Whither all the War Protesters? (from the Christian Science Monitor)

[marmar]

Whither all the war protesters?
As the Iraq war heads toward 'surge,' the antiwar movement, now mostly online, nears a crucial moment.
By Brad Knickerbocker | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
On a beach in US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district the other day, about 1,000 war protesters formed up to spell out the word "IMPEACH." The aerial photo quickly spread to China and Europe.

Still, there were no political harangues, no civil disobedience. The quiet turnout was mostly "old hippies, and even older hippies," jokes event organizer Brad Newsham.

Nearly four years into US combat in Iraq, the antiwar movement has yet to generate the kind of mass protest seen during the Vietnam War. There's no shutting down universities or blocking traffic at military bases – no tense face-offs with police.

But with the new Congress, the Bush administration's surge strategy (which critics deem an "escalation" of the conflict), and increasingly negative public opinion polls on the war, this may be a critical moment for the antiwar movement.

Now, it is organizing and most active in cyberspace. And while that "public space" is not as visible as the town square and university grounds nearly four decades ago, it no doubt feeds the growing public opposition to the Iraq war. (Seventy percent of Americans oppose sending more troops to Iraq, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll last week.)

One key reason that opposition to the war has been less overt, organizers recognize, is the lack of a military draft. Also, the scale of the war is different. There were four times as many troops involved and 10 times as many American casualties over a comparable period in Vietnam.

Third, only a handful of Americans are directly affected by the war or asked to sacrifice for it. .....(more)

The rest of the piece is at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0119/p01s03-ussc.html

[HereSince1628]

1. Because most American's don't percieve a personal danger

Sure, it's gonna take tax increases in 2040 to retire the debt on the war, but people complain about taxes all the time. And There's always the chance that inflation, or dollar devaluation could discount the cost, or that we'll be dead from trans-fat indulgence, or raptured before the bill comes due.

[marmar]

2. Humorously sad but true....

:) :cry:

[Philosoraptor]

3. Good damned question.

[msongs]

4. there is no sacrifice in this nation for bushler's war except for those actually in it

the coward in chief says what? go shopping.

to his own children of military age? go ho-ing around the planet for the papparazi.

then he sets up phony photo ops using other people's dead kids as props and cries fake tears.

whatta man.

whatta country of sheep.

Msongs
www.msongs.com

[bdamomma]

6. that go shopping comment is like fuck you americans and let

us just continue.

[davhill]

5. It's not the 70's anymore.

Then we had the support of the media. All the demonstrations before this war were pretty much ignored by the press and TV news. There is no sense in having a mass demonstration if no one sees it. I believe there has been a concerted effort since the Viet Nam war to make sure that the public does not get riled up again. The all volunteer army, the "free speech" zones, the funding of war by debt rather than taxes, and the controlled media have all made anti-war demonstrations obsolete. All we have left is the web, long may it be free.

edit typo

[WinkyDink]

7. Why? Is the CSM continually exhorting its constituents to take to the streets?

[skooooo]

8. It's cold outside - duh.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

9. a trip down memory lane, folks. We DID stand up.

And we were abused, arrested, and threatened.

In Chicago, before we invaded Iraqnam, we had several thousand people attempting to march peacefully. the police showed up in identical numbers, dressed like robo-cop. They knocked cameras out of hands, exposed film, and arrested anyone trying to walk away from the protest. They herded people like cattle, and took into custody more than 200 people. All charges were eventually dropped, but the point was made.

Remember what happened in New York. Remember what has happened every time that the public does gather. The Bushistas put up chain link pens to hold all protesters. They arrest and harass. They plant subversives to create violence, just to capture and accuse innocents.

There is a reason for this quiet, and CSMoniter does us all a disservice for its failure to investigate the whys of today's reality.

[marmar]

13. True, but Civil Rights-era protesters were hosed, attacked by dogs, beaten, arrested

and even killed, but it only made them more determined.

[Az]

10. There is no point to protesting if the media is not going to cover it

There has been protesting going on. But the media does not cover it. And without the media covering the protests then it is just a bunch of people standing around not making a difference. Making a difference only occurs when people are aware of the actions and it requires a nation wide communication system to enable that. In the past that is what the media served as. Protests used the media as a means of gaining attention for a cause and broadcasting it across the nation. But that method has been silenced. So we have turned to another system to communicate.

The net is more efficient for wide scale dialog but it is still relatively ineffective at conveying ideas to those outside our extended circles. The media still trumps the net in that regard. Even with the advantages the net provides we still need to the media to be responsive to the voices of the people when they rise up. Silenced as we are now we become isolated and easily picked off by the powers that the media supports.

[libnnc]

11. There were close to a million of us in the streets of DC

in September of '05. I even dragged my ass up there. Where was the media?

Oh yeah, I remember, making fun of us.

[HughBeaumont]

14. Not there, that's for sure.

I repeatedly kept calling Silver Springs to my mother and sister, and asked "are you seeing any of this?" "Nope." "NOTHING? No major news network is covering half a million people in a major city?" "No, nothing, oh wait, here's CNN . . . Oh, that didn't even last a minute. It was like a blurb".

And so goes the voice of the people. This isn't America anymore, it's CORPmerica. You does the bidding for the extremely wealthy or you get rounded up.

[4bucksagallon]

12. If there were a draft you would see protest IMHO and yes I believe there should be................