Anti-War Movement is Dying Away

It was on a Sunday morning in August of 2005 that I wrote my first piece involving Cindy Sheehan.  I had never heard of her before that day, and I was shocked to see that the lead story on AOL News that morning was about some crazy woman who had decided to set up camp in the ditch across from President George Bush's Crawford Ranch to protest the war.  Thanks to the general boredom experienced by the press corps stuck in Crawford and the fact there wasn't much other news going on in the world (this was before Katrina arrived), Sheehan got way more attention than she deserved and became a cause celebre for the left.

Now the anti-war movement is dying.  Why?  Because the people that supported them were not so much anti-war as they were anti-Bush:

“A lot of the people who were part of this movement have retreated,” Code Pink’s Benjamin said. “They wanted to give up on the timetable [for withdrawing from Iraq]. Some are still reluctant to criticize a Democratic president now with the midterms coming up.”

The staggering economy has hit the movement hard: Just a few years ago, some groups raised millions of dollars in donations and mobilized legions of supporters to rallies in Washington, D.C., and New York; now, United for Peace and Justice – which had a full-time, paid staff and a budget of over $1 million – relies on volunteers working without a headquarters and with less than $100,000 to spend.

“That says a lot about where our masses are when it comes to getting out against the wars,” said Michael McPherson, the co-convener of United for Peace and Justice. “If people are deciding between trying to figure out if you’re going to have a job and ending the war in Afghanistan…trying to figure out how to keep your job is going to win every time.”

But Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq and who kept vigil outside Bush’s Crawford ranch to protest the war, had long abandoned hope that the activists would fight as hard once Obama was elected. Groups like MoveOn.org, in particular, are more interested in politics than in peace, she said.

“I basically think that it’s over,” Sheehan said. “And the reason that it’s over is that so many of those same groups that you’re talking about supported Obama…I just don’t think that if you’re anti-war you can support somebody who is for war.”

It's no surprise to most of us that once Obama was elected it probably wouldn't matter what he did in regards to the war, the anti-war crowd was going to melt away. Their commitment to liberal politics far outweighs their commitment to stopping war.