Lord love academics, but they will be long-winded. Twenty pages to express the following three ideas:
- The antiwar movement was largely taken over by the Democratic party between 2002 and 2007;
- The Democratic party abandoned wholesale the antiwar movement without a qualm just as soon as they were finished using* the antiwar movement; and
- The antiwar movement collapsed like the empty suit that it was, just as soon as the elements were removed that made it more than a haven for some of the most vile examples of depraved scum in Western society**.
…which was, of course, already obvious to anybody with a triple-digit IQ. But I suppose that when people give you grant money to do a survey, you should write a paper. If only out of elementary politeness.
Via Instapundit (grinding antiwar progressive’s faces in this) and Megan McArdle (more in sorrow than in anger).
Moe Lane
*Do I mean that in a sense that implies an uneven sexual power dynamic? Why, yes: yes, I think that I do.
**Not that the authors were sufficiently undiplomatic to imply said depravity: that’s all me. And while we’re on the subject, here’s a fourth bullet point:
- The antiwar movement will be reactivated just as soon as there’s another Republican President to vilify. And the antiwar movement will be more than happy to lick the Democrats’ hands, and comply.
I suggest that there never was an anti-war movement. Rathe you had an anti-draft movement, which died when Richard Nixon ended the draft. That is to say, the peace protesters were not protesting war, but only their potential involvment in it.
It appears that any peace movement since 1973 was constructed out of whole cloth.
Thing is, the “anti-war” movement didn’t just exercise their right to protest. They supported the enemy. Code Pink — given letters asking Bashir Asad to provide them with safe passage by high-ranking Democrats — gave money and supplies to al’Qaeda in Fallujah. Other groups picked up and amplified every piece of enemy propaganda they could find — to the point of showing photos from a pornography shoot in the halls of Boston’s city government, and reprinting them in the Boston Globe, because it was claimed they were photos of a US soldier committing rape.
Oh, and the Democrats didn’t just spread the lies the enemy made up. They created some of their own. Remember the memo about using their control of the intelligence committees to attack Bush by creating the story that he lied us into war? Remember how they ginned up “Plamegate”? And how about Sandy Berger and his Magic Pants? We’ll never know what documents he destroyed — or passed to someone.
Oh, and how convenient was it that Gorelick had not only just raked in millions from serving on the Fannie Mae board, but also got to serve on the committee that investigated the impact of the policy she wrote?