by Alexander Cockburn
America right now is ‘anti-war’, in the sense that about two thirds of the people think the occupation of Iraq is a bad business and the troops should come home. Anti-war sentiment was a major factor in the success of the Democrats in last November’s elections, when they recaptured Congress. The irony is that this sharp disillusion of the voters owes almost nothing to any anti-war movement. To say the anti-war movement is dead would be an overstatement, but not by a large margin. Compared to kindred movements in the 1960s and early 1970s, or to the struggles against Reagan’s wars in Central America in the late 1980s, it is certainly inert.
When in March of this year Democrats in the us Congress felt obliged to send President Bush the message that he should bring the troops home before he leaves office, they were not voting in the shadow of a mighty throng of protesters cramming into the open spaces in front of the Lincoln Memorial, their slogans rattling the windows of Congress. They were voting in the shadow of the elections of 2008, and eager to display in gesture if not in substance some acknowledgement of a general anti-war feeling abroad in the land.
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