MORE PROTESTERS
MORE PROTESTERS: NYT reports Antiwar Protests Flare in Many Countries. As I have been noting, the protests continue to be unoriginal and uninspired:
Barely three hours after the first U.S. missiles struck Baghdad, a crowd that organizers put at 40,000 and which police said numbered “tens of thousands” brought Australia’s second largest city, Melbourne, to a standstill.
In Germany, 50,000 school students marched from Berlin’s central Alexanderplatz past the guarded U.S. embassy and through the Brandenburg Gate.
The crowd whistled and chanted and carried banners saying “Stop the Bush fire,” “George W. Hitler,” “No blood for oil.”
“The war is illegal and it should be resolved by the United Nations,” said 18-year-old David Stassek, carrying a banner that read: “Stop U.S. imperialism.” Pia Telschow, a 14-year-old from Berlin, said: “Bush is just carrying on his father’s war.”
I want to emphasize that, even with troops now in harm’s way, I don’t consider protesting the war “unpatriotic” or “anti-American” per se. People in free societies have an absolute right to disagree with their governments or the government of the United States even during wartime. As long as they don’t actively interfere with the war effort by sabotage or other such measures, these protests are legitimate. But most of them are stupid. The vast majority of the protesters are simply clueless about the causes of the war, the nature of war, or the threats posed by Saddam. And the lion’s share are just joining the party; they’d pretty much protest anything that got them out of class or let them participate in a mass event with their friends.
