What is the “peace movement” doing wrong?
- It failed to prevent the war in Afghanistan.
- It failed to prevent the war in Iraq.
- It failed to change power in the executive branch.
- It failed to end the war in Iraq.
- It was duped by Democrats in 2006 who promised “A New Direction In Iraq” without ever having even formed a committee to brainstorm ideas until 2 months after being elected.
- It failed to prevent The Surge offensive.
- It failed to stop cannibals in the Congo [and was silent while 4-6million died as UN peacekeepers raped and sold children en masse].
- It failed to stop the bloodshed in Darfur.
- It speaks out against the efforts (war) of US forces to protect people from terror.
- It speaks the same rhetoric as the enemy’s propaganda. It is silent in response to terrorist attacks.
- It is openly embraced by Islamic holy warriors.
What is the “peace movement” doing wrong?
In late 2002 through early 2003, millions and millions of people took to the streets around the world and protested against further military attack on Iraq. They failed to prevent the invasion and removal of Saddam Hussein. Post war investigations and even interviews with many senior level regime leaders (as well as with his interrogator) 
show that Saddam never believed the U.S. would have the will to go against the world’s anti-war movement. At most, he expected another Operation Desert Fox, and it wasn’t until the last few weeks or days that he finally recognized that the invasion was going to happen. What do you think might have happened if millions of people took to the streets and-instead of trying to deter action (as Saddam believed would be successful)…what if those millions had protested in demand that Saddam answer Blix’ 129pgs of “Unresolved Disarmament Issues”? Could the “Peace Movement” have better achieved peace by protesting against Saddam rather than against those who would later remove the dictator? Would the Peace Movement be more effective if it protested against dictators, warlords, etc rather than representative governments?
Maybe the Peace Movement has failed because it’s embraced the very tactics that it alleges were used to start a war? Before the war, we were told by members of the Bush Administration that the war would be short, costs offset by Iraqi oil revenue, and casualties would be comparable to those of Desert Storm. Those claims were wrong. Opponents of the war often point to them as deliberately wrong, misleading, etc.; i.e. lies. Conversely, 
for the past four years the American people have been told that the Army was on the verge of collapse, that there was no way to continue the war in Iraq without a draft, that casualties are 50x higher than the actual number of bodies, that the cost is trillions higher than it really is, that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror (despite the fact that 95%+ of the suicide bombers were Al Queda, and 80% of all civilian casualties were from Al 
Queda suicide bombings). Today’s Peace Movement seems to feel it’s ok to lie and/or mislead to try and end the war in Iraq in the same way that Bush Administration people are accused of having lied and misled to start it.
Maybe the movement fails because its promoters really aren’t willing to help people/nations in trouble? When a nation is starving, and it asks the world for food then the U.S sends food. When a nation is facing a massive 
disease, and it asks for medicine, then the U.S. sends it. When a nation is hit by a tsunami or earthquake or other natural disaster the U.S. sends aid. When a nation is under attack from terrorist groups that are allied, affiliated, or even part of the enemy that the U.S. is at war with (as is currently the case in Iraq) then why shouldn’t the U.S. send help?
Maybe it’s something as simple as respect? Looking back at the protests and marches that brought about changes in civil rights and helped end the Vietnam War history books show tens of thousands of people dressed in their Sunday-best. Many people see today’s protest marches, and they look like carnivals. Groups like Code Pink seem the opposite in appearance to the respectful, professional look of the 60’s civil rights marches. Does this polar shift in respectful protest to a more “carnival” protest had an effect on the Peace Movement? Do people respect clowns as much as they did more formal protesters of the past?
I don’t know, but the fact remains that the Peace Movement seems more a partisan political tool and a carnival than a substantive and meaningful call for action. Perhaps someday it will succeed in bringing peace to a war torn nation rather than support those tearing it apart? Perhaps it would be more successful if it marched and took action against the terrorists?
For a detailed look at the 3/15/08 protest in LA from where these pics were taken, please visit this site. It’s worth it!
Author of “Reparations and America’s 2nd Civil War
Reparations and America’s 2nd Civil War: Malensek, Scott: 9798864028674: Amazon.com: Books
I’m currently reading “Liberal Facism”. It’s a tough read, but worth it. The Anti-War schtick is just that – a schtick. The goal is to overthrow the legal government. Most of those demonstrators are the “useful idiots” that facism has always motivated – if the leaders succeed in their goal of taking over the government, the “useful” idiots will be the first to go. War is to be condemned unless it serves their purpose – then it’s justified and necessary.
