Casualty list speaks louder than senseless anti-war protests

By Pete Waldmeir / The Detroit News

Usually, I can abide just about any form of protest against any injustice, real or imagined. Hey, this society's all about freedom of speech and assembly, right? As long as protesters don't use violence to make their point, I say, let 'em holler til they're blue in the face. Saturday's anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C., however, dipped to a new low in ridiculous behavior. It wasn't only badly timed, it was just plain stupid. I mean, this was the 2001 version of the Flat Earth Society grousing about the United States' pending involvement in a conflict in which we are the only nation that has been in the cross-hairs and suffered large numbers of casualties. The U.S. has neither invaded a foreign land nor fired a shot in anger. This is not Vietnam, where we stuck our noses into the politics of a region a million miles from Times Square and poured billions of dollars and thousands of American lives into a seemingly-endless conflict that left deep scars on our national psyche in pursuit of a goal that nobody ever adequately identified. Here there not only is a real adversary, but there is real proof, real death and real destruction that Americans haven't just seen on television, but can smell, taste and feel -- right here, right now. We live with it, day after day. And we also live with the anxiety of waiting for the second and perhaps even a third or fourth shoe to drop. Many Americans were eager to rush right out and smack Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 bloodshed. Like those impatient retaliators, I demanded revenge and retribution, and the sooner the better. It's one thing for these stiffs to bomb a marketplace in the Middle East or blow up an embassy a country that is half a world away. It's quite another to watch landmark buildings in the heart of New York City and Washington, D.C., explode, then crumble and bury men and women, children and rescue workers. Frankly, I think that this nation's military and political leadership has shown incredible restraint over the last three weeks. I'm not quite certain if it's because they can't figure out exactly how to respond or if they actually are planning the mother of all counter-strikes and want to make certain they have everything in place. Actually, it makes little difference. Suffice to say that there will be a response to these vile acts when the time is right and it will be aimed at the perpetrators and not just the innocent bystanders. Saturday's demonstrators, alas, not only were getting way out ahead of the curve, I'm not sure they even know which curve they are following. Most of that crowd apparently are rebels in search of a more timely cause; warmed over anti-globalization protesters turned peaceniks because their original message has gone stale. Whatever, they'd do well to sit down, shut up and put an ear to the ground for a while. Just shouting the wrong message at the top of your lungs doesn't automatically make people believe that you know what you're talking about.

Read Pete Waldmeir's column on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday in The Detroit News. Send e-mail to Pwaldmeir@aol.com or call him at (313) 222-2345.

-- (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), October 01, 2001