But, but, I thought an antiwar movement was a bunch of hippies in the street doing nekkid pagan dancing and stuff!

Tom Hayden takes a look at today's antiwar movement - yes, Virginia, there is one - in Anti-war movement deserves some credit San Francisco Chronicle 11/26/06. He poses an obvious question. Obvious, that is, if you're not one of the punditocracy:

To many observers, the [antiwar] movement seems feckless and marginal, its rallies an incoherent bazaar of radical sloganeering. Yet according to Gallup surveys, a majority of Americans came to view Iraq as a mistake more rapidly than they came to oppose the Vietnam War more than three decades ago. So how could there be a peace majority without a peace movement?

A political movement does not equate to street demonstrations, although Hayden points out:

Even defined as a street phenomenon, the anti-war movement has commanded significant numbers. The global movement surely succeeded in pressuring foreign governments against supporting the U.S. invasion in 2003. The February 2003 protests were the largest turnouts in history before a war began. The August 2004 demonstrations at the Republican convention in New York were unprecedented in convention history, including the 1,800 arrests (approximately three times the number arrested in Chicago in 1968.) (my emphasis)

And his explanation of the cluelessness on the Establishment press on that score rings true:

Perhaps these events go largely unnoticed because of a false paradigm that anti-war protesters must be isolated, howling, fringe figures. That doesn't fit Cindy Sheehan or the military families who have turned against the war.

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