I did not protest the invasion of Iraq, although I wish I had. I opposed it, but not forcefully. This reader dissent at Sully’s speaks to me of the courage of those who did protest it:
We didn’t have a friendly media outlet promoting our every move. The media was hostile and interpolated us in a way that was unrecognizable. There was no anti-war blogosphere to speak of, even people like Josh Marshall over at TPM had bought into the rush to war (I forgive him). Move-On was active but nothing close to the force it would grow into. We were alone.
When I protested the war I was made out to be the scum of the earth. What must it be like to show up for a protest, denounce your Country, bad mouth the President, threaten armed revolt, and have your very own media outlet brand you a patriot.
I’m convinced — comparisons between tea-baggers and anti-Iraq war protesters really are absurd.
asiangrrlMN
I can’t even imagine how difficult it was to protest the war when I was careful to whom I even said I was against it. They had absolutely no support from anyone–not even the elected Dems.
P.S. I can’t stand Ross D. I don’t care if he’s considered a more eloquent, thoughtful conservative. I don’t see it, and he’s pretty misogynistic to boot.
Joshua Norton
They had already poisoned the well with the knee-jerk Viet Nam associations and how the libs were opposed to that war, too. Not to mention reviving the right wing fiction of DFH’s spitting on the troops during jubilant homecoming parades or some such shit.
None of which was ever documented or proven, by the way.
Just Some Fuckhead
Ouch.
Emma Anne
I protested, mostly because I didn’t see how I could set a good example for my kids by sitting around bitching but not doing anything. I don’t think protesting accomplishes anything anymore – it was new and exciting in the sixties, so people paid attention and gave it some thought. Now they don’t. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt anything either. And it made my ex-hippie mom happy. :-)
IMO the commenter above is being a bit drama queenish. Yeah it was annoying that people said we hated America. But those were big marches – clearly plenty of people agreed with us, here and abroad. Also, ISTR Atrios was opposed to the war, and Kevin Drum came down against it at the last minute too. I know I was reading about the aluminum tubes and the yellow cake in the blogosphere. It wasn’t as lonely and oppresive as all that.
DougJ
That probably depended on what part of the country the protests took place, IMHO.
cleek
it took four fucking years before opposing the war was socially acceptable in mixed company. no, we didn’t have our own fucking news network, nor did we have any party leaders on our side, nor did we have any pundits anywhere making our case.
being opposed to the war was deemed treasonous by the very same cocksuckers who are now cocking curious eyebrows at the ideas of secession and armed revolt. the media sneered at the idea. the punditry mocked us. our own fucking representatives shunned us.
fuck them. fuck Fox. fuck the Democratic leadership – still. fuck the conservatives who suddenly realize wars cost money. and double-fuck, with a rusty spike and a bottle of lemon juice, the pathetic sycophantic simpering beltway media who still refuse to admit their culpability.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Someone needs to write a Protesting For Dummies manual that is tailored for the wingnuts. It has to be loaded with enough cognitive dissonance to make a sane person insane just reading it. Only then will it make sense to the lunatics on the right.
Problem is it would probably kill the author before it was finished.
The Iraq war protesters were painted as being unpatriotic in a time of war and thus must be despised. The Teabaggers are just pitiful people who the press is largely ignoring.
Or outright ridiculing, as they rightly should be.
asiangrrlMN
The commenter who made the original remark on Sully’s page is an American vet, so I highly doubt he’s just trying to get sympathy. I know I felt alone in my opposition. I wasn’t reading blogs at that point, and I live in an area that is right-leaning. Well, at least it was before 2004. The point is that there was no mainstream support for the Iraq war protests the way there was for the teabagging parties. I know, I know, FOX is not exactly mainstream, but they do get treated as a legitimate news station.
BrianD
I don’t know if it was that bad. I protested in Chicago, several times. Everyone I knew was against it, and I felt strongly that a majority of the city was, too.
People would cheer us on. I remember us marching under the El and it stopping above us, and all the passengers were going crazy sticking their hands out the windows and cheering. When we marched on Lake Shore Drive, the drivers of the cars we had brought to a halt, if they weren’t just ignoring us, were giving us the thumbs up and high fives.