Outstanding post, Scott!
I would say the peace movement isn’t a movement at all.
1. There is the lobbyist camp which is fighting over the $500 billion military budget. For example the talk and studies on the mental illness from the Iraq/Afganistan vets could be in part coming from people trying to get a contract to sell a drug like Prozac to the vets. There is also talk of peer (as in a technologically advanced) warfare which just sounds like somebody trying to sell a weapon system for a foe that doesn’t exist (the airforce, for example, listed India as a possible U.S. enemy when it tried to get more F-22s). I would include the businesses selling shirts, hats and buttons and books in this camp although they are trying to get money from the public rather than the military.
2. There is the celebrities camp. This could be real celebrities or those just looking for their 15 minutes of fame. These people will do anything to get noticed and news programs want celebrities to help sell their show. If CNN is able to book Britney Spears to talk about Iraq, it will.
3. There is the party camp. These people like to dress up and make noise.
4. There is the rebel camp. They either like to rebel at anything or are just trying to find their way.
5. Then there are the people that are actually serious about the peace movement but they are buried by the other groups. Most of this group have jobs, bills and no time for protests. I would say the economy in the 1960s and 1970s was in some ways better and some ways worse. There was higher unemployment, but if one could land a job it usually allowed a one income family which freed up a bunch of people to protest. In this age, the economy provides more jobs but everyone has to work to pay the bills.
Because being “anti-war” is not the same thing as being “for peace”. Something the hippies don’t seem to get. Absence of violence does not mean the presence of peace.
The U.S. military IS the peace movement.
Short on time but if I remember correctly the MSM played up the fact that there would be massive causalities during the runup to Baghdad. Don’t recall Bush saying there would be few causalities….
Outstanding post btw Scott…..
….hehe
(the angel’s in the comments section)
Because it’s not even about what it claims to be about, and it’s boring.
Like a Zombie rising from the grave to take another toke off the bong, the Peace Movement attempts to make a statement about an “it” that never was.
Forgive me if some will say I lack the requisite qualifications as a tie-dyed-in-the-wool “Movementeer” since I was only in High School during “The Peace Movement” – but I remember a helluva lot of it — from the indoctrinations of the film “Hearts and Minds” in Jr. High through to my Lefty U.S. History Teacher who taught us Marxism and Socialism and the Fall of Western Civilization for Sophomore year. None of which happened like he thought.
What I remember is that it was really primarily a *movement* about being COOL and Getting Stoned and Laid – none of which Code Pink is gonna accomplish, and frankly in this day and age of potentially lethal STDs it’s not such a particular draw to kids — certainly not so much as it was to those sex-denied adolescents who were running away from the straight-laced 50’s.
Also, having been so thoroughly over-documented by 60’s Summer-of-Love Children, there’s nothing new or novel about acid or pot – and New Age Religion fundamentally isn’t much more than a bunch of Acid-Baptists in Tie-Dye, so the novelty (and sexual attraction) of that has also worn thin. At least Ravers are so much more straightforward about Ecstasy and trance-dance.
Youth Movements, as most semi-adolescent narcissistic sociological urges go, tend to be about Youth Itself, and the Yout’s typically have a pretty good spiel and patter developed to deal with and deflect Real Adults (Parents) from the truth of their actions, it’s mostly a whitewash for behavior and things that would otherwise get them in Trouble. But since they use the same old lines over and over to get off the hook or displace responsibility onto somebody or something else, probably some have come to believe the lies they told themselves. In a similar vein the older Yout’s had an issue with “Government=Parents” that they played-out over and over in their manifestly adolescent rebellion, repeated ad-nauseum as a child does and with increasing shrillness if their attention is not being met. Angry at being denied a voice to their tantrum some acted explosively, then ran away and hid.
The whole stinking, Zombie-Movement is not something that resurrects well – it is a corpse that is obviously ripe with Age. The blind obliviousness to the state of their creaky “Movement” and tattered tie-dyed corpse that the current participants evince is a certain sign that they have unresolved issues, including a bad memory – or as they are prone to say (over and over), “If you remember it, you weren’t there.” Well, I remember quite well how actively “Not-There” both my older Broth and Sister were, and the complete disasters that they made for themselves, excuses of “Enlightenment” notwithstanding.
