned on Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW / Deep Dish TV show, on FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, on the WORKING ASSETS RADIO show, on The Nation Institute's RADIO NATION show, on David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show or in the pages of PROGRESSIVE, MOTHER JONES and Z magazine. One reason may be because the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations subsidize the Establishment Left's alternative media gatekeepers / censors.

- more . . .

http://questionsquestions.net/gatekeepers.html