Pretty good times. It is nice to know for a fact what I strongly suspected at the time: that we were on the right side of history. Those of us who stand up for truth and against violence always are.
smiley
I was a little early earlier. It’s getting to be a bigger issue for the right that we, you know, act rationally in the country’s best interest.
srv
Remarkably, the most complete and balanced TV coverage of the February protests in Austin was by the Fox outlet. Someone there must not have been marching to corporate orders.
Bhall35
From Ross’ analysis:
Does he not realize that these are the very same people who voted for Obama and mocked the Tea Parties? What if we’ve been right all along? Prescience is not dumb luck. I wish I could wish him such luck at the NYT, but I think it’s gonna be Kristol 2: The Kristolling.
Flit
Oh, give me a break. Every Iraq war protest was covered until the story became uninteresting (after the war was on for a couple of years).
Living in DC , I’ve seen multiple. The larger ones had plenty of average, everyday folks who opposed the war, but the smaller and more frequent ones (and even some of the big ones) were as chock full o’ nuts as any of those Teabag protests are with radical birchers, maybe more.
ANSWER coalition, real live communists handing out communist literature (hammers and sickles, no shit)., folks with signs calling for enlisted to shoot officers.
And while they weren’t relentlessly promoted like Fox is doing to the Tea Parties, they were consistently covered, and the media outlets would downplay the radical element and/or overplay the size of the protests for drama effect. One common tactic was tight shots of a protest with only 40 or so people, to embiggen it.
Crack on tea baggers all you want, but don’t re-envision history. Media bias (dramatic, ideological, and otherwise) works in many ways.
DougJ
Perhaps, and I’m not sure I agree. But there was a consistent undertone of “these people hate America.” If you don’t remember that, it’s your cognitive loss.
Skullduggery
I was in high school in 2003. We organized a walkout—it seemed like the right thing to do at the time—to join a larger protest happening one day. Our principal actually helped us organize the event.
But then again, I’m from one of those many liberal cities that like to pretend it was the first one nicknamed “The People’s Republic of _________”
cleek
so, DC news covered events in DC ?
before they covered the events, were any TV personalities encouraging viewers to come on down and tell the traitorous government what’s what ?
joe from Lowell
I never felt alone in my opposition. That’s Lowell, Massachusetts. Even though the papers were for it, a majority of people here were against it.
I never protested, though. It just seemed so pointless.
Flit
1.
Or, uh, not. I used to roll my eyes at how the news outlets like CBS would play it straight, because they needed a visual to represent the anti-war point of view, and they didn’t want to get any loose shots with the lunatics out that day.
If you aren’t aware of that, you are re-envisioning history to suit your ideal that the media somehow rooted for the Iraq war. And at some of the protests I’m talking about, a lot of the people DID hate Amerikkka. It said so, right on the signs advocating enlisted to whack their superiors. There is a strong anti-IMF overlap, if that tells you anything.
I’m referring to national coverage of protests in DC.
No, and on that point I will agree with you that Fox has taken this to another level. I don’t necessarily think that Fox is somehow orchestrating the protests preemptively, but they are certainly pimping them out. Fox is a joke. That doesn’t make CNN not a joke, IMO.
cleek
fwiw, things were different in Raleigh, NC.
DougJ
You will have to excuse me if I believe that it is far more likely that you are doing the re-imagining here, my Bush-loving friend.
I’m curious to hear about how the media simply spun Katrina into a failure for FEMA.
Meg
From someone who organized their campus’ anti war effort during those times, I can tell you it was absolutely draining with no payback whatsoever. People screamed and spit on us, stalked us, and vandalized our cars and (meager) office space. We were in constant fear of surveillance or arrest, even though we were peaceful (but loud and angry!). I hate to romanticize it all, but kids were failing their classes or working themselves sick to present a professional, united front against the war. The one thing that kept me going was squaring off with the smug, confident pro-war dupes when they claimed “Of course Saddam has WMD! And you’re a traitor for questioning it.” I’d really like to talk to those idiots now. Biggest “I told ya so” in history.
Of course, we were all in Central Florida at the time – one of the worst possible places for grassroots organizing. The highlight of the whole anti-war movement for us was when we packed up our little gang into a bus and drove to the big NYC protests, where we at least felt validated, but still powerless to affect policy.
