The American peace movement has been plunged into disarray after failing to persuade the new-look Congress to stop the war, amid mounting warnings of a summer bloodbath in Iraq.
When its most high-profile controversial figurehead - bereaved mother Cindy Sheehan - quit the anti-war campaign and the Democratic party in disgust last week, her resignation statement revealed the deep divisions. Now opponents of President Bush are warning that the anti-war movement and the Democrats have little time to salvage their credibility if they want to end the war - and take the credit for it. . . .
But while some believe that Sheehan may return to the peace movement after a spell out of the limelight, she seems unlikely to kiss and make up with the Democrats - or one of their most famous support groups, MoveOn.org - which has become the other high-profile face of the US anti-war movement.
She called MoveOn's reputation as a big player in the anti-war left 'hilarious', accusing it of being so tied in to the Democrats and their electoral cause that they clammed up when the party failed to protest about the war.
Military Families Speak Out admitted that the anti-war movement was 'fragmenting' - a view endorsed by the Crawford Peace House, a campaign based near Bush's ranch, which is calling for the anti-war movement to 'regroup'.
'The peace movement is in disarray. It's run by the Democrats and they are scrambling to try to show that they are anti-war, but no one is fooled any more, and Cindy Sheehan just added an exclamation mark to that,' said John Walsh, a commentator for the leftwing online newsletter Counterpunch.
It seems we have an antiwar movement composed of three distinct factions:
1. Principled pacifists who believe all use of force is immoral. (Example: Quakers.) These people are sincere, honorable, well-intentioned, disconnected from reality, and damned lucky to live in a country where men with guns keep reality at a safe distance from them.
2. People who aren't against the war so much as they are rooting for the other side. (Examples: Mother Sheehan; CAIR.)
3. People who are out for their own short-term political gain, and are amoral enough to not mind a few thousand of their fellow citizens getting killed if they think it'll juice their poll numbers. (Example: MoveOn.org and its wholly-owned subsidiary, the Democrat Party.) As they are not above losing a war to get elected ("I was for it before I was against it."), they are certainly not above using groups #1 and 2 and then discarding them when their utility runs out.
Groups #1 and 2 are just now figuring this out. |