objet trouvé: Morons, Freaks And Fascists

Numbers were debated on both sides of the rallies in DC this weekend. How many anti-war protesters were there? How many counter-demonstrators (pro-war protesters) were there?

And the other thing I got to thinking is, with people parsing the various messages on all sides of this: do we just hear what we want to hear?

If you're for the war in Iraq and you walked upon the anti-war protesters, the thought seems to be, or at least the one I find being put out there--they're freaks, those anti-war nuts. Or, as one person was quoted in yesterday's Washington Post: Saddam Hussein is a moron, and you're a moron. This was directed to someone wearing a t-shirt saying this: Wanted for Mass Murder: The Bush Regime.

If you are an anti-war supporter, you say 300,000 people were there, or 500,000, instead of the 100,000 figure quoted by most of the mainstream media and DC police chief Charles Ramsey, and the less than that quoted by some pro-war bloggers who say they can see the aerial photographs. To them, it didn't look like nearly that many, and that, they actually saw more counter-demonstrators.

I had two brief conversations with people this weekend--one on my soccer team and one with my dad. I shouldn't say conversations, because I was telling them I was up at the anti-war rally and had taken pictures; I just listened without comment. The soccer guy said he thought a lot of the people on the Mall likely didn't know enough about the issues and were just there. My dad placed the freaks label on them (and particularly on Cindy Sheehan), though I think his actual comment was harsher.

How many people were actually at the anti-war rally Saturday? Who knows? Without tagging each individual and passing them through an electronic checkpoint of somekind, no one's going to get, or give, an accurate number. I wasn't there when the protesters marched past the White House, so I don't consider what I saw representative of the numbers of people. While I was on the Metro to the Mall, I saw people at some of the DC stops boarding the Metro and heard some of them talking about it.

The cars were crowded, and I hardly think they were all getting on just in the car I was in, so who knows how many people were getting on Metro to leave the rally, or even go from one point of the rally to the other.

I heard at least one speaker on the stage nearby the Washington Monument quote the 300,000 figure, and I saw another person at DailyKos quote 500,000. I'm not sure those figures are true, just by my own hunch, but I wouldn't be surprised if the 100,000 (give or take) is close to accurate. And that number would still (and is) significant. Even whatever numbers that counter-demonstrated over the past few days is significant too. I leave that to one's own conclusions, though.

Getting back to the freaks stuff, I read some stuff about how the anti-war protesters weren't even united on the issue they were protesting. There were people, and signs, talking about other things besides the US's involvement in Iraq. I think that might be because people who support other causes see a large gathering such as the one Saturday as an opportunity to get their message out to more people; if they had to have a separate rally for their pet issue, it wouldn't draw nearly the attention to spread their message, and at least they have the opportunity to make their views known to a wider audience.

However, I see this as fracturing the original intent of the rally: to protest the war in Iraq. Rallies and causes, I think, work best when there's a singular focus. You can draw people in from a wider spectrum of the population on that issue. I have a friend who's done a 180 on the Iraq war, for instance, someone who supported going after the Taliban in Afghanistan, someone who originally bought into what the Administration was reasoning about going into Iraq. He now sees things differently on Iraq, and he's the type of person the organizers of the protest need to be reaching.

I know it's hard to throw aside the other causes for which they support, or would like to protest. It's difficult to stick to one subject, and keep people focused on one issue. But I think honing in on one issue is better. Though I think there's some legitimacy into some people tying together the government's Katrina's response (or lack thereof) and the war in Iraq, I'm not sure that's a good idea. True, if you believe they've screwed up both, they it's not too much of a stretch to do so.

I think, though, that the focus needs to stay on Iraq. There are people who have rethought their views on Iraq, and what the Bush Administration has told the public about the reasons for our involvement.

However, I think there are more than a few people who've grown to oppose the US's fighting in Iraq, but don't want to associate themselves with people who have their own, broader agenda (freaks, morons to them, perhaps), and with groups they aren't fond of (ANSWER, United for Peace and Justice--the two big organizers of the anti-war rallies in DC. Reportedly, they had a hard time agreeing whether there would be a singular focus; I'll have to check more into this). InstaPundit's Glenn Reynolds says the anti-war movement is dominated too much by fringers to be taken seriously. And another at Whiskey Bar asks whether Iraq would be better off with a US withdrawal.

Someone takes those groups apart: Anti-War, My Foot:

..."International ANSWER," the group run by the "Worker's World" party and fronted by Ramsey Clark, which openly supports Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, Slobodan Milosevic, and the "resistance" in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Clark himself finding extra time to volunteer as attorney for the génocidaires in Rwanda. Quite a "wide range of progressive political objectives" indeed, if that's the sort of thing you like. However, a dip into any database could have furnished Janofsky with well-researched and well-written articles by David Corn and Marc Cooper—to mention only two radical left journalists—who have exposed "International ANSWER" as a front for (depending on the day of the week) fascism, Stalinism, and jihadism.

