Con: Protesting a war that is half over is counterproductive and disrespectful.
By J. Douglas Stevens
Assistant Opinions Editor
It is official — the war has begun. Yet protestors continue to walk the streets in a futile exhibition of civil disobedience.
Remaining civilians can enjoy the decadence that our armed forces are fighting to protect. The people that are not involved in the war need not fight a counterproductive battle on domestic soil.
It’s natural for Americans to desire peace, but if war is necessary on a foreign front to preserve homeland security, don’t congest the streets with destructive propaganda.
Few Americans wanted to go to war. I’d like to think that even President George W. Bush, as indignant and resolved as he is, did not want to shed innocent blood in a war with Iraq. But the powers that be have deemed it necessary to fight.
It is our duty as civilians to support the war effort, not criticize it.
Countries all across the globe have joined the crusade against war, and more specifically, a tirade against Bush. This intense anti-war sentiment has not been seen since Vietnam. But unlike Vietnam, this war with Iraq has a clear objective and a victory seems to be within our scope.
In a letter posted on www.slate.msn.com, veteran journalist Mark Bowden wrote that he understood the anti-American sentiment in other countries that “resent unilateral displays of American power,” but was bewildered by similar protests here in the United States. Are protestors against the liberation of the Iraqi people?
It is naïve to protest the use of armed forces to remove a tyrant known to be violent, even toward his own people. Saddam has shown us and the rest of the world that he does not respond to nonviolence.
Protestors are saying Bush is overzealous in his pursuit of Saddam, and that his demanded deadlines are arbitrary.
At least he is a man of action. He has called his troops to do battle on our behalf and all we can do is stand around holding slanderous signs, chanting and scuffling with riot police?
Last Wednesday, when attacks began, the Los Angeles Police Department made more than 40 arrests during a sit-in on Wilshire Boulevard near the Federal Building in Westwood. What is to be gained from these demonstrations?
Gov. Gray Davis has instructed California Highway Patrol troops to be on duty seven days a week in 12-hour shifts in order to increase patrols of high profile terrorist targets such as airports, harbors, and power plants. Officers will be distracted from their important jobs by protestors with their own rebellious agendas.
But what motivates these protesters now that the war is underway?
I doubt Bush is going to tell our boys to come home in the face of a few peaceniks. If they don’t want to support our efforts in the Gulf, they can get a passport, get on a plane and fight alongside the Iraqi army because they are not helping our cause.
How do our soldiers feel seeing unsupportive citizens highlighted in American media, given a platform to badmouth their patriotic effort?
Or worse, what if returning troops expecting a warm, celebration-style welcome are met with crude remarks and anti-war banners as thanks for risking life and limb in the distant and hostile desert?
But at the end of the day, it was those American soldiers/citizens who fought for our right to make such a ridiculous display, if we chose to exercise that right.
The time protesters squander brainstorming clever anti-war slogans, making attention-grabbing posters and walking in circles could have been better spent on their knees in prayer.
Iraqi citizens were seen celebrating the arrival of American and British troops. That should be a huge red flag, or rather white flag, for protesters to surrender their anti-war signs and ask themselves: What are we fighting for?
Protest NIKE’s labor practices in Indonesia, protest California’s off-the-chart gas prices, but don’t protest a war that for all we know could be more than half over.
March 27, 2003