Cindy's movement: is this what the antiwar people really want?

IN mid-August, the liberal Internet organizing group MoveOn.org sponsored a series of candlelight vigils across the country to support Cindy Sheehan, the woman camped outside President Bush's Texas ranch to protest her son's death in Iraq. As part of the effort, MoveOn offered what might be called pre-fab vigil kits to would-be protesters who wanted to project an organized and professional image. There were signs, pre-designed to be printed out poster size, that read MOMS FOR PEACE and MEET WITH CINDY. And there was a "sample media advisory," a press release that the leaders of local MoveOn protests could send to newspapers and TV and radio stations:

   Mothers in [YOUR TOWN] to
   President Bush: Meet With Mother
   Whose Son Was Killed In Iraq

   Candlelight vigil in front of [YOUR
   LOCATION]

   [YOUR CITY]--Local mothers,
   family members of fallen soldiers,
   and other concerned citizens will
   hold a vigil in [CITY] in support of
   Cindy Sheehan ...

Just fill in the blanks and you've got yourself a protest. The release even contained a heartfelt, pre-written quote that declared, "'Many of us have children in Iraq and have the same questions as Cindy,' said [XXXX], [CITY] MoveOn member."

MoveOn's click-and-protest vigil raised a question: Are the group's antiwar demonstrations a natural, organic outgrowth of increasing disapproval of the war? Or are they the product of a relatively small core of antiwar organizers determined to make their movement appear more significant than it is?

The same could be asked of the antiwar movement as a whole. Certainly MoveOn's vigils--the organization says there were 1,627 of them on August 17--were relatively small affairs. Fifty thousand people were said to have registered to take part nationwide, with MoveOn estimating that the number who actually showed up might have been somewhat higher. For a national event, it wasn't very big. And the Sheehan protest, for all the attention it has received in the press, is downright tiny. Indeed, today--with setbacks in Iraq and a death toll of U.S. troops inching toward the 2,000 mark--the striking thing is that the antiwar movement is not bigger than it is. Instead, the movement is deeply divided, lacking focus, energy, and--the Sheehan protest aside--visibility.

Signs of division are everywhere. The most bitter split now is between the groups preparing for what organizers say will be a massive antiwar demonstration in Washington on September 24. On one side is United for Peace and Justice, which claims to represent about 1,300 antiwar groups, including the National Council of Churches, the Green party, and Not in Our Name. On the other side is International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), a group so far out on the fringes of the left that it includes Stalinists, Trotskyites, and fans of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il.

The conflict between the two groups is clear from the promotional materials they have prepared for the rally. United for Peace and Justice says the demonstration will "send a clear message to the White House and Congress: The Iraq war must end. It's time to bring all the troops home, leaving no U.S. military bases behind, and to stop the corporate theft of Iraq's resources." While that position puts United for Peace and Justice well to the left of almost every Democrat in Washington, it is nevertheless what might be called centrist, for the antiwar movement.

International ANSWER is a different story. "While we organize around the demand for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the U.S. from Iraq," ANSWER says in its promotional materials, "it is essential that the movement show the connection between the war in Iraq and all the other fronts of the U.S. government's war for Empire, including the struggle of working and poor people in the United States." Therefore, ANSWER listed several "demands" of the rally, including the demands that the U.S. "end colonial occupation from Iraq to Palestine to Haiti"; "support the Palestinian people's right of return"; "stop the threats against Venezuela, Cuba, Iran & North Korea"; "stop the racist, anti-immigrant and anti-labor offensive at home, defend civil rights," and so on.

The differences between the two groups were so great that they considered holding separate rallies in Washington. But that would have presented a graphic picture of a terribly divided movement, so after much talking, they worked out an agreement to share the same protest. "We are a very broad coalition," says Leslie Cagan, head of United for Peace and Justice, walking carefully around differences with International ANSWER. "What we have in common, what holds us together, is our opposition to the war in Iraq, and that is why we felt it was very, very critical for us to organize a massive antiwar demonstration ... They [International ANSWER] have another way of organizing; we're not trashing them, we're not criticizing them."

Not now, at least. Which means that, come September 24, the face of the antiwar movement will again be, as it was in the months leading up to the war, members of groups like the Free Palestine Alliance-U.S. or Free the Cuban Five or the Korea Truth Commission--all parts of International ANSWER--yelling things like, "Butcher Sharon!" or "We don't want your racist war!" or "Free Mumia!" (This last is a reference to Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Philadelphia cop-killer on Death Row.) The antiwar movement will look like a bunch of kooks.

All that will undoubtedly make more moderate Democrats cringe. As they have searched for a way to oppose George W. Bush on Iraq, they have sometimes found themselves more at war with their left flank than with the White House. "The public is rightly fed-up with the status quo," wrote Democratic Leadership Council adviser Marshall Wittmann recently. "But that does not necessarily mean that they will be willing to accept defeat. If Democrats become associated with 'defeatism' and 'out now,' this may enable the president and Rove to portray the party as the 'cut and run' crowd." Wittmann also wrote that a quick withdrawal would "reward al-Zarqawi and his killers with a victory for creating rivers of blood. Whatever the legion of mistakes of the Bush administration, that is not a moral position."

But that, in fact, is the position of the movement that will come to Washington on September 24. It is also, of course, the position of Cindy Sheehan and her followers in Crawford, Texas. She is the one who not only called for an immediate U.S. pullout from Iraq, but also referred to the president and his "neo-con cabal" as "the biggest terrorist outfit in the world"; who said the United States would be a "fascist state" without the Internet because the press is the "propaganda tool" of the government; who talked about the "Bush crime family"; and who declared, "You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine, and you'll stop the terrorism."

It's not the kind of rhetoric that picks up support from the center of the political spectrum, even from those who are increasingly concerned about the course of the war. But hope is alive on the antiwar left. On many, many occasions during the Sheehan episode, protesters expressed the hope that Sheehan would somehow provide the movement the boost that it so far has not been able to give itself. "We have Cindy Sheehan to thank for the beginning of what I believe is a mainstream movement against this war," the left-wing singer Steve Earle told the crowd in Crawford on August 20. "This moment in history, right now, I really believe that this is where we get it going."

Maybe. But don't bet on it. It's not that Americans aren't worried about the prospects for success in Iraq or don't have questions about the administration's handling of the war. It's just that the antiwar movement--currently led by International ANSWER and Cindy Sheehan--will undoubtedly turn off more Americans than it will inspire. No matter what has gone wrong in Iraq, that simple fact hasn't changed.