While I won’t go so far as to call the teabaggers UNamerican (because skepticism is healthy), I can say that they are terrible at the art of protest.
JK
@Flit: Pure baloney. The anti-war rallies were largely ignored by the major news networks.
To the extent that they were covered at all, the rallies were depicted as consisting primarily of communists and anarchists.
Don’t give me any BS about how left wing MSNBC supported anti-war rallies in the same way Fox News Channel supported the tea parties. MSNBC fired war critic Phil Donahue before the Iraq War began.
Olbermann has given several commentaries opposing policy decisions made by Obama. Give me any examples you can find of Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity criticizing policy decisions of George W. Bush.
Give me the names of any MSNBC or CNN program hosts who reported from ant-war rallies in the same way that Neil Cavuto, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren reported from tea parties. Fox News pulled out all the stops to promote this tea party nonsense.
From the day it began airing, Fox News has been waging a scorched Earth campaign against truth, facts, logic, reason, rationality, and critical thinking.
Fox News is a malignant cancer in our body politic and a bottomless cesspool of lies. Fox News has as much fairness and balance as North Korea has democracy.
Shawn in Showme
They were too busy covering the Swift Boaters.
TR
I was at the NYC rally on February 15, 2003, with roughly 300,000 people in attendance.
Tight shots of that protest only served to make the crowds look smaller. A practice that was further helped by the NYPD shunting us off onto side streets and keeping most of us on the sidewalks.
The news coverage that night on CNN showed street-level clips of the protest, and then gave equal time to the pro-war folks. 300,000 on one hand, 100 on the other. The media dismissed us out of hand.
cleek
Bill O’Reilly once said he’d never believe anything BushCo said again, if no WMDs were found in Iraq.
and he meant it!
Nellcote
For the last 8 years the only national outlet I’ve ever seen cover anti-war protests has been cspan.
WereBear
Time and again I would read about protests on the blogs, with pictures and people spelling out IMPEACH on beaches with their bodies…
And there would be nothing on the news. Nothing.
Calouste
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
Marc Cooper at The Los Angeles Times already did: “Go to a hobby store. Buy a scale model of a U.N. One-World-Government Black Helicopter and a tube of glue. Toss the model kit. Sniff the entire tube of glue. You’re all set.”
Surreal American
I wonder how long it took O’Reilly to become convinced that there were no WMDs found in Iraq.
I bet there are some Fweepers and other invincible blockheads who still believe that Saddam Hussein had WMDs moved to Syria (his archenemy) or Lebanon (until fairly recently a client of said archenemy).
geg6
What cleek said. And fuck you Flit. I protested here in Pittsburgh and there was no friendly media coverage, nationally or locally. We were portrayed as freaks when we were mostly regular people and non-fringe college students. Thousands of us who were threatened with violence, screamed at, spit on, and called every vile name in the book from commie to cocksucker. And then my government and political leaders and media pundits called us traitors. Fuck you and fuck them. You’re another Village idiot who has no idea what it’s like to live in the real world.
JK
@cleek: I’m sorry, but Bill O’Reilly is not looking out for you and he sure as Hell is not looking out for me.
The bottom line is that Fox News did a full court press promoting the tea parties and the anti-war rallies had no comparable booster or advocate within the mainstream media.
woolie
I am uploading some photos from a March 2006 protest. I will post the link when they’re done.
woolie
err, March 2003. :)
MNPundit
I did protest a few times, not at any of the big ones, but there were only a handful of us, it’s not like we could have been anonymous. I was protesting in a state that went for John McCain by 10 points in 2008 (though the county itself went for Obama by 10 and Bush by 4 in ’04).
Part of the desire for fierce partisan revenge is that very fact: we were called traitors in all but name by our own government. (Sully’s fifth column–and he damn well meant it that way when he wrote it.)
woolie
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/18/225757/638
dan robinson
I’m a vet and I went to one protest here in Seattle. It was a lot less than the sum of its parts.
I’m not very big on armed insurrection, but during the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, I felt so powerless. I knew that it was going to be a goat fuck.
The protest here wasn’t enough to get people involved. There were about 30,000 at the protest. But it wasn’t enough.
joe from Lowell
wtf?
