Gathering With the Eagles
GATES OF VIENNA
by Baron Bodissey
There was another big anti-war rally today in Washington DC, and an anarchist website tipped its hand by announcing that they intended to vandalize the Vietnam War Memorial as part of the action, as they did earlier with the Capitol building.
Free Republic responded by organizing a massive counter-protest of Vietnam vets and other patriotic volunteers in order to protect the memorial. I made the long drive up early this morning to report on "The Gathering of the Eagles" for Gates of Vienna.
..............The Rolling Thunder guys stood shoulder to shoulder across the walkway that leads to the memorial, and refused entry to any of the demonstrators who tried to get in. I was standing next to one of the vets when a woman carrying a peace sign and pulling a suitcase on wheels wanted to get past us.
"Excuse me," she said, with a thick European accent.
"You can't come in here," he told her. "You're not wanted."
"What do you mean?" she exclaimed in outrage. "This is America! You can't stop me going in there."
"Oh, yes I can. Go back down there —" he pointed towards the Lincoln Memorial — "that's where you're wanted. And we'll stay down here."
He never did let her get by.
There were several DC cops opposite the vets, watching impassively from across the sidewalk next to Constitution Avenue. I asked one of them if the checkpoint was OK with him. He shrugged. "They're not blocking the sidewalk. That's all I care about."
The demonstrators were now arriving by the busload and massing on the lawn by the Lincoln Memorial. Their plan was to cross Memorial Bridge and march a mile and half to the Pentagon. There was no way I was going out over the Potomac in those temperatures and with a stiff wind blowing, so I decided to head back towards the Metro.
DevilThe last thing I saw before turning to walk up the hill was this very peculiar icon or totem. It was being wheeled up the sidewalk by one woman while two others held ropes and struggled to keep the wind from blowing it away. It seemed unlikely that the monstrosity would ever make it across Memorial Bridge intact.
I never did figure out exactly what the thing represented. It sported an eye-and-pyramid on its forehead, and had something to do with Bush, and something to do with Oil, but beyond that it was inscrutable.
After I left DC, some of my TV-owning sources told me that CNN had lavish coverage of the anti-war protesters, but no footage of the veterans. CNN reported that there were "about two thousand counter-demonstrators", but don't believe them — early in the morning, when the vets met at their staging area, I saw considerably more than that. I heard that they fanned out across the city later on to place a protective cordon around all the major monuments.
God bless those veterans! They renewed my spirit.
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