Justin sums it up pretty well in this one.
Now that Bush’s wars are Obama’s wars, the antiwar left is silent. Oh, they still maintain they oppose the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, but that’s only in theory. In practice, they seek to subordinate the antiwar issue to the long litany of progressive causes. Their so-called “strategy” is to channel antiwar activism into building whatever rally or candidate the union bosses are sponsoring that day.
What galls me most of all is the lack of urgency, the complacency with which these self-proclaimed leaders of the antiwar movement approach the question of how to stop the US war machine. I find it galling that people who are so quick to accuse others of racism would be so focused on the trials and tribulations of an American auto worker who makes fifty bucks an hour over that of a dirt-poor Pakistani villager whose family has just been decimated by a US drone attack.
The great downfall of the US antiwar movement has been its dogged insistence on a multi-issue approach. It’s gotten to the point where these rallies all have the same character and tone: the whole litany of grievances is laid out, and every victim group gets to lodge its particular complaint. Opposition to our foreign policy of global intervention is just a single note in a symphony of protest. No wonder there are no more antiwar protests coming from the left – they’ve bored themselves to death!
And us, too, I might add.
