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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
In frigid conditions, thousands -- from 30,000 to 200,000, depending on the source -- show up in Washington, and Middle America outnumbers the radical fringe.
Jan 20, 2003 | American flags outnumbered Palestinian and Iraqi ones at Saturday's antiwar march in Washington. Though the enormous protest was called by ANSWER, a front group for the Stalinist Workers World Party, the National Mall next to the Capitol building was flooded by ordinary, outraged citizens. They completely overwhelmed the Spartacus Leaguers, the Maoists and other assorted wackos who turn out to support anything opposed to the U.S. government.
Sure, there were still plenty of signs featuring George Bush with a Hitler mustache or declaring "CIA = Al-Qaida," but they were more than matched with placards saying, "Peace Is Patriotic" and "Don't Assume I Support Hussein." There was a far larger Jewish presence than during the last march on Oct. 26, which was also organized by ANSWER, and fewer whispers about Zionist plots (though one New York Jewish man, himself wearing a Bush-as-Hitler pin, complained about the "We Are All Palestinians" T-shirts, saying, "How about 'We are all Palestinians and Jews'?").
There were more black people -- perhaps reflecting the increased focus on how an inordinate number of minorities will fight in a war and the emergence of the antiwar group Black Voices for Peace -- with some holding signs saying, "Blacks Refuse to Be Cannon Fodder." GLAMericans for Peace, a group of stylish urbanites, shattered the stereotype of protesters as hemp-clad hippies (one carried a fashionable fringe-bedecked sign announcing "Peace Is Not a Fringe Movement"). There were even dorky middle-class white men holding a sign featuring cartoon versions of themselves that read: "Mainstream White Guys for Peace."
The broad-based antiwar movement many have awaited is here.
With the D.C. police not making estimates, it's nearly impossible to figure out how many marched through the bitter cold on Saturday. Organizers put the number at a half-million, and then later settled for 200,000. The Capitol Police estimated the march, as opposed to the larger rally that preceded it, as between 30,000 to 50,000. Most others hedged with a safe "tens of thousands." All one can really say with certainty was that there were a hell of lot of angry people out there, and that from the ground it looked a lot bigger than the Oct. 26 demonstration, which D.C. police suggested at the time surely topped 100,000 protesters. (The D.C. police seem to concede Saturday's was bigger, but refuse to give estimates.)
That was in addition to large protests in San Francisco and Portland, Ore. (where the police reported at least 20,000), and smaller demonstrations around the country. Worldwide, protests in Tokyo, Paris, Moscow, Cairo, Bologna and Goteborg, Sweden, each drew thousands. In D.C., protesters chattered excitedly as numbers rolled in via cellphone from marches abroad. Meanwhile, journalists speaking a half-dozen languages threaded through the crowd, sending home news of American opposition.
It shouldn't be forgotten that these protests are almost certainly being aired in Iraq, and, despite the protestors claims of solidarity with the Iraqi people, are probably causing a great deal of unhappiness there. All available evidence suggests that Iraqis long to be freed from Saddam by almost any means necessary. In December, the International Crisis Group, a multinational think tank, released a report based on covert interviews conducted with Iraqis throughout Iraq, that concluded, "A significant number" of Iraqis were prepared to support an American-led attack. This view is shared by Iraqis in exile. A few months ago, Mohammed Al-Moussawi, a 34-year-old security guard in Toronto who grew up in Basra, in Southern Iraq, told Salon about how demoralized he felt watching people protest the Gulf War on Iraqi TV. "I'm a 100 percent sure you will see on Iraq's national TV images of these war protests, trying to give Iraqis the impression that the whole world is against this war. It happened in 1991 with all these protests in Europe and elsewhere in the world. It serves Saddam's purposes. Iraqis really hope the Americans will come, get the nation rid of him and establish a democratic government."
Yet it's not just an impression that much of the world is against the war -- there's a widespread feeling abroad and in pockets of America that an Iraq war might unleash horrific violence far beyond Iraq's borders. That's why people in dozens of countries besides Iraq, as well as dissenters throughout America, will likely be cheered by Saturday's success.
The fact that the American media reported on it to a great extent signals a shift in the debate about Iraq. October's rally was virtually ignored in many outlets. After running a brief story that reported how "[f]ewer people attended than organizers had said they hoped for," the New York Times seemed to try to rectify the error with a follow-up piece a few days later about the burgeoning antiwar movement.
Saturday's rally, meanwhile, made the network news and CNN Saturday night and the front page of Sunday's Times.