Navy SEALs rock! Woo!
Ned Ludd
I’ve been organizing or going to protests since college, but attending the Iraq anti-war protests really disillusioned me. The people who organized the protests did a great job and got great turnouts, but the organizers were the same faces I saw organizing protests in the early 1990’s. I was really surprised that a new wave of young people hadn’t stepped up to become organizers. Also, there wasn’t an ecosystem of political groups to sustain the activist community like there had been in the early 1990’s.
This was especially disheartening because through the 1990’s, political organizing was strengthening, including the anti-sweatshop campaigns both on and off college campuses and the anti-globalization movement, which brought together unions, religious groups, environmentalists, and students. But after 9/11, it became dangerous to protest – instead of just being a DFH, you were now smeared as unpatriotic. The cops had carte blance to treat activists however they wanted and juries became even more deferential than usual to police testimony. People trusted authority. Criticizing Bush or protesting the war was equated with hating America.
Cain
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
I was wondering where you disappeared to. :)
cain
Cain
@Skullduggery:
That’s pretty cool. But going out to protest about what you feel is right should be part of your education and your duty as a citizen. It’s government civics class 101. Being a part of history. Every school should allow it nobody how wacky (and that includes the tea parties)
cain
Cain
@dan robinson:
Nothing would have been enough. The administration thought they were in a God touched mission. I figured that out long ago and decided to bypass all the protests and instead exercised my fundamental right to get my ass going on the next election and elect people with some balls and spend some money on more subtle methods.
What protesters should do is instead start putting pressure on their congress critters and start making it really really hot for them. When their ass is on the line they might grow some balls and start acting against the president. Protesting? Meh.
cain
TenguPhule
Of course this did not stop him from still peddling the bullshit, only that he personally no longer believed in it.
jc
The protest in San Francisco was HUGE – I have no idea of the numbers – but pretty much the city establishment was signed on to the fact, that this war was a bad idea. Cops in San Francisco – that CAN get pretty ‘riot gear-y’ on occasion, for other protests – basically were standing by, affable, relaxed, during the whole thing that I saw. People were going up and talking to the cops. I thought it was great!
The ferries coming in from places like Vallejo, Larkspur, were full to the brims with people. I wouldn’t be surprised that San Francisco alone, had around 100K. I totally forget what the official numbers were- but it was huge.
Now – the ORGANIZERS – the organizers was that moronic group called ANSWER. And in the speeches, they brought out every leftwing hobbyhorse from Mumia, to the Cuba embargo etc. I turned off listening to them, and a group of us just started chatting people up, and milling around, going away from the stage, so we didn’t have to listen to the idiots up there.
But I, at least, didn’t feel alone – I felt like I had the whole SF Bay Area in agreement with me.
As people say – probably felt a lot different, especially say, down in the south.
BruinKid
@Flit:
See, I have to call bullshit on this. Here’s an example, from Fox News’s coverage on January 18, 2003, the day there were nationwide anti-war protests.
IT WAS NEVER MENTIONED.
And this was not because nationwide anti-Iraq war protests had gotten “old” or anything.
bob h
I often think of the day, Feb. 15, 2003, when I took part in the NYC protest against the impending war. The NYC police, many of them mounted, displayed unprofessional brutality and recklessness. I saw women knocked to the street by officers on horses. All at the behest of Bloomberg.
You cannot imagine how being denied the right to stand on a street corner and peaceably protest makes you.
gil mann
Yeah, the protesters here in New York weren’t hassled and made to feel like traitors. I don’t know what everyone’s complaining about.
Unless major urban centers have a slightly different vibe than other places in the country, which is possible, I suppose.
El Cid
Actually, the accurate comparison would be between the teabagging protesticles and the “pro-war”, um, “protesters”.
You could have several thousand anti-war demonstrators show up, and equal or greater coverage would be given to 12 dudes with signs like “Bomb Saddam” etc, and that’s not even counting FOXNOOZ and the Hannitards, which actively promoted pro-war “protests” and asshole country singer fake events.
maryQ
I wonder what the Dixie Chicks are thinking right about now.
A loudmouth entertainer makes a thoughtless comment at a concert, and then Fox news and every country radio station whips up a frenzy, to the point of the girls receiving death threats.
