Where Are They?
I have to agree with Rick Moran today. Where are all these mega-hordes of anti-war protesters that the press is touting? I have been looking through the Yahoo photo pages on the protests and the crowds look kind of thin compared to the way the press is reporting it.
The May Day protest in Washington, D.C. sought to shut down the government. Some 50,000 hard core demonstrators would block the streets and intersections while putting up human barricades in front of federal offices. How exactly this would stop the war was kind of fuzzy. No matter. Nixon was ready with the army and National Guard and in the largest mass arrest in US history, clogged the jails of Washington with 10,000 kids.
Where are the clogged jails today? As I watch the demonstration on the mall today (much smaller than those in the past) I am thinking of the massive gulf between the self absorbed hodge podge of anti-globalist, pro-feminist, anti-capitalist, pro-abortion anti-war fruitcakes cheering on speakers lobbying for Palestinians, Katrina aid, and other causes not related to the war and the committed, determined bunch of kids who put their hides on the line, filling up the jails of dozens of cities, risking the billy clubs and tear gas of the police to stop what they saw as an unjust war.
The netnuts are fond of calling those of us who support the mission in Iraq chickenhawks. What do you call someone who sits on their ass in front of a keyboard, railing against the President, claiming that the United States is falling into a dictatorship, and writing about how awful this war is and yet refuses to practice the kinds of civil disobedience that their fathers and mothers used to actually bring the Viet Nam war to an end?
I call them what they are; rank cowards. There should be a million people on the mall today. Instead, there might be 50,000. Today’s antiwar left talks big but cowers in the corner. I have often written about how unserious the left is about what they believe. The reason is on the mall today. If they really thought that the United States was on the verge of becoming a dictatorship are you seriously trying to tell me that any patriotic American wouldn’t do everything in their power to prevent it rather than mouth idiotic platitudes and self serving bromides?
I know what I would do if I actually believed the United States was in danger of slipping into some kind of authoritarian, anti-Constitutional nightmare. And it wouldn’t be sitting at this keyboard trying to come up with cleverest way to skewer my political opponent. And I know I wouldn’t be alone either. The fact is, the left is not blessed with any special insights into what evil George is trying to do to the Constitution. They are a small, pitiful minority of paranoid, self aggrandizing mountebanks who are courageous when it comes to calling people names but abject cowards when it comes to actually standing up for their beliefs and putting iron behind their words of change.
If you compare the photos the wire services are running (in this slideshow) with say these pictures from the civil rights marches, the crowds are not there. Not even close. Or this photo of the anti-Vietnam rally in 1969. But the press is reporting enormous crowds, the organizers are crowing about even larger numbers and accusing the media of underr-reporting the numbers. The pictures tell the story, though.
UPDATE: Some others with thoughts: Spree at Wake Up America has some thoughts and history on "Hanoi" Jane Fonda and her second go around at killing American soldiers. Roger Simon says it is not at all what it was during the Vietnam years. He calls them disasters for the organizers. Blackfive says, "Told ya so" and enumerates the groups involved. Anti-American is an understatement.
By Terrence, January 28, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
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We had a few hundred here in San Diego. One held a sign that said, "support for troops is support for genocide."
(edit – fixed broken link)