Behind the Placards: The odd and troubling origins of today’s anti-war movement

LA Weekly ^ | Nov. 7, 2002 | David Corn

[Doctor Stochastic]

"Shorted out dome light"? Was this supposed to be more effective than a dead horse in bed?

[mandingo republican]

http://www.geocities.com/pastorswatch/
My anti IAC, ANSWER, NION website. Please pass it around. The world needs to know

[Eva]

I missed the re-run tonight, but I saw the original. I have tried to pass this along to others and no one seems to be paying much attention.

You know, there was a lot of talk of communists being behind much of the Vietnam war protests and no one believed it, now it makes me wonder. When my cousin was a student at Berkeley during Vietnam, she was approached by the FBI and asked to infiltrate some of the anti-war groups to monitor communist involvement. Now it makes me wonder.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

This website is great. Thanks so much for posting it. I will bookmark this and use it as a resource. The article was a wake up call for me but this website provides even more information and resources. Thanks for posting, I will certainly pass this on.

[okie01]

"Still, I think in these remarks is a subtle message to leave clinton alone."

While the text cited is superficially innocuous, it could be interpreted that way. And doubtless was, by those so inclined.

This address does seem to have been part of a regularly scheduled series, rather than a special pleading. And it obviously did not occur prior to the opening of the impeachment trial, at the special meeting in the Old Senate Chamber where the rules of procedure were decided upon.

Interesting that, under the circumstances, Bush 41 did not choose to beg off the speech. He would have been justified in doing so, certainly. That he did not is a message all its own.

Thanks for the follow-up. Yes, it was a strange time. And your nugget makes it a wee tad stranger...

Once again, one wonders what our world would be like had the Senate exhibited the courage to do their duty. In all liklihood, Algore would be President today. I shiver at the notion.

As is said, the good Lord moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

I have no doubt that the pattern we are seeing now vis a vis the antiwar protests match what went on in the sixties. Small cadres or cells of hard core communists and lefties, organizing much larger groups of people who show up for a whole broad range of reasons (including to have fun, smoke dope and meet members of the oppposite sex). There are certainly stories I have read and heard about the professional organizers agitating and stirring up the crowd and then ducking out when the rocks started flying and the police showed up. As this article and others make clear, someone has to get the permits, make the signs, rent the buses, print the newspapers, recruit the speakers, etc. etc. etc. And lest we forget, from the very beginning, the communist movement and the union movement was always fundamentally about organizing . That has always been what these people have excelled at. It's what they do. But they try to cover up their tracks, whenever possible.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Agree with all of your comments. I would only add one thing, albeit a highly subjective note. My recollection was that the Bush speech was very much a momentum stopper. Like a key goal line stand in a tight football game. If my memory serves, things were still in a somewhat early stage in the Senate on 1/20/99 and there was still optimism that witnesses would be called and senators would truly vote their conscience. My recollection was that after the Bush speech, the momentum seemed to shift and before we knew it, we were treated to pictures of Rehnquist dressed up in his Gilbert and Sullivan costume (Rehnquist had stripes sewn onto his judicial robes because he favored the costumes from Trial by Jury ). In other words, high drama became low farce. And I seem to remember the Bush speech having something to do with it all. But, in the end, who knows.

I agree, the thought of a Gore presidency is not a nice one to contemplate.

[okie01]

"If my memory serves, things were still in a somewhat early stage in the Senate on 1/20/99 and there was still optimism that witnesses would be called and senators would truly vote their conscience."

According to the Lott transcript, the Bush 41 speech came at the end of Day 1 of the actual presentations. By that time, the rules of procedure had already been decided -- including that there would be no witnesses.

Thus, Mighty Mo was already going downhill...

Still, I'm stunned that I didn't remember a damn thing about Bush 41 addressing the Senate at this time. Shows you how you can miss things, even if you're paying close attention...

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Whew. Another marathon search to find the story of "the dour little" Byrd's burned hand during impeachment. I found it here.

Then there was Sen. Robert C. Byrd. The dour little West Virginia Democrat was sporting a large bandage wrapping his left hand. According to his office, Byrd was inbound from his home in McLean in his chauffeured Lincoln Town Car about 9 a.m. yesterday, reading in the back seat, as is his wont, when one of the specially installed reading lights burst into flames. The doughty Byrd quashed the fire with his hand, sustaining burns in the process, but he wasn't late for the office. He never even had the driver pull over.

