A good friend of mine e-mailed this to me and I thought it was worth sharing here. I wish I would have known this "protest" was going on because I would have spent the 3 hours on the road to go to DC and stand with my fellow vets.
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 06:40:35 -0700, "BG Maralin Coffinger USAF ret" forwarded
Power to the People
by Jack Langer (More by this author)
Posted: 03/19/2007
Mr. Langer is a book editor for Regnery Publishing (a HUMAN EVENTS' sister
company) and a freelance journalist. He can be reached at
jlanger@eaglepub.com.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=19862I could tell right away this wasn't going to be your average Washington D. C.
anti-war protest.
For months, the anti-war coalition International A. N. S. W. E. R. had been
publicizing its plans to hold a major anti-war rally in the nation's capital on
Saturday, March 17. However, reaching the protest staging site next to the
Lincoln Memorial at 11:00 -- an hour before the protestors were slated to begin
marching to the Pentagon -- I found the field nearly empty. Across the street
stood several thousand counter-demonstrators, mostly comprised of Vietnam War
veterans associated with various biker clubs. Wearing leather jackets
emblazoned with organization names like "Rolling Thunder," "Legacy Vets," and
"Combat Veterans of America Motorcycle Club," the vets had turned out to stand
guard at the Vietnam Wall and other monuments after some sites were desecrated
at an anti-war rally in January. The vets were a grizzled; tough-looking lot,
and their presence seemed to surprise the handful of Chinese tourists snapping
photos in the area.
Across the street, the war protestors were arriving late with their usual
collection of Che Guevara banners, placards decrying American imperialism, and
bizarre signs denouncing the 9/11 attacks as a government-orchestrated
conspiracy. Some tables were set up offering books and pamphlets advocating
socialism while a few enterprising capitalists worked the crowd, briskly selling
T-shirts commemorating the march. As they arrived, the protestors were
entertained by a DJ who, we were informed over the loudspeakers, was from Puerto
Rico - "the first country invaded by the U. S. " He played the Edwin Starr
protest classic "War (What is it good for?)" several dozen times, it seemed,
then launched into James Brown's "I'm Black and I'm Proud," as the mostly white
crowd sang along.
Eventually, around 15,000 protestors arrived -- appearing to me about the same
number as attended the January anti-war rally. . This must have been a severe
disappointment to A. N. S. W. E. R., which had drawn upwards of 100,000 people
to previous protests. The poor turnout at this year's rallies can largely be
attributed to a schism between A. N. S. W. E. R. and the other main anti-war
coalition, United for Peace and Justice. The two groups used to sponsor these
rallies together, but have recently ceased cooperating.
Their dispute stems from two factors. First, there was some squabbling over the
amount of time given to each group's speakers at past rallies -- a surprising
bit of selfishness from people who drive cars with bumper stickers proclaiming
that everything they need to know they learned in kindergarten. Second, there
was a disagreement over the Israel-Palestine issue. Apparently, A. N. S. W. E.
R. 's position is that the Jews should be driven into the sea, while UPJ, being
slightly more moderate, seeks to convince the Jews through peaceful dialogue to
throw themselves in.
Before setting off for the Pentagon, the war protestors were addressed by a few
speakers. The veterans watched quietly from just across the street until Cindy
Sheehan was introduced. Even before she denounced President Bush as "the
greatest terrorist in the world," the mention of Sheehan's name elicited from
the vets a rigorous round of booing the likes of which is rarely heard outside
the confines of a Philadelphia Eagles home game.
Finally, the march began. It was a motley collection of organizations and
interest groups. The parade was led by a collection of anti-war military
veterans, followed by the radical feminists of Code Pink. Then came a group of
"drummers" who were really just banging sticks on the bottom of some empty
pails, succeeded by the mandatory contingent of masked anarchists. Further back
were lots of hippie-throwbacks, a good number of college students, some refugee
from an anarchist rodeo twirling a lasso around himself, and a variety of people
waving Lebanese and Palestinian flags. There were a few American flags as well,
although nearly all of these were defaced with peace signs, political slogans,
or sardonic renditions of corporate symbols.
The counter-demonstrators lined the first few hundred yards of the parade route,
sometimes on both sides. Waving American flags, the vets gave the marchers a
generally good heckling; "Go impress your professors!" was my favorite epithet.
Despite their fetish for the right to "dissent," the war protestors are
unaccustomed to opposition, aside perhaps from a lone College Republican or two
that might show up with an American flag at a campus protest. But these
counter-demonstrators were different. They were combat veterans who still
bristle at the memory of being jeered by these kinds of radicals when they
returned from Vietnam. The marchers seemed not only nervous, but even ashamed
-- to prove their patriotism to the vets, they began chanting "U. S. A. ! U. S.
A. !" This was probably the first time that chant has ever been heard at an
anti-war rally.
I fell in with the anarchists, since that's where the action usually is. There
were around 100 of them, although the number of face piercings exceeded that by
a factor of 10, even with most of their nose rings and tongue rings hidden by
masks and bandanas. Their banners proclaimed slogans like "Destroy all
government" and "No war but class war. " The vets yelled out to them "Come over
here!" and "Show your faces!" Declining either invitation, the anarchists
responded by chanting "Whose streets? Our streets!"
But the chant lacked conviction, seeing as the only thing protecting the
anarchists from a smack down by the vets was the line of police officers
separating the two sides. I spotted a group of four anarchists carrying an
upside down American flag and wondered how far they'd get with it. It turned
out to be about 50 yards. Then, a vet managed to infiltrate the parade and
snatched the flag from them, causing all four members of the revolutionary
vanguard to run scurrying away.
After parading through this gauntlet of counter-protestors, the rest of the
march was pretty subdued. I walked back toward a portable loudspeaker
surrounded by Palestinian flags. A speaker was leading a chant of "Stop bombing
Lebanon!", which I found strange, since no one is bombing Lebanon. The chanting
stopped when the microphone was passed to a Middle Eastern woman whose accent
was so thick that no one could understand what they were supposed to be
protesting. Finally, they agreed on singing another refrain of "War," which
seemed to be their automatic fallback position for almost any unexpected
situation.
We arrived at the Pentagon parking lot, where a DJ was again playing "War. " I
couldn't take the song anymore, so I wandered off in search of the anarchists. I
found them at the end of a bridge leading to the Pentagon itself. They were
facing a line of police officers in full riot gear, replete with gas masks.
"Whose streets? Our streets!" rang out again, but it was pretty clear whose
streets these were, since the anarchists weren't allowed to keep marching
forward on them.
The police announced through a bullhorn that they'd use teargas if the
protestors didn't return to the parking lot. In response, a female-looking
anarchist in dreadlocks yelled out to me and some other reporters nearby, asking
if we'd help get the word out that the police, without cause, had gassed
peaceful protestors. "No!" I instinctively yelled back, eliciting some shocked
stares from the anarchists. Another anarchist approached us and asked if we'd
stand between them and the police to prevent the cops from "attacking" them. He
pointed to one elderly female reporter: "You ma'am, if you get in the middle,
there's no way the police will knock you over. " The request caught me off guard
-- I was unaware that old women are used as human shields anywhere outside of
the Middle East.
