Why It Took The Antiwar Movement So Long to Get Started--Updated!(Welcome Michelle Malkin Readers! Thanks, Lorie!)
Because Cindy Sheehan is about the most sane person on that side. You think I'm kidding?
The first group to attempt to lead the antiwar movement was ANSWER, Act Now to Stop War and Racism. Unfortunately for the peaceniks they turned out to be a Stalinist front group of the
Worker's World Party.
The WWPers in control of ANSWER are socialists who call for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, who support Slobodan Milosevic and Kim Jong Il, who oppose UN inspections in Iraq (claiming they are part of the planning for an invasion aimed at gaining control of Iraq's oil fields), and who urge smashing Zionism.Remember the
human shields?
They got to Baghdad only to find their Iraqi "co-ordinators" wanted to deploy them not at "humanitarian" facilities but at military bases. One British teacher said he was used to working with young children and would have preferred to be deployed at an orphanage. Pity the poor Iraqi official who had to explain to the guy that the orphanage has already got all the human shields it needs: they're called "orphans."
The bewildered Brit seemed to find this hard to follow: Here's a man who's convinced that Bush and Rumsfeld are slavering to drop a bunch of daisycutters on Iraqi moppets, but thinks they'll cease and desist just because some droning Welsh leftist is sitting amongst all those inviting underage targets.Then you had Michael Moore. 'Nuff said. Compared to those losers, Cindy actually looks quite normal.
You might also enjoy my post on what
would have happened if Reed Richards was a neocon and the rest of the Fantastic Four were peaceniks.
Update: Princeton Progressive Review
says I'm being unfair in saying that the ANSWER folks ever had a shred of credibility among the progressive antiwar community. That may be (he links to a David Corn piece in
LA Weekly, while I linked to a David Corn piece in the Nation). But that's not my argument. My argument is that ANSWER tried to lead the antiwar movement but were too radical.
