Who were the Real "Anti-War" Protesters?
Christopher Hitchens at Slate has more on the Ramsey Clark's Anti-War Protest from this weekend.
Saturday's demonstration in Washington, in favor of immediate withdrawal of coalition forces from Iraq, was the product of an opportunistic alliance between two other very disparate "coalitions." Here is how the New York Times (after a front-page and an inside headline, one of them reading "Speaking Up Against War" and one of them reading "Antiwar Rallies Staged in Washington and Other Cities") described the two constituenciess of the event:And, LGF and Zombie have pictures from the rally in San Francisco. And, you thought the Washington DC rally was crazy!
The protests were largely sponsored by two groups, the Answer Coalition, which embodies a wide range of progressive political objectives, and United for Peace and Justice, which has a more narrow, antiwar focus.
The name of the reporter on this story was Michael Janofsky. I suppose that it is possible that he has never before come across "International ANSWER," the group run by the "Worker's World" party and fronted by Ramsey Clark, which openly supports Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, Slobodan Milosevic, and the "resistance" in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Clark himself finding extra time to volunteer as attorney for the génocidaires in Rwanda. Quite a "wide range of progressive political objectives" indeed, if that's the sort of thing you like. However, a dip into any database could have furnished Janofsky with well-researched and well-written articles by David Corn and Marc Cooper—to mention only two radical left journalists—who have exposed "International ANSWER" as a front for (depending on the day of the week) fascism, Stalinism, and jihadism. (much more here)
posted by Gateway Pundit at 9/27/2005 02:37:00 PM
1 Comments:
Hitchens is right. Here is a comment I sent to them about this:
If I had not experienced it, I would not have believed it. Hitchens might have a point about the wavering “anti-war” stance of some on the left.
To wit: I was discussing the situation in Ethiopia with someone I considered very learned of the left-of-center persuasion. True to form, I went off on how Jimmy Carter continues his rather bizarre relationship with a pointedly Marxist government that has dabbled in everything from ethic cleansing (the Anuaks) to election rigging to mowing down of unarmed students protesting the election rigging. Yet Jimmy has said nothing about the atrocious human rights record of his African boy toy.
Learned Lefty then says to me: “The trouble with Ethiopia is that it got rid of revolutionaries like Mengistu who were bringing reform to the country.”
Es-squeeze me? The same Marxist/communist Mngistu, one of the most brutal dictators of Africa who killed a whole generation of Ethiopians? The same one?
Yes, mused Learned Lefty, the same one. Just because the US didn’t like him didn’t mean that the people didn’t.
No, seriously?
Seriously!
So, yes. There is that element in the left that believes that as long as the people committing heinous crimes are the same color as the ones being suicide-bombed, gassed and shot, then there is room for palatability. The left needs to get rid of those elements ifit wants to be taken seriously. Legitimate anti-war supporters are being lumped in with these people. Ferpetessake, did you hear Amiri Bakara’s speech??
So, for those of us who thought that anti-war could also mean anti-violence from wherever it comes, the left has disappointed us. A few weeks after the Ethiopian government killed unarmed students, Jeffrey Sachs, the new Poverty Pimp, was on the same dais with the Ethiopian prime minister calling him “the most brilliant leader ever.”
Don’t piss on me and tell me that it’s raining!
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