JenJen
I read that dissent at Sully’s site yesterday, and it made me a little weepy, it really did. It hit me hard.
I traveled to DC to attend the first big anti-war march in October of 2002, and again in January of 2003. I’ll never forgot the January one, because it was a huge march, I think the biggest of the entire anti-war movement, and the press ignored it almost wholly. I believe the Park Service said there were 30,000 of us. You should see my photographs from that day and try to make that number square with what your “lying eyes” tell you.
Living in Cincinnati, I also protested outside of Union Terminal as President Bush gave his infamous “Cincinnati Speech” in October of 2002. People leaving the speech threw donuts at us. Seriously, I guess they had snacks inside for everybody who wanted to get their war on. We would catch the donuts and say, “Thanks! We’re hungry!” If I repeated the things those assholes yelled at me, it would make your hair stand on end.
The last anti-war march I traveled to DC for was in September 2007, scheduled to coincide with General Petraeus’ report on “the surge.” It was the march that for me was the most poignant, because it was led by Veterans for Peace. The AP said there were “several thousand” of us. I remember opening the Washington Post the next morning and I think they had a small photo of the march on, like, page A18.
So yes, it is maddening to watch the media lick the boots of these Tea Tantrum assholes, while they completely marginalized war protestors. It honestly makes my stomach turn.
Incertus
@DougJ: Absolutely. The anti-war protests I attended in San Francisco in 2004 were a hell of a lot more popular than the ones I attended in Fayetteville Arkansas in 2002. I worried for my physical safety in the latter instance, though I was heartened by the size of it.
JenJen
@cleek: I absolutely agree with your sentiment, and even your use of language.
After weakly supporting John Edwards in 2004, and then Kerry after he won the nomination, I decided by the time mid-2007 rolled around that I wasn’t doing it again, I wasn’t going to support any candidate who voted for that fucking war. I didn’t even care about winning or losing, I just knew I couldn’t live with myself if I spent another year trying to mush-mouth my tepid support of a Dem just because they were a Dem.
And then I started listening to this Barack Obama fella, and I heard for the first time his anti-war speech of October 2002, which received about 0% coverage at the time, and I said, “OK, that’s my guy, and I’m going all in, and let the chips fall where they may.” As we all know, it would be a rough year trying to make this argument to those who had already decided we should just give the nomination to Hillary and get out of her way.
I’m pleased where those chips ended up falling. :-)
zoe kentucky from pittsburgh
The anti-war protests were AGAINST WAR. Against killing people. They were truly spontaneous, they were not partisan (I saw a lot of “another republican against the war” signs at the Jan 2003 in DC) and they were about opposing dropping bombs on people.
The teabagger pity parties? Mostly people still royally pissed off that Obama won, a lot of people who think fascist and communist and socialist are the SAME THING. People carried signs saying “taxation without representation” with a straight face. They were organized and supported by Dick Armey, Rush, Beck, Hannity and all of FoxNews. They were pathetic and ridiculous.
The more coverage I saw of the teabagger parties the more they reminded me of the coverage outside of McCain/Palin rallies. It’s the same ignorant assholes.
JK
@zoe kentucky from pittsburgh: Very well said. I don’t understand why so many seemingly intelligent people have been duped by these stupid tea parties.
JenJen
@zoe kentucky from pittsburgh: And, the current Tea Baggers are the exact same people who would go apeshit-crazy-off on any war protester they happened to come in contact with.
Having demonstrated outside the “Cincinnati Speech” in October 2002, I will never, until my dying day, forget the face of one particular woman. Many of those leaving the speech confronted those of us outside, and she was clutching a baby to her chest, and her toddler by the hand, as she literally stood nose-to-nose with me and screamed at me, at the top of her lungs. For some reason, out of that crowd she singled me out for her tirade.
My crime? Holding a sign reading “NO WAR.” And a candle. I just stood silently and accepted her abuse, wondering to myself, “How on earth could anyone take their babies inside to hear that speech?” I’ll never get the image of her anger-filled face out of my memory.
Watching the Tea Baggers, I was reminded of her. Same people, same anger, different day.
kth
Wingnuts will never accept comparisons between the antiwar protests and these tea parties, because the antiwar crowd is obviously full of dope-smoking slackers who attend rallies more or less as a vocation, like soccer hooligans on the dole following their teams across Europe.
