Link: Washington Post
The marchers are coming! The marchers are coming!
This weekend, thousands of protestors will hit the streets of Washington -- protesting the war in Iraq and fighting for attention against Hurricane Rita.
The Post's soft analysis of what passes for a peace movement raises the most important question: Is something happening here? The answer: Hard to say.
The polls will tell you that an increasing majority of Americans are frustrated by the war in Iraq, believe it was a mistake, wonder how we're going to exit what increasingly feels like a quagmire, or a stalemate. And the stream of average Americans -- as opposed to the mohawked punk-rockers of the Reagan Era disarmament movement or the anarco-goth crowd that converged at global economic conferences -- who have flocked to Crawford, Texas, and appear to be heading to D.C. seems different somehow. More solid.
But how solid is it, really? And does it have the answers America is looking for?
... the peace movement's claims to rising momentum are more tenuous.
Since a majority first called Iraq a mistake more than a year ago, the
number has fluctuated rather than increased steadily. Polls in the last
week have suggested an uptick.
Hurricane Katrina and now Rita may
be sucking publicity from peace. On the other hand, the movement has
struck a chord with some people by using Katrina to further question
Bush's competence and priorities.
If this weekend's
demonstrations do draw 100,000, they will rival a prewar peace march in
Washington that police suggested involved more than 100,000 and was
considered the largest antiwar rally since Vietnam. Organizers claimed
500,000 attended that march.
So if you want to learn about the
movement, you need to track the characters back up the solitary trails
of tears that brought them here. The journeys involve the main
questions facing the peace movement:
If the troops come home now, won't there be even more chaos and deaths of innocents in Iraq?
How can you support the troops and not the war?
If we don't fight the Enemy in Iraq, will we someday fight him here?
Isn't it a good thing that Saddam Hussein is toppled and facing trial?
If we "cut and run" and do not "stay the course," will the fallen have died in vain?
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