WTF? Anti-war protesters interupt Obama the only true anti-war candidate. . .

[wndycty]

. . .I understand their passion, I understand their urgency, I understand their frustration, but to interupt the only candidate who was against this war from the start is just silly and self serving.

-snip-
In Chicago, Obama's speech was interrupted several times by a group of chanting protesters in the audience with a sign calling on Obama to "Stand up! Cut the funding," presumably for the war in Iraq.

"Hey guys, come on ... you made your point," he told the protesters who were booed by the audience.

Obama, who had been talking about health care, told them he would get to their issue about the war soon, but they were escorted out before he got to it.

"We have a responsibility to be as careful coming out as we were careless getting in," Obama said of the American presence in Iraq.
-snip-

http://www.thetimesonline.com/articles/2007/02/11/ap-state-il/d8n7tu080.txt

-snip-
Then a vocal crowd of anti-war protesters quickly made the issue the central focus of Obama's evening rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion, holding up a sign that read "Cut the Funding" during his address and chanting loudly as he tried to speak.

"I'm glad they were there," Obama said later. "They feel a sense of urgency about a war that should have never been authorized and a war that should have never been fought."

But he said he doesn't want to cut funding for the military personnel who are already serving in Iraq, saying that could mean they don't get the equipment they need.

"We need to bring this war to an end," he said, "but we need to do it in a way that makes our troops safe."
-snip-

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-070211obamaearly,1,4991261.story?track=rss



Sen. Barack Obama is joined by his wife Michelle at a presidential campaign kickoff rally at the UIC Pavillion in Chicago Sunday, Feb. 11, 2007.
(Tribune photo by E. Jason Wambsgans)
Feb 11, 2007

[AtomicKitten]

1. WTF is right.

This is just bullshit IMO.

[wndycty]

2. He had not got to the war part of his speech he was talking about healthcare. . .

. . .this war is important but there are a ton of other issues that need to be addressed. The majority of voters are not one issue voters, and when you combine that with the fact that he is against this war its just silly.

[patrice]

4. It's called ego-inflation.

I've been through it. It happens when you assume the whole thing depends on you and what you do - a little like a messiah complex. They NEED friendly counseling, not antagonism.

[PLF]

22. they put the discussion back on the war

I have no problem with that.

[wndycty]

32. Well considering he was going to talk about the war. . .

. . .and he was talking about other things that matter as well, such as healthcare this was so unnecessary.

[silverweb]

3. Again, he handled it beautifully.

Another DUer used a cute and very appropriate slogan that I'm now going to steal:

GObama!

:loveya:

[AtomicKitten]

7. hey - you swiped that from me

:)

[silverweb]

9. Can I keep it?

It's just sooooooooooo perfect and I salute you for coming up with it! :patriot:

Can I keep it???

Pretty, pretty please??? :D

[AtomicKitten]

14. only if you promise to pay it forward

and spread the word about this great candidate!!! :)

[silverweb]

17. Deal!

That's a very easy promise to keep!

GObama!

[The Magistrate]

5. The Idiot Claque From W.C.W. And A.N.S.W.E.R. Heard From, Sir

Of course, it does help somewhat to be attacked by these types: no one, by and large, likes them....

[KoKo]

30. Well....more people than you might think feel keeping our candidates

feet to the fire concerning this Immoral War is worth the effort, considering that MSM doesn't address these issues by covering different points of view. And it also could have been a "Code Pink Action," which is different from WCW and A.N.S.W.E.R. But, even WCW and ANSWER deserve to be heard in a Democracy.

:shrug:

[wndycty]

33. Deserve to be heard?

It was not like he was ignoring the war. He was getting to the war but because these idiots wanted to make a scene they did. It wasn't there forum, people were not there to hear them and MORE IMPORTANTLY he was prepared to talk about what they wanted to talk about, BUT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT HEALTHCARE WHICH IS JUST AN IMPORTANT they just wanted attention.

[KoKo]

35. Perhaps our Dem Candidates could set up "Free Speech Cages" like the Bushies have?

Would that be more acceptable? Would it be more acceptable for our Democrats to do exactly what the Repugs have done ...speaking only to groups of hand picked cheerleaders from which they never see anything from the podium but flag wavers and cheering faces?

Unless you believe the Dems Big Tent must now be winnowed down to the Auditoriums of the Fawning. :shrug:

[wndycty]

38. You are being silly. . .

. . .and irrational. No one is criticizing the protesters for what they had to say, in fact many in attendance probably agreed with them, but to just interupt Barack just to interupt him is just uncalled for. HE WAS TALKING ABOUT HEALTHCARE for heavens sake. He went on to talk about the war, which if these idiots had any sense would have been the best time to heckle him. But methinks these people were looking to cause a disturbance for the sake of causing a disturbance.

