It's not up to the marchers to offer an acceptable rationale for another course of action. The need only say no or yes.
...Give women the vote; get out of Vietnam; stop racism in the US.
The three campaigns you mention all had a straightforward translation from the demonstration to the political course of action desired - it was clearly possible to pass the Suffrage Amendment, leave Vietname, and pass civil rights legislation. In fact, the demonstrations happened to support political campaign that were going on at the same time.
Now, the political consequence being demanded at the anti-war demonstrations is a chimera: Disarm Saddam peacefully. Saddam isn't disarming peacefully with 200,000 troops on his border; he's certainly not going to disarm if we forget about the invasion as the demonstrators demand. So the real non-chimerical demand translates to: Leave Saddam alone. Pull back the troops, lift the sanctions (the demonstrators object vehemently to the result of sanctions), sell the Kurds down the river.
The demonstrators are supporting a non-serious policy. This guts the chances of their having any political influence. Saying 'it's not their job' to get a coherent policy is like saying that an opposition party has no responsibility to come up with a coherent platform. If they don't, then they don't have any serious plans for returning to power, apart from praying that the party in power screws up badly.
As for the Taliban insertion in that sentence, I assume that was a typo. You meant to type Al Q. But now having typed it, it does occur to me that had the US continued after Al Q after 9-11,and not taken a wrong turn into Iraq, the same kind of backing found for the Afghanistan campaign would likely still be around. Assuming, of course, the Bush folk could handle the diplomacy of all that with a bit better skill than to date.
No, I meant to type 'the Taliban' since they ran Afghanistan, the country we were about to invade. If you will recall, the far left was totally opposed to that attack also, and made very free with predictions of quagmires, humanitarian disasters (remember Chomsky's "silent genocide of three or four millions"?), the brutal Afghan winter, and "Afghanistan, death of empires". But in the direct aftermath of 9/11, these opponents did not have the time or chance to gather supporters to demand that we Leave Mullah Omar Alone. |