Probably not a horse's head, probably just one of them things, but speculation abounded at the time!

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

My first thought after posting this is why would you need a reading light to read at 9 AM. But on further reflection, I'm guessing that the "dour little West Virginian" probably had a Lincoln Town Car with heavily tinted windows, so that people can't see inside and spot the "dour little West Virginian".

[RaceBannon]

Gotta read, old news, but timely

[LisaFab]

Thanks for the ping - will you be in DC on the 18th to confront this trash? Am thinking of Amtraking down.

Happy New Year.

[willyboyishere]

I give the Wobblies lots more credit than that, and I don't think they'd feel at all "at home" with today's snotty-nosed anti-gkobalist crowd. I think that was implicit in Corn's article, that there is an instinctive pulling back among legitimate leftists and pacifists from these groups who have successfully hijacked this immediate historical moment of the (still impending) "War on Iraq". The Wobblies were part of their own historical moment and a great deal was going on across the world, including the beginnings of
the Russian Revolution, which was the lodestar for decades for millions of people concerned with "social justice". Of course they were deluded, of course they worshiped a "God that Failed", but they were the first generation and hence made the biggest and most embarrassing mistakes, and were the first to learn from their mistakes (some did, some didn't.). The motley crews as described by Corn in this article haven't learned anything from the present or the past---they virtually have NO sense of history, or any appreciation of the fate of the kind of ideas that history has shown us wind up on the proverbial "ash-heap of discarded notions".

[johnb838]

I love how these jokers never claim he's NOT developing WMD or that he ISN'T a threat to his neighbors, and to regional and national stability. They just claim we don't have enough evidence to convict. If the glove don't fit'cha gotta vote to acquit. And their other big ploy is to claim that NK represents a greater threat, why aren't we pushing war with them? If we were prioritizing NK they'd be saying "What about Saddam?'

Also this article says hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children murdered. I thought they were claiming millions. But Iraq claims they've provided iraqi families with months of extra rations. Whose lying? I suspect the lefties.

Don't underestimate them though. NBC has been having nightly man-on-the-street interviews with iraqi citizens crying "DOn't bomb us. Don't mess up our wonderful country'. They'll be singing a different tune when we liberate them. Then there will be NO ONE that supported Saddam. Just like the 'good chermans'.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Your points are well made and well taken. Nice historical background. I tend to believe in the "timelessness" of people and events. What do I mean by that? By this I mean if you look at soldiers from different points in history, they are a lot more alike than they are different, be they revolutionary war, civil war, napoleonic war, WWI, WWII, Vietnam etc. The same might be said about political leaders, writers, athletes, religous leaders, whatever.

While admittedly it's only a theory, I am tempted to look for similarities instead of differences. I think human nature is more or less constant, as are external pressures such as social, economic, political. I would tend to view the revolutionaries from the early 20th century as maybe slightly less unique and historic as you choose to, and I would view today's anti-globalists or anarchists as slightly more dangerous and committed than you may choose to.

To me this is sort of the joke about the so-called "New Left" that was so much a part of the scene in the '60s. Many of these members of the "New Left" were "Red Diapers" ro children of an earlier crop of radicals. But they were somehow different, hence the "New" in "New Left". Maybe they were less enamored of Stalin, or whatever. But in joke was that, in the end, the "New Left" turned out to be very much like the "Old Left". There were just as many bomb throwers (maybe more), just as many working hand in glove with the USSR, just as many that were intolerant of opposing points of view.

It seems like every generations spawns their share of bomb throwing leftist revolutionaries, and at least to me, they all turn out pretty much the same.

Nice posts.

[kristinn]

The communists have so successfully infiltrated our college campuses and other institutions that it is the rare liberal who objects to their leading the anti-war movement.

Corn and Hitchens are among the few on the left who have spoken out against IAC-ANSWER. The rest are happy to march no matter whose banner is waved.

Thanks for posting this article. It'll come in handy soon....

[lizma]

The way it looked to me at the time was a sovereign state defending it's own got caught in klintoon's cross-hairs.

But having Croatian ancestors, when I was a kid in Chicago I saw hostility from Serbians. Couldn't figure why.

Would like to know where to get the truth.

[okie01]

"But having Croatian ancestors, when I was a kid in Chicago I saw hostility from Serbians. Couldn't figure why."

But you do now, of course.

"Would like to know where to get the truth."

Hang around FR. It passes through with some regularity.