Scott,
I finally took the time to click on the photos. I knew those photos would raise my blood pressure! And to think all of that occurred in my neck of the woods while I was out watching my friend’s daughter at her gymnastics meet.
Also, some good stuff by Jules Crittenden (excerpt):
It failed because it was not in favor of peace; it was in favor of defeat. These rallies were all sponsored and organized by anti-American, islamist and communist organizations like ANSWER and the Women’s Press Collective. Their increasingly desperate posters plead with passersby to attend their rallies in support of a huge laundry list of causes: end the war, free Mumia, end the Cuba embargo, legalize marijuana, ad nauseum.
Guys go to the rallies because hippy chicks are easy, and hippie chicks go to the rallies because, well, they’re easy.
They are about blaming America for the world’s problems, sometimes reaching to absurd lengths. But the cognitive dissonance eventually becomes overwhelming. More than anything else, this was not a movement because it offered no solution, no alternative, and no action item. You can’t just declare “peace.”
Also, the creeps behind the bogus protests overplayed their hands when people like Ward Churchill and Ted Rall and all the others blamed and mocked the victims of the 9/11 attacks and the brave soldiers who gave their lives to fight the very fascism that the loony left constantly claims eminate from the Bush White House. As a nation in terrorists’ crosshairs, our BS detector is set to “11.”
want to see what that movement really fears? our realizing their utter failure to understand this concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide
LMAO!
I see this in action every weekend in West Chester, Scott.
Cross posted this to MidnightBlue, the peaceful folk of the CCPM love to read my blog. I’m sure this will get blood pressure rising.
skye,
I decided to take a poke over at Code Pink HQ. I don’t expect to sway any of them; but for any of their visiting readership who aren’t fully brainwashed yet, perhaps if I sound reasoned and level-headed enough in my argument, I’ll make some readers think and reflect.
You are so much braver than I.
Yeah, good luck with that Wordsmith. They seem to be ignoring you.
They told us 2-3 million Iraqis have died from the Coalition, but the truth is that over the past 5yrs, there’ve been about 1/20th-1/30th that number of bodies, and only 1/200th-1/300th of the casualties are from American fire (the rest from the enemy aiming at and killing civilians)
They told us Saddam had not ties to Al Queda, but the Clinton Admin started the claim w the 1998 indictment of UBL, hundreds of captured regime members confessed to working w AQ, captured AQ guys in both Iraq and elsewhere have confessed to working w Iraq, and documents which were captured and authenticated show clearly and unequivocably that Saddam’s regime worked closely w Al Queda groups and Al Queda leadership even before the invasion
They told us the war was about oil, but it’s 210% higher now than it was before
They told us it was about some sort of daddy complex on GWB’s part (as if Congress and a dozen Democratic Presidential candidates didn’t look into that before authorizing the invasion)
They told us Congress didn’t see the same intel as the President, but they ignore the fact that many in Congress actually saw more.
They told us the intel was pressured, manipulated, a lie, a forgery, etc., but a dozen investigations have shown that wasn’t the case at all
They told us neocons like Doug Feith and his office tricked the entire government into war, but his office’s presentation was followed 48hrs later by a CIA presentation that cleared up any misconceptions.
They told us the war’s cost $3trillion dollars, but the DNC only recently admitted in its ads that it’s been $500bn over 5yrs….not expensive at all in terms of military operational costs. In fact, the cost of the Clinton wars was almost $400bn over 8yrs.
They told us that American Marines in Haditha were mass murdering psychos, then never apologized when the truth came out
They admit to their crowds that the DNC opposition to the war and the promise in 2006 to end it was a lie just to get the Democrats back in power
They claim that there was never any wmd in Iraq, but can’t tell us where the stuff that Pres Clinton said was there went, and they can’t even show any contaminated sand.
They tell us that no WMD warehouses were found, but it doesn’t take a warehouse. It takes a suitcase, and post-war investigations have shown that YES there was a WMD threat just not in the form of stockpiles.
They tell us it’s Bush’s war, and expect us to ignore that Democrats promoted it, saw more intel than the President, authorized the invasion, supported the war, funded the war, and continue to fund the war all the while calling it a lost cause and advocating appeasement or surrender to the enemy’s objective rather than America’s.
The peace movement has failed because it has revealed itself to be nothing more than a pipedream fueled for politial expediency by the DNC, fed on unimaginable distortions and deliberate lies….
….and now they wonder why it failed?
Maybe if “open minded” people dared to question their leaders rather than just follow them like lemmings, America would truly CHANGE, and be united instead of deliberately divided for the personal powerquest of professional politicians who want to keep their jobs or get more powerful ones.
Okay, Wordsmith… but you invite ’em over, you entertain ’em! LOL
This is a bunch I have little patience for. I think having a baby in a Naval hospital, right when Kerry was testifying about my “baby killer” friends, must have short circuited something in my “patience” brain circuitry for that mentality.
Jesus Christ, Scott…..early evening caffeine, some?
Sumpin like that word
Since 2003 when I wrote, Iraq’s Smoking Gun, I’ve been obsessed with trying to understand the “peace movement”. It’s not a peace movement at all. It’s a group of people deliberately misleading some of America’s finest, most active, most caring people. The entire theme they present is based on a lie that somehow an invasion of Iraq wasn’t necessary/that Saddam wasn’t a threat and if he was he could be removed peacefully.
It was necessary; it was the last resort after a decade plus of trying to use surrogates to remove him
He was a threat as post-war investigations have found, and as he himself admitted
Lastly, if the “peace movement” really wanted to remove him peacefully, they’d have marched by the millions demanding invasion so as to provide a credible threat of force (deterrence). Instead, they marched against the threat of invasion, and EVERY investigation (again, including Saddam’s own interrogation as well as that of his inner circle) all show that he never believed he was gonna be invaded until it was too late. The “peace movement” convinced him he wasn’t going to be invaded. They removed the only chance at peacefully compelling him to come clean on WMD, to end his ties to AQ, and to open the doors to a Democratic Iraq.
Why’d the “peace movement” do it? Because they’d been misled by professional politicians seeking the White House. I mean, seriously, are we to believe that the Maple Syrup King of Vermont, Dr/Gov Dean, somehow had access to intelligence secrets that no Democrat on the intel committee or even Hillary and Bill Clinton had? Hell no. That guy marketed the idea that invasion wasn’t necessary based on nothing more than his calculated political play to get support for his run for President. The same is true with a dozen other Democrats who ran for President at the time. It’s no accident that on the eve of the invasion, Democrats came out of the woodwork to announce they were running for President on anti-war themes (Yeah, that helped deter Saddam into compliance SOOOOOO much).
If the “peace movement” really wanted to make a difference and make Saddam comply peacefully, they’d have gone by the millions to Iraq to be human shields. Or they’d have gone to Iraq to march in the streets in support of Saddam rather than in the safety of the streets of London, NYC, etc.
Instead, led by politicians who saw a political marketing opportunity to sell out their nation’s interests in favor of their own, millions of people have been deliberately and grossly misled.
btw 550 tons of yellowcake uranium were secretly removed from Iraq last weekend and shipped to Canada where it will be used for peaceful purposes. It had been enriched in Saddam’s Iraq to make bombs, but the IAEA put it in a shed w a padlock and a tag to secure it rather than remove it. Not weapons grade stuff, but the clearest example that he intended to secretly restart his wmd programs and that the 10/2/2002 NIE was correct, if left alone, Saddam could have had a bomb by 2007. Also, this is 550 tons of stuff that coulda been loaded into empty artillery shells or suicide bombs, or backpack bombs to make dirty bombs. A few ounces per bomb=how many bombs from 550 tons?
Yeah yeah, I know….the UN already knew about it (like they knew about lots of WMD according to their 3/6/03 Unresolved Disarmament Issues report just days before the invasion), and they had it “secure” w a padlock and sticker.
Saddam was a tyrannical dictator w ties to Al Queda leadership and operational ties to Al Queda groups as well as a WMD rapid restart (“breakout capability” to quote the ISG report), and he couldn’t be removed peacefully. The invasion was the last resort.
At this point, anyone who believes otherwise is just parroting Bush Derangement Syndrome talking points from intelligence experts like the Maple Syrup King of Vermont/DNC Chairman Dean.
Since you’re too modest a prolific author to blow your own horn, here is a link to Scott’s reviews on Amazon for Iraq’s Smoking Gun that he mentioned above. He wrote it under his nom de plume, Sam Pender. Four reviews, all 5 stars.
While we’re at it, here’s a link to all of Scott’s books as Scott Malensek… plus those as Sam Pender.
You’re just a literary machine, guy!
BTW, always wanted to ask you the origin of your particular spelling of “al Qaeda” as “al Queda”.