Why Democrats Won’t Stop the War

The nationwide opposition to the Iraq War is based on a host of populist impulses. Some people hate it because they think lives are being sacrificed to pursue the oil industry’s agenda. Some despise it because, without a military draft, the U.S. casualties — 4,000-plus and counting — are disproportionately working-class kids. Still others abhor the war because it drains scarce resources away from pressing priorities at home. And yet, despite this groundswell of antiwar sentiment, the campaign to stop the war is adrift and dysfunctional.

On the one side are groups like United for Peace and Justice, that head what progressive activist Matt Stoller has deemed “The Protest Industry” — a clan “made up of those who decided that participation in the system was immoral” because they “have seen ‘compromise’ many times before and think they know where it leads.”

At Protest Industry rallies against the war in Iraq, you will find no effort to hone a basic message. You will see a sea of signs demanding (1) the end to a war with Iran that hasn’t happened, (2) the impeachment of President George W. Bush, (3) the arrest of Vice President Dick Cheney, (4) the elimination of the death penalty, or (5) the overthrow of the U.S. government by Maoists who reason that the “world can’t wait to drive out the Bush regime.”

These demonstrations are boisterous but ephemeral displays whose chaos and lack of message reinforce a self-defeating fringe image.

On the other side of the antiwar movement is a group of organizations and apparatchiks that have launched an operation called Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI) — a coalition of mainly Washington, D.C.-based advocacy groups, pooling cash and staff for “a major, multimillion dollar national campaign to oppose the president’s ’surge’ proposal to escalate the war in Iraq,” as its website says.
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