A rchive Date
[ 23-02-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/steward.html
It looks like the '60s all over again
By HARTLEY STEWARD - Toronto Sun
February 23, 2003
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - The protesters are eternal. They look the same as they did 20, 30, probably even 50 years ago. Their signs say pretty much the same things they always said. The lettering is even the same. They are mostly young. Many are college students. A surprising number are mothers toting along their children.
They are not as broad a representation of the population as organizers would have you believe, but they have recruited a few seniors and here and there an old soldier stands by looking severe. Young blacks and Hispanics seemed to be fairly represented in the United States demonstrations.
I warrant the protester groups around the world, who came out in astonishing numbers last Sunday, look similar. Guesses put the number of American cities which boasted sizable crowds at about 150. Worldwide, they figure some 600 cities and towns participated. It may well have been the largest turnout of protesters in the history of protest. Millions upon millions, for sure.
More than 750,000, including the ridiculous Jesse Jackson, jammed into London's Hyde Park, startling even the organizers with their numbers and their zeal. Rome's Piazza Venezia hosted almost as many. France and Germany counted their objectors in the hundreds of thousands as well.
In nearby Orlando, looking for all the world like leftovers from the '60s, a very young and exuberant gang took to the downtown streets. Only headbands and peace signs outnumbered backpacks and baby pouches. All that was missing was soldiers with flowers jammed in their rifles. It was as if the '60s had never gone away.
I tried and almost always failed to find a few guys in suits - except for a couple of worn out movie stars in the Los Angeles demonstration. Certainly there were none to be found in Orlando and most of the other American cities chosen for coverage by the major television networks. There were no women in suits, either. There were a few guys in London sporting collar and tie, but in England even the anarchists wear suits.
Even a smattering of suits would have helped me take them more seriously.
I was looking for any suggestion that actual adults had bought into their beliefs that President George Bush's plans to effect a regime change in Iraq one way or the other was wrong. I was looking for anything that might show that this generation hitting the streets en masse in protest was more than just the latest cool thing to do; more than merely an opportunity to yell a few obscenities, break a few windows and scrawl a little graffiti on the walls. That behind it was some real thought and a sincere desire to understand the issues.
Until I listened to some of the protesters try to tackle the question of why they thought demonstrating against a war with Iraq a good idea, I was prepared to believe the size of the demonstrations was because the Bush administration had done a poor job of explaining the nation's need for a drastic change in foreign policy after the attack of Sept. 11, 2001.
The fact is, one would not know where to begin the lesson. The thought processes of most of those I heard interviewed - here and abroad - were so shallow and simplistic as to make presentation to them of a subtle and cogent argument well nigh useless. Their impulse to march in protest is by necessity knee-jerk, in most cases, because they don't have near enough information to make a thoughtful decision.
There never seems to be any suggestion on the part of the demonstrators that they might have an obligation to offer a solution to the dreadful dilemma facing the free world. Apparently that's the job of the United States government. Their job is to object.
Listen to Mikolaj Wasowiski, a 24-year-old University of Florida senior: "We cannot buy the reason that we are going to overthrow a ruthless dictator when there are so many other ruthless dictators who are probably more ruthless," he told The Orlando Sentinel.
In New York, where crowd estimates varied from 100,000 to half a million, a city policeman trying to control the crowd was hauled off his horse and beaten. Eight other officers were injured and 50 protesters were arrested.
President Bush is obliged because of his elected office to say he views the demonstrations, especially in his own country, as an expression of democracy. But it is not difficult to find Americans who believe such demonstrations are more treason than exercises in free speech; that they constitute a betrayal of the president and the country; that they provide succor and encouragement for the enemy.
I would like to dismiss them as harmless, even silly, but I find instead I get angry and frustrated when I try to reconcile the facile and self-righteous protesters with images of the vicious and deadly terrorist attack on the Twin Towers.
Steward appears Tuesdays and Sundays. E-mail: hartleysteward@canoemail.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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