But Geraldo Rivera found a nut, comparing the tea parties to the anti-immigration protests of 2005. Wingnuts can’t really object to this comparison because it was basically the same set of people then as now. And though the anti-immigration rallies were lit up with much of the same negative energy as last week’s events, they at least:
1. Were spontaneously organized (easy to see how Fox News might be ambivalent about promoting them, as immigration reform was a Bush initiative and was favored by the sort of people who actually pay the bills among the right)
2. Were coherent (i.e., the specific nature of the grievance was easy enough to determine).
3. Had turnout worth writing home about.
By comparison even with a previous wingnut groundswell, the tea parties utterly failed to impress.
Corner Stone
@Flit: Fuck you.
Corner Stone
@Cain:
Which is why to this day I still have such a burning passionate hatred for that fucking coward Colin Powell. He was the only person, the one person alive, that could’ve stopped this war from starting.
Not saying I ever thought that water carrying coward was *going* to stop it, just saying he had the ability to.
He didn’t and I hope La Diabla has a nice comfy room ready for that fucking scumbag.
Corner Stone
@asiangrrlMN:
Not only did we not have support from any elected Dems, but if you even got in the same football field length of them your presence alone pushed them further to the right. They were scared to death of being tainted with protest aroma. Closer you got to em the faster they waved their flag and chanted U.S.A.! U!S!A!
Corner Stone
@cleek:
Anyone who argues the media didn’t actively label anti-war protesters as anti-USA and traitors has their head shoved so far up their rectum not even surgery can correct.
The media was an absolute companion and co-conspirator with the pro-war forces. War gets good ratings! GE gets to sell more shit if equip and material are destroyed!
They had war pr0n on 24/7 hyping this fucking war.
Again, anyone who denies that is not worth talking with except in a clinical case study for dementia.
Corner Stone
@MNPundit:
You’re FSM-damned right that filth meant it. No amount of squibbling and backing away, recontexting, or anything else will ever change the fact that that miserable fucking scum called me a traitor.
There are a lot of things people can say that apologies will take the sting off. And he writes alot, it’s his living as we all know, and sure – sometimes things come out that maybe could’ve been addressed differently. I try to give allowances for that when I can.
But he meant it. Fuck him.
JenJen
@Corner Stone: Damn, is that ever true. Being a lifelong Dem, I never hated my party more than I did during the march to war. There were times when I wondered if I would ever even vote again.
I do believe that is the “big diff” between our Iraq War protests, and the Tea Baggers. The RNC signed off on the Tea Bag movement, while our Dem representatives would’ve rather been caught with a live boy than photographed at a war protest.
Fuckers. I’m still irritated about it. And as I said above, it’s why I knew from the beginning there was no way I was supporting Clinton or Edwards in 2008. Wasn’t about to get fooled again.
Corner Stone
@JenJen: Yeah, try protesting in Houston, TX before the war and see how that feels. The people across the Greater Metro area are kinda Democratic, but the police are not. They are straight up nutters. The mounted patrol pushed their horses into crowds, and if you’ve never seen a horse do crowd control it’s a sight to behold. I’m not sure what causes more instictive fear in unarmed people – cavalry or the K-9 unit.
They used a lot of both to quell the smallish protests. I’ll never forget being on the right side of my conscience, or the things that happened to others there with me.
This is to say that if we had had any kind of backing from one of the two major political parties I doubt they would have been so profligate with the fear and abuse. It’s kinda hard to come back from.
JenJen
@Corner Stone: Having “the war speech” named after your city is no big treat, either. In those days, Cincinnati felt to me as though I had been suddenly transported to Finland and didn’t speak the language, couldn’t read the signs. It was such a strange and disturbing time, and it wasn’t very long ago.
Which is why it felt both strange and exhilarating, when in 2008 this same city went for the anti-war black guy with the funny name.
I think the Tea Parties really rub me the wrong way, because it’s like they’re trying to drag us back to those days, and for absolutely no legitimate reason. It’s the dishonesty that pisses me off the most. They’re all pissed off and full of bromide, when they should be either quiet or apologetic, if you ask me.