Maybe they knew if they interupted him before he got to talk about the war they would get more attention. Anyone, including yourself, who thinks that Barack is an enemy of the anti-war movement or free speech is simply misguided.

[KoKo]

43. I don't like to see Dems start talking like Repugs....the timing of the

protest was not great...if they started disrupting before he talked about the war. And, without knowing the affiliation of the protestors...how can one say what their motivation was....

[wndycty]

59. He was not talking like a Repug. . .

:kick:

[The Magistrate]

48. That Does Not Concern Me At All, Ma'am

Whatever Democrat is elected in '08 will pull U.S. forces out of Iraq. Popular feeling demands this, and it will have its way, slow though the wheels of government turn.

The only benefit activities such this provide is to show Democratic political leaders are not really aligned with these tiny cliques of radicals who are depised by the great bulk of the voting public: they provide some small degree of insulation from a standard rightist line of attack.

Demonstrators who had real motives of opposirion to the war would concentrate their fire on the Republican leadership which conceived, planned, and executed it. That these "useful idiots" are instead assailing Democrats only demonstrates that their real motive is not opposition to the war, but that that is simply a pretext for pressing the long-standing left-splinterist objective of damaging and ham-stringing the Democratic Party, in the deluded hope that the people's sufferings under Republican rule will cause them to turn to the splinterists for leadership, and make them into a large party with favorable prospects for revolutionary actions. It is a fever dream that comes over a few adolescents, and in a sad small number of cases, it is never outgrown....

[MaggieSwanson]

6. Just one point:

"...the only candidate who was against this war from the start..."

Dennis Kucinich voted against the war.

I like Obama very, very much. Let's not start calling him the only candidate against the war from the start, though.

[illinoisprogressive]

8. Gobama handled it with his usual class. it is sad when some people

think an issue that they are into is something a candidate should only look at and address. And if the candidate tries to do things in an adult and responsible way, they stamp their foot. it's selfish.
We all hate this war. We know all the retoric. However, to expect a candidate to ignore everything but, your issue and to fix it right this minute is childish.

[Dean Martin]

10. Voters aren't used to seeing candidates act like adults

I think that's the problem. Obama is acting mature, and that's unknown for the last several decades in politics.

[MaggieSwanson]

11. I understand your point.

Mine was simply an issue of framing Barack Obama as the "only true anti-war candidate", which isn't true.

I have mixed feelings about the protesters, but that's not what I was posting about.

:hi:

[patrice]

15. Thanks for the reminder.

Kucinich doesn't get the credit he deserves. Out-lyers can contribute a lot, even though they're not taken seriously unfortunately. Think of whate "we" would be without them!

[Cerridwen]

25. Thanks, Maggie.

You beat me to it. :D

[oasis]

12. I wonder if any of those protesters are registered to vote.(eom)

[KoKo]

34. It's only the Freeps who stand around "Porta-Potty's" in small

numbers protesting who aren't registered to vote. :D

[oasis]

36. I doubt if registered Democrats would embarrass a solid candidate for pres. (eom)

[ZombieNixon]

13. I think I might be in that picture somewhere.

:D But, yeah, Obama handled it well. Those guys weren't exactly doing a great service. :eyes:

[ben_meyers]

16. Think 1968

The Democrats self destructed over the Nam war. Look where the most vocal demonstrations were. The whole 2008 election cycle is in real danger of devolving into the same kind of mess. No Democrat will be "pure" enough for the anti-war side. Very extreme elements are just waiting to jump in front of the parade. Look what is happening to the 9-11 "truthers" for example. Read up on the Youth International Party (Yippies) and the Black Panthers in the 60's. It only takes a few extremists to screw things up, believe me I've been there.

[Ken Burch]

18. This is WAY THE HELL DIFFERENT FROM 1968.

The protests were vocal in Chicago because Chicago was where the party leadership insisted on nominating a pro-war candidate despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of primary voters had clearly voted for peace candidates. The party didn't even have the decency to put an antiwar plank in the platform. The whole week of the convention was deliberately designed to antagonize antiwar voters, voters the Democratic ticket desperately needed. There was no justification for this.
After receiving this treatment,
peace activists backing Humphrey would have meant surrendering on all they believed in. Many of them did come around in the end (especially after Humphrey FINALLY broke with Johnson
in his Salt Lake City speech of Sept 29, 1968.)

The doves did far better by Humphrey than the hawks and the hacks did by McGovern four years later.

The fault for the Democratic defeat(and the emergence, we can now say, of the Second Republican Ascendancy) in 1968 lies not with the Yippies or the Panthers. It lies with Lyndon Johnson and Richard J. Daley for putting ass-kicking and "showing those bastards who's boss" before party unity and victory.

The situation this weekend with Obama bears little comparison.

The answer is not to suppress dissent. The answer is dialogue and coalition.

Let's hope Obama or HRC realize this.

[ben_meyers]

19. Whoa there Ken

I think you have just described the Democratic Party self destructing in '68. Isn't that what I was trying to point out? What did I miss?

[Ken Burch]

20. It sounded like you were putting all the blame on the peaceniks.

If you were acknowledging that most of the blame lay with the party insiders that's a whole different matter.

[FreeStateDemocrat]

29. Bottom line: 1968 the peace movement helped elect Nixon and that's the facts Jack,

Lack of a displined, intelligent leadership in the peace movement ended up undermining the Democratic Party by only disrupting our convention and allowing the Pukes to shine to the American public at their convention in Miami Beach. It was a close election and the out of control peace movement was a factor in acheiving seven more years of war in Vietnam by being a factor in swaying the American public to go for law and order Tricky Dick and we have been paying for it every since including Kissinger's meddling in Iran contributing to the current mess.

[Ken Burch]

58. The peace movement ONLY went "out of control" AFTER the Democratic leadership

dissed them.

It was Johnson and Daley's fault for going "scorched earth" on them.

LBJ should have just respected the will of the primaries. Humphrey begged Johnson to let him back the peace plank and Johnson wouldn't let him.

And then Daley started breaking heads for no good reason.

It would've been a helluva lot better if Humphrey had been elected, I'll agree. And it would have been better if, failing that, the hawks and the hacks hadn't cut the top of the ticket loose in '72 when McGovern had done nothing to them to deserve it.

[Hippo_Tron]

62. If you were draft age how was Humphrey any better than Nixon?

Sure Humphrey was better on all of the other issues besides Vietnam but when you get drafted then there's a good chance you won't be alive to experience all of the other good things that Huber Humphrey would do for the country. So it seems to me that your only bet is to get the Democratic Party to adopt an anti-war platform by any means necessary.

Besides, the fact of the matter is that tactics aside the anti-war movement was right. Vietnam was a pointless war that got thousands of Americans killed. If LBJ hadn't sent the troops in the first place there would've never been an anti-war movement and a split in the democratic party. So why blame the protesters instead of the guy who started the war?

[ZombieNixon]

50. Obama seemed to realize this yesterday.

When the protesters were interrupting him, the crowd started to booing them to shut them up (let's face it, they were being discourteous to someone who says he's on their side; not a great service). Obama quieted everyone by saying essentially "we're all on the same side."

[rman]

27. By all means do read up on the Black Panthers - and Cointelpro

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party#COINTELPRO_and_conflict_with_law_enforcement

...
In August 1967, the FBI instructed COINTELPRO to "neutralize" what the FBI called "Black Nationalist Hate Groups" and other dissident groups. In September of 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the Black Panthers as "The greatest threat to the internal security of the country," (source required) and by 1969, the Black Panthers were the primary target of COINTELPRO, and the target of 233 out of a total of 295 authorized "Black Nationalist" COINTELPRO actions. The goals of the program were to prevent the unification of militant Black Nationalist groups and to weaken the power of their leaders in order to reduce that probability, as well as discredit the groups to reduce their support and growth. The initial targets included the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Nation of Islam. Leaders who were targeted included Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Maxwell Stanford and Elijah Muhammad.

Although COINTELPRO was commissioned to prevent violence, many of the tactics of the FBI organization were intended to foster violence. The most telling example was the FBI's efforts to "Intensify the degree of animosity" between the Black Panthers and the Chicago gang, the Blackstone Rangers. These included sending an anonymous letter to the Ranger’s gang leader claiming that the Panthers were threatening his life, a letter with the stated intent to induce "reprisals" against Panther leadership.
...

[JNelson6563]

21. Some people only know how to be AGAINST something

All they know how to do is bitch and whine. We've got plenty of 'em here too. Carl Levin was in town as few weeks ago and there were protestors. Nevermind that Levin has spoken out against this war from the beginning.

Assholes, the world's full of 'em.

Julie

[wyldwolf]

23. one issue voters... and they may not even be voters

[Bjorn Against]

60. What evidence do you have that they are one issue voters?

Just because someone speaks up on an issue doesn't mean that is the only issue they care about. Please don't just make assumptions about people without taking the time to understand them.

[Adelante]

24. This is what it's going to be

I agree Obama didn't deserve this treatment, but it's a hint as to what will be happening in the GE if we elect a war voter as Democratic nominee. Only much, much worse.

[zulchzulu]

26. Why don't these guys just hang with Nader instead...

They're going to paint Obama as a "warmonger" because he isn't for kissing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's little toes and calling for all to sing "Kumbaya" in the Zoroastrian dialect.

Obama has made his point.

They can takes their bongs and bongos and scream half-toothed garbage at somebody else. I'm so sick of the A.N.S.W.E.R. crowd...they are an embarrassment to the real peace movement.

[rman]

28. "only true anti-war candidate" - Kucinich, anyone?

[bdamomma]

45. you know Kucinich is the only one out there who gets what is

going on with this country and this wacked out *. I hope he remains outspoken.

[Vidar]

47. Thanks for that point.

[Owl]

49. Yes, Kucinich has always been outspoken against this war.

[fishwax]

63. my thoughts exactly n/t

[PhilipShore]

31. I know virtually nothing about Obama --but he needs to read up

on pacifism. There is no nice way to leave Iraq. War is hell, the only ethical thing is to cut the funding, impeach bush and leave Iraq effective immediately.

And, leave all offshore military bases immediately, and to outlaw all wars, and change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of Non-violence.

Close down the CIA, and transfer all Spy missions back the the Army. And cut the military Budget by 95%, and transform the Armed forces into a non-violent Army , Navy, Air Force and Marines.

He would support the troops by sending them home now, and use them to focus on defending our nation here at home.

[Ninja Jordan]

37. Good, it makes Obama look more moderate.

[noonwitch]

39. The anti-war left is getting increasingly annoying, imo

Whether it's the hunger strike that isn't really a hunger strike, or visiting communist dictators, I'm sick of the whole thing. This is not Vietnam, the Bush administration is not going to pull troops out of Iraq. They can protest for days and it won't change anything at all.

[TheWatcher]

61. What would you suggest people do, sit back and enjoy it?

I know that sounds harsh, but it isn't meant that way, so please do not take it that way. :)

What are people supposed to do at this point?

It is true that Bush will not pull the troops out of Iraq.

It is true, that Bush will almost assuredly attack Iran.

They will not follow the will of the people. They will not represent the will of the people.

They will not listen to We The People. They will not represent We The People.

They are criminal mafioso running amok and they will not stop.

Perhaps one of those "Goddamn Pieces Of Paper" could give us a clue as to what to do at this point:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.


And I shall keep screaming this from the rooftops.


THEY MUST GO.

Legally And Peacefully if at all possible.

NOW.

[bdamomma]

40. Barack wasn't even in the Senate for the Vote.

but I can see why the demonstrators were there, we need to let them know they must hear our voices.

[wndycty]

41. Do you think it was appropirate to interupt him on healthcare. . .

. . .especially considering he is against this war? It just seems like its an attempt to grab headlines.

[bdamomma]

44. demonstrators are just outraged and they want to be heard.

and yes maybe it was wrong for them to interrupt, but there will be probably more outspoken people out there in the months to come.

[Forkboy]

42. Worked out well all around

The protestors will probably make the news and Obama will score points for saying he was glad they were there.

See,everyone's happy. :)

Who wants pie?

[Zhade]

52. Hey FB, good to see you around again!

Haven't seen your posts in ages.

[Forkboy]

54. Good to see you too!

:hi:

[PresidentObama]

46. Where are these people at Clinton rallies? Or Dodd and Biden rallies?

They're in the Senate too. Why is this group focusing on Obama? He's been against this war from the beginning. Perhaps they should put that passion they have elsewhere, where it is needed!!

[Zhade]

51. Er, when did Kucinich become pro-war?

"Only" candidate?

[IndianaGreen]

53. Great comeback by Obama: "Hey guys, come on ... you made your point,"

I saw another quote in which he sail "C'mon you guys, we are on the same side."

Hillary would have had them arrested!

Remember when Code Pink's Medea Benjamin was dragged out of the 2004 Democratic Convention, and she was a delegate?

Obama RAAAAWWWWKKKKS!

[Bronyraurus]

55. Good for Obama

It was a classy way to get those dopes to shut the hell up.

[AnOhioan]

56. I like Obama, but "the only true antiwar candidate"? C'mon

That statement is just plain wrong

[SoCalDem]

57. Camera-hounds..

Some people cannot miss any opportunity to be heard.

A savvy speaker can turn the crowd against them in a hurry, by pausing ans asking the crowd if they want to hear from the interruptors, or the person they came to see.