Where Have All of the Anti-War Protesters Gone?

By: Steve Yuhas

Sunday marked the 3rd anniversary of the opening salvos of shock and awe that led to the liberation of Iraq.  To mark the occasion massive protests were planned and hundreds of thousands were expected to show their displeasure with the war.  Unfortunately for organizers of these events - they flopped and nobody showed up: the question now becomes where did the anti-war movement go?

Conventional thinking among those responsible for the 200 people who gathered in Salt Lake City and the paltry 300 at Vice President Dick Cheney’s residence is that apathy has set in and people who were vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq have lost interest in the cause.  In New York City, where a typical bar mitzvah can provide a turn out of 500 people – only about 1,000 attended a “rally” in Times Square to hold up signs and listen to speakers opposed to a war that has already been fought.

Perhaps the most interesting city to watch was San Francisco where the average age of a protestor was that of a 1960s hippy who was between Medicare appointments and thinking back to the days of tie dye t-shirts and free love.  One 61-year-old man named Paul Perchonock lamented the fact that protestors were more like retirees at a spring picnic and that young people did not turn out for the protests, ''There are not enough young people here,” Perchonock noticed when looking at the aging crowd.

In cities across the world the turn out was better, but still even in hot beds of anti-war politics the protestors were silent and what noise they made was created by elderly professional protestors who are harkening back on the chants and tactics they used during the 1960s.  Of course, the government sponsored protested turned out more results, but people tend to protest more fervently when they are threatened with prison.

“No Justice, No Peace” is a favorite among protestors (what justice they are looking for is unclear since their signs read everything from Stop the War to advocating for abortion and gay rights) as is the ever popular and tiring No War for Oil.  Have those of us in California missed the huge oil supply coming freely to our ports from Iraq?  The left is constantly demanding that President Bush get more oil into the United States from the Middle East (G-d forbid we look for it here) – so which is it: no war for oil or the opposite?

Protestors seem confused.  Lesbians for Change took up signs to talk about abortion in San Francisco (one would think the last people who would be concerned about abortion on demand are women who have no chance of getting accidentally pregnant with their sexual companion), but that was their cause for the day and the war was just an afterthought.

As it turns out the anniversary of the war was really just a day set aside for a few thousand people, fewer in number than an average NCAA basketball game when combining all of the participants from around the country, to complain – about anything!

It seemed that everything was getting protested except the war and outside of the far left fringe elements and their leader, Cindy Sheehan, the fifty people who gathered to demand that troops return home now are minimal in number and aging in years obvious.

The left will never admit defeat, but the fact that more people gather for birthday parties for co-workers than came together to protest what they perceive to be an illegal and unjust war is telling of the fragmentation of the Democratic Party and the left.  Either they have lost all hope in their position or the old people demonstrating with the occasional student protestor who came out to show support (or defibrillate) the elderly represent the entirety of the collective anger toward the war.

Either way – the fact of the matter is that nobody showed up for what should have been and what was billed to be a banner day for protest.  The weather was good and outside of some cool weather and snow where one would expect it – it is not like people were kept away by flood waters.  The reasons for the poor turn out depend on what side of the political spectrum you reside, but there is no disputing the numbers: nobody came.

The war in Iraq is three years old and in that time the Iraqi people have gone to the polls in spite of the constant threat of terror.  They brave going to the market and standing in line to volunteer to serve their country as a police officer or military man knowing full well that terrorists will target them.  Terrorists from outside of Iraq, and a few Saddam supporters, are trying to foment a civil war in Iraq, but cannot even do that right.

Protestors in America and elsewhere may just be looking at the reality on the ground and realizing that more people will die in America from murder this week in some of the largest (and smallest) cities in the country than will die in Iraq at the hands of insurgents or terrorists.  In a sense the left may have realized, Sheehan notwithstanding, that the work they’ve done to paint the war as unjust and wrong may have done the opposite.

Aligning with Sheehan and her crowd is now considered an irrational and wacky position to be in and no Democrat looking to be re-elected will show their face with the formerly grieving mother turned studio apartment living mental case that profits from the death of her heroic son and then blames Bush for his death.

People are not protesting and the gray haired protestors cannot figure out why – the answer is staring them in the face: Americans want the war to be a success, not a failure and to protest it gives the enemy ammunition to use against our troops.  Most people are not ready to give in to the people who would cut off our heads if they had the chance and the turn out proves it.

So we return to the question: where is the anti-war movement?  The answer is simple: dead.

Steve Yuhas is a columnist and radio talk show host on KOGO AM 600 and may be reached at www.steveyuhas.com or steve@steveyuhas.com