The group self-lovingly calling itself "United for Peace and Justice" is by no means "narrow" in its "antiwar focus" but rather represents a very extended alliance between the Old and the New Left, some of it honorable and some of it redolent of the World Youth Congresses that used to bring credulous priests and fellow-traveling hacks together to discuss "peace" in East Berlin or Bucharest. Just to give you an example, from one who knows the sectarian makeup of the Left very well, I can tell you that the Worker's World Party—Ramsey Clark's core outfit—is the product of a split within the Trotskyist movement. These were the ones who felt that the Trotskyist majority, in 1956, was wrong to denounce the Russian invasion of Hungary. The WWP is the direct, lineal product of that depraved rump. If the "United for Peace and Justice" lot want to sink their differences with such riffraff and mount a joint demonstration, then they invite some principled political criticism on their own account. And those who just tag along … well, they just tag along.

To be against war and militarism, in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, is one thing. But to have a record of consistent support for war and militarism, from the Red Army in Eastern Europe to the Serbian ethnic cleansers and the Taliban, is quite another. It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as "antiwar" when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side. Was there a single placard saying, "No to Jihad"? Of course not. Or a single placard saying, "Yes to Kurdish self-determination" or "We support Afghan women's struggle"? Don't make me laugh. And this in a week when Afghans went back to the polls, and when Iraqis were preparing to do so, under a hail of fire from those who blow up mosques and U.N. buildings, behead aid workers and journalists, proclaim fatwahs against the wrong kind of Muslim, and utter hysterical diatribes against Jews and Hindus. ...

Ultimately, calling people of principle freaks, morons--I'm sure both sides call each other things like that--doesn't get anyone very far. But can there be any reasoned debate? If I say I'm against the war in Iraq and say the government bungled Katrina relief, does that make me a freak, a moron? I hardly think so. I don't think pro-war people are nuts either.

I like to think I keep up with the news. I read, listen and watch a variety of sources and check in with a variety of views. I don't think pro- or anti-war supporters are freaks. I think most have some kind of principle behind their view. It may or may not be a flawed view, and I'm not sure a majority of people keep up with the issues; we do have lives to lead and only those things that come in direct contact with us seem to have the biggest impact. There's so much said and counter-said that it's hard to tell what's going on without an encyclopedic program. And perhaps there is a bit of ignorance. I don't mean that in a negative connotation, either.

One's always free, ultimately, to draw their own conclusions, and to each of us, they're accurate based on our own world view.

But that doesn't make someone a moron.

We all have different ways of forming our views on various things (practical experience, media, friends/family influence, whatever). I haven't hidden the fact that I'm still trying to sort through my own views on a myriad of issues.

I also think that no one has an absolute on morality as well. Pro-war supporters believe it's moral to get rid of dictactors, and no doubt a lot still tie Iraq into 9/11. Anti-war supporters either don't believe the war in Iraq is moral, or any war is moral (Iraq, as the purpose of the rally was, because they're view is that the government lied to the US public about the reasons for going in there, presenting an illusion that it's tied to 9/11).

For those who say there were people who were there not really protesting but as part of the book fair, or just passing through: perhaps. I also look at it this way: in the same sense that you might bring someone to church and just let them absorb what's going on, I'm sure some of that was going on with the anti-war demonstrations too. Bring some people along who are on the fence and let them absorb the scene and the views of the people there, and let them reflect on it afterward.

I did see people who came from the book fair over to the concert staging area; perhaps some were anti-war protesters who also took time to go to the book fair, perhaps others came out of curiosity once they saw what was going on. The way you could tell they were book fair people were by the neon green bags they carried.

Anyway, my own purpose for going over there was one of curiosity, and to absorb the scene and reflect upon it. I had no individual confrontations with anyone-- a few excuse me's to get by some in the crowd. Otherwise, I wandered through the back and side edges of the crowd around the stage and tried to take in the overall atmosphere.

I don't know if what's being portrayed in the media, or by other bloggers, is true or not in terms of numbers, in attitude, in overall purpose, or whatever. I will say that I don't understand the smile Cindy Sheehan had when she was being arrested yesterday. That protest seemed a bit artificial to me. I also don't know how much difference the protests will make either. Maybe they have, and maybe they will, make a difference in the US's involvement in Iraq.

Maybe scenes like this will convince people to drop support for the war in Iraq; they'll likely embolden others.

I think, in the end, that Bush and his Administration deceived (whether intentional or not, I'm still drawing that conclusion) the public about our reasons for going in there, and I never fully understood, even then, how Iraq was tied into 9/11 and being a part of that. Justice for 9/11, fine. Go after those who perpetrated it, organized it. I understand that. But does the US government, by use of our military, have free reign to go after regimes, dictators, just because we don't like them, or because they might pose a threat later? And, somewhere in my US government lessons, I thought it was the US Congress that had the power to declare war on someone. Can someone tell me when that last happened? World War II?

I mean, I might not like my neighbor, but if I take a preemptive strike against him and take him out because I think he might be a threat later, I'm in jail for life, if not on death row.

More pictures I took from Saturday: