Since I don’t want to just be MrEff’s yes-man:

Dear Puke,

The anti-war movement is not a collective. Honest to god, it’s not. They do not choose to participate under a collective banner. A poltical group posts up flyers, web pages, hand outs to get the masses (anyone) to attend a rally based on the issue that they are concerned with (be it anti-war sentiments or Free Peltier). No one claims a right to this group that collects en masse at a rally. These political organizers don’t distance themselves from the wackies because they are open to others ideas, thoughts and opinions. When you create an open rally, you invite anyone with like or opposing interests. Why should an organizer take any credit or blame for the action of anyone in attendance?
Protests, rallies, whatever you want to call them are not “working” as you feel they should in that they don’t stop the war. I think that these protests, rallies, etc. have more than one purpose. Sure, if a whole bunch of people physically say somewhere and it stopped war all over the world that would be swell, but that doesn’t happen. What does happen is that 100 people find a place to stand and voice their opinion. They invite everyone. People listen, people learn. The audience and support for an idea expands over time. Look at the WTO. Do you believe that most people would even care if it weren’t for protesters? Now you have Jane Smith, anchorwoman, running a story about why people destroyed Seattle’s downtown. When there is dissent and upheaval it makes for good 6:05 news.

The grassroots political groups need to pick their battles, and they do. I’m sure they are very sorry about not being able to hold a rally every hour of every day for every human-suffering world event that is horrible and caused by wealthy bastards. If they don’t fight all of them it does not mean that the causes they do choose are somehow less worthy of our attention.

As far as the removal of Saddam, there are other options. Ideally, yes, you create a huge domestic opposition. Realistically, you hire a sharp shooter or four, pin the blame on the guy in the warehouse who ran into a movie theatre and there never was a grassy knoll. Honestly. You don’t send off all the physically able citizens aged 18 to 34 into a pit of death to kill anyone aged 0-125 over there. Innocent people get killed in wars. Innocent children get raised in wars. Innocent children growing up in violence become violent adults. You’re setting up for future wars when you teach societies that this is the only way to solve conflicts.

Just because someone opposes Saddam and opposes war but does not have a brilliant underplayed solution doesn’t mean that they are somehow wrong. I just came up with one very sketchy alternative to the removal of Saddam without war (the whole grassy knoll). Am I all of a sudden right about opposing both war and Saddam?

The status quo on Iraq a year ago = not good. The status quo 5 years ago = not good. The status quo now = not good. What’s different is that with the removal of Saddam there are prospects for the future. People are still dying on a regular basis of unnatural causes, just now there are Americans in the mix and the numbers per day are probably up.

“Most members of the movement argue that they take to the streets in favor of the voiceless people of the countries involved; they seem instead to be arguing against any American military action.”

I don’t think those two are separate issues entirely. If American military action is taken what effect does that have on the voiceless population?

I think there is a difference between violent interventions such as war (that an anti-war movement is likely to dislike) and political interventions. Some interventions are worse than other. Going down the line we have War being the worst for all parties, All Sanctions being horrible for the citizens of the punished country, Trade Sanctions will hurt the businesses (in turn the citizens, in turn the economy, in turn the state) but at a high cost for all parties if the export is important, Opposition Campaigns (in this case unhappening—in many cases where regimes need to be removed), Political intervention with Human Rights trials from the UN and so on and so forth (but we know the limitations of the UN) and finally Humanitarian aid such as citizen empowerment programs. It’s like giving an 11 year old the talk about the birds and the bees. Sure it’s intervention, but it’s good intervention.

There is nothing moral about a country getting violent when other options can be made available for a lot less of the costs of both finances and lives. You rape comparison is false as we can call an authority to prevent it. The world stage has no one at this time (and if we did it would be Revelations, baby).

If you get to the UN make the tools of political upheaval an army of sharp shooters.

Just because some one doesn’t believe war to be the answer and does not have an answer of their own does not mean that they are doing a disservice or are magically wrong. It’s not unlike telling an anti-abortionist that protesting doesn’t work and that they should somehow rise to government with that platform to change that law. Not everyone has the desire to enter politics in a very real way.