Publication Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Our Town: Quiet on the peace front
Our Town: Quiet on the peace front
(June 30, 2004) by Don Kazak
Thousands of people jammed Palo Alto's Civic Center Plaza for anti-war demonstrations in February and March of last year, just before the war in Iraq started.
The war went better than almost all predictions, militarily, but has the occupation has much more deadly than the war itself, in terms of American deaths.
But the peace demonstrations have been muted since then.
Only a few hundred people were at a Memorial Day peace rally at the Palo Alto Civic Center May 27.
People are upset about the war, but confused about what do to. For many, protesting the continuing American occupation of Iraq may seem unpatriotic, with Americans dying there almost every day.
That's why there haven't been the big rallies like the ones that preceded the war.
"It's tricky holding a large rally," said Paul George, executive director of the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center in Palo Alto. "What's the message, the shorthand that goes on posters, other than, 'Bring the troops home now?'"
Nonetheless, there will be a peace rally at 6 p.m. tonight in the Civic Center Plaza.
As we go into the July 4 weekend, it's going to be a strange holiday for many people. American flags will be everywhere and it may seem disloyal to the troops to now question the war effort.
"It's harder to get people out on the streets without a crisis," George said. "There was a feeling of desperation last year, with the immediacy of a war looming."
The May 27 demonstration was organized by Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice. The Rev. Diana Gibson, formerly of First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto, helped organize the group and the rally.
"People have a need to hear the tragedy of it all, the wrongness of it all, but in a way to support the troops who are still there," Gibson said. "People don't know what to do."
The May 27 demonstration included carrying several flag-draped coffins in a solemn march through downtown streets. The coffins represented the war dead, American and Iraqi.
"Parents are concerned about a draft now," Gibson said. "They could wake up and those coffins could have their kids in them. They do have our kids in them."
Recent public opinion polls show that for the first time since the war began last year a majority of Americans now think what we're doing in Iraq is wrong or seriously off track.
At one of the last rallies before the war started, a vendor was selling peace buttons. "Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam," one read. Right, I thought. Now there's a stretch.
Fifteen months later it doesn't feel like such a stretch.
The parallels between Vietnam and Iraq are getting scary.
There are important differences, too.
The healthiest one so far is that the country isn't being torn apart about what's happening in Iraq, as the protestors remain supportive of the troops.
The American effort came under fire recently from unlikely sources, former military commanders testifying before Congress.
"We are absolutely on the brink of failure .... We are looking into the abyss," one commander, Gen. Joseph Hoar, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in late May. Gen. Hoar is the former commander in chief of Central Command, which oversees American troops in the Mideast.
At the same hearing, Larry Diamond of the Hoover Institution at Stanford also gave a grim assessment after serving as an advisor in Baghdad. "There is only one word for a situation in which you cannot win and you cannot withdraw," he said. "Quagmire."
The drumbeat of bad news for the Bush White House continued in mid-June when the commission investigating the 9-11 terrorist attacks said there "is no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated in attacks against the United States." The reported link was a key rationale for invading Iraq.
Then, on June 16, 27 retired diplomats and military commanders, including Republicans, jointly released a statement criticizing the American effort in Iraq as ill-planned.
"Never in two and a quarter centuries of our history has the United States been so isolated among the nations, so broadly feared and distrusted," the statement read. "We need a change."
Strike up the band for the parade, but "bang the drum slowly and play the fife lowly," as the song goes.
Weekly Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.
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