Phoebe
You don’t wish you protested it.
I protested it. I stood on a corner this one time, with a bunch of people, and this guy was talking through a megaphone and I couldn’t really hear it, but I thought “preaching to the choir”, and I was holding a candle, we were all holding candles, and the candle kept blowing out, and these frat boy types drove by and one of them yelled “towelheads!” and everyone just kept standing there with candles, blah blah drone, not even responding to this, uh, hilarious public feedback. I suddenly felt like someone in a linty black leotard coming up to the mike on some Tuesday night, bleating, “this is my statement against U.S. imperialism”, before flailing about ungracefully and stomping so hard that people instinctively pick their drinks up off the table, i.e., yuck.
Unless you meant you wish you protested it in some kind of way that wasn’t useless, boring self-back-patting. Being right isn’t enough by itself to make the protest any good, is all I’m saying.
zoe kentucky from pittsburgh
Thinking back to America before the Iraq war this country was in a very dark, scary place. It was traumatizing and still gives me a sick feeling in my stomach if I think about it too long. I still have occasions now where I can’t believe this is the same country, it’s the reason why for nearly a month after Obama became president I could find myself a little weepy whenever I saw him speak. (And I’m not someone who cries easily, maybe once a year.) I still can’t reconcile the America that existed in 2002/2003/2004 and the one that we are living in now. I went to DC for inauguration and spent the better part of that day feeling like the whole thing was a dream, it just didn’t feel real.
I’m not someone who believes that protests generally accomplish anything but when it came to protesting the Iraq war, well, I wanted to be counted among those who believed it was wrong, wrong, wrong. There was nothing else for us to do then, the anti-war protests were a sign of our collective powerlessness. It wasn’t just the Bush administration either, but most of the Dems were on board and the people who supported the war were outspoken and quick to anger.
Phoebe
I know, zoe. I’m still so glad he won, not just over McCain, but over Clinton, if for no other reason* than that anti [“dumb”] war speech. I still feel pretty powerless, but I’m happy that the powerful agree with me, pretty much anyway.
*and there are many other reasons, but that would have been more than enough alone.
JenJen
@Phoebe: Having gone through exactly what you did, I agree.
But didn’t you keep trying? I was impatient at the beginning, and it took years, a few of them quite demoralizing, but when opinion started to shift, I felt like it was worth fighting. Without the anti-war movement, I am not convinced we’d be where we are today. And of course we still need to keep trying.
@zoe kentucky from pittsburgh: I was at the Inauguration, too. A bunch of us were in DC for the September 2007 protest, and at one point, we all kind of agreed that we’d return to DC for the Inauguration, no matter who won, but hopefully for Barack Obama. What’s amazing is that we all did return, and we were in shock that it was for the reason we’d most hoped.
Oh, did that city ever feel different that week than it did in, say, January of 2003. We have a lot further to go, but that indescribably giddy feeling in DC during Inauguration Week made it feel as though we were all living on a different planet in 2002/2003/2004, in comparison.
Svensker
@JenJen:
What you said. I had been a Republican up until that point, so I naturally assumed that the brave and true Dems would stand up against the war. Hah. But I learned to love Robert Byrd then, after years of loathing the man. What a beautiful speech he gave. Remembering that time still nearly brings me to tears. What a fucking waste.
El Cid
@zoe kentucky from pittsburgh: What’s funny is that I think that this is how the teabag right feels right now.
They believe we’re falling off the cliff right now into gay Kenyo-Shari’a Stalinist debtors’ prisons. They’re crazy, but at some level it might be educational to bear in mind that the 28%-ers are like the Southern Hemisphere seasonal opposite: as we begin to see signs of Spring (perhaps, or the end of Winter maybe), they feel like they’re entering the coldest, bitterest Winter of their lives.
Will
@cleek:
No shit. I was an actor on a tour back then, and when the bombs started falling in March 2003, I remember a gay, liberal dancer in my company shouting “yeah, kill those fuckers” at the TV screen.
That was how fucked up and monolothically hateful the atmosphere was back then.
Paul
Too bad you didn’t participate. You would have had the pleasure of being called a Fifth Columnist by your darling Randy Andy Sullivan and a Communist dupe by John Cole of Balloon Jiz. Good times. Both of those clowns still suck bigtime.
JenJen
@Svensker: It’s a big thing to me if a former Republican can admit that he was moved by a Robert Byrd speech.
And gawd, when mid-2007 rolled around, I lost friends (temporarily) because I said if we had any intellectual integrity, we’d go with this Senator Obama guy…
Looking back on it, I think the night of the Iowa Caucuses was the sea-change. If you had to put a date on it, that’s where it started. The shift happened so fast that it still boggles my mind, and it’s probably still why so many of us who remember 2002-2004 America more painfully than others have to be pinched from time to time. “President Obama.” No way. Shut up!! You have got to be kidding me.
Svensker
@JenJen:
My husband and I read Byrd’s speech (delivered to a nearly empty Senate) and said, “Yeah, see, NOW people will understand. He’s so eloquent. He’s so RIGHT. This war is insane. We CAN’T, we WON’T attack Iraq. It’s impossible.” And then I read the Republican “answer” delivered by someone whose name I’ve blocked out, and it sounded like Babbitt if Babbitt had dropped out of school in the 6th grade because he was too stupid to go through puberty, and we realized that we were going to war and our country really was that dumb and that sick.
So, yeah, Obama’s win was unbelievable. No, he ain’t perfect, but jeez.
Jack D. Ripper
All you LIBERAL’S gotta have such Filthy mouths, after having a shit covered dick, stuck in it? BUTTPIRATE. At least AIDS is good for something…………………
Phoebe
JenJen, I didn’t keep trying with the candle-vigils, because I didn’t think there was anything to gain in that direction, and just put all my energy/frustration into the Obama campaign.
Now, when I hear some news voice on tv or the radio begin a sentence with “President Obama” I get a giddy grin. And I don’t know when it will wear off. Because I also put a ton of energy/frustration into the Dean campaign, and this is the first time the one I wanted to win [before he even ran] has ever won. Even a primary. The curse must have lifted.
PhoenixRising
@bob h:
Yeah, I didn’t think anyone was in favor of making war on Iraq, the one country in the MidEast that wasn’t associated with the Wa’habist movement culminating in al-Queda, until I saw the cops at the protest.
They tear gassed my toddler’s playmate, who was being pushed in a stroller, on the sidewalk
No laws were broken by the protestors in my city, yet we were assaulted and insulted as traitors, fools and knaves.
Teabaggers can bite my left one. If no one got their head busted by a cop, it wasn’t a protest, it was a circle jerk.
skippy
tea baggers! now 33 1/3% stronger than the green party!
Jim
Funny how no one remembers Hans Blix screaming, “There are no WMD here!” from any outlet that would let him speak into a mic.
Andy Olsen
I was also active in the opposition to the invasion and occupation. I was on both the Dane County Board and Madison City Council and supported resolutions there.
We were insulted openly, scorned by the media and pundits and told we needed to be patriotic and that the President had all the information and we should trust them.
Scott Ritter was a weapons inspector who was derided and accused of being mentally unstable.
But it was bullshit and the arguments didn’t make sense. Saddam Hussein wasn’t a religious militant, like al Qaeda. He wasn’t a threat.
The “Shock and Awe” campaign was a shame to our nation. Those words, and the actions, basically mean “terror” and we inflicted great violence.
joe from Lowell
@ Jack D. Ripper
Your tears are so yummy and sweet!
Hope you like Kenyans, bilateral negotiations, withdrawal from Iraq, and paying for poor kids to go the doctor!
Sophia
@Phoebe:
The linty black leotard comment made me laugh so hard it brought tears to my eyes.
Roq
Yeah, as a protester, let me confirm this. It doesn’t even begin to compare. The 9/11 patriotism fever was still in full swing at that time, the fear was carefully stoked and tended by every senior official of our government, and even supposed liberal media outlets leaned toward it (ahem, NYT).
We were hated traitors, isolated and for me at least – struggling with internal doubt in the face of it. There’s no comparison to this recent nonsense.
It wasn’t no tea party.
Kenneth Almquist
It may have felt that way, but the pundits who didn’t fall into line behind push for war deserve to be remembered and honored. Here is an excerpt from Paul Krugman’s Octover 15, 2002 columns: