Roger L. Simon: The Big (Antiwar) Snooze

The "Antiwar Movement" is in pretty drastic decline if we are to believe the figures (and we can assume they're inflated) given out by the mainstream media today for European demonstrations in opposition to the Iraq War. Some news services, like king fuddy-duddy Reuters, report "tens of thousands" in their lead, but further inspection reveals that London, a city of roughly nine million with millions more in their outlying districts, could muster up a scant ten thousand in Hyde Park. [Maybe it conflicted with the whippet races.-ed.] Similar figures are reported for Rome and Turkey. Pretty pathetic. As we all know, over a million demonstrated in Beirut alone last week in favor of democracy and against Syrian occupation of Lebanon - in a country of three and a half million.

MSNBC quotes one of the antiwar demonstrators this way: "We got the Iraqis into this mess, we need to help them out of it," said Kit MacLean, 29, waiting near Hyde Park's Speakers' Corner for the start of a planned march to the U.S. Embassy and Trafalgar Square.

I guess Mr. MacLean hasn't read the latest poll in which the Iraqis themselves say they are now better off by a margin approaching forty percent. But that's okay. At least Mr. MacLean got some fresh air.

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The war is over. These people are protesting against democracy and reconstruction.

Roger,
completely off topic but is there a way that you could set it up that when you E-mail someone one of your posts, as I do from time to time, that the emailer could be copied the Email that is sent!

What I have to do is Email the person I want to send the post to. Then come back and Email myself.

A lot more people turned out to watch Wales win the Six Nations Rugby Grand Slam.

It wa an absolutely gorgeous , warm spring day in London today. An ideal day to stroll around and protest. And few showed up. George Galloway was being interviewed by Sky News and spent the whole time arguing with the reporter about the size of the "crowd"

Only the die hards were out and they would be out demonstrating for anything. The tide has turned.

There were maybe 300-500 demonstrators in Chicago. Pretty pathetic compared to previous years, they must have been further depressed because the police were out in force preventing them physically demonstrating just how "peaceful" they are.

That is indeed correct. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over. These countries regrettably remain dangerous, but our enemies have no realistic way of returning to power. Both the Baathists and the Taliban are on the defensive. The United States endured similar circumstances in Germany after WWII. Nazi terrorists did everything they could to derail progress. Needless to add, eventually they were forced to throw in the towel.

A number of people like Michael Lind claim, ““That not inconsiderable asset, the mystique of American power, is a casualty of the Iraq war.” What planet do these individuals live on? And isn’t Lind’s approach to historical analysis uncomfortably close to those arguing that the holocaust never happened? It appears that the hatred of George W. Bush has turned some people’s brains to mush.

I'm uncertain that the number of people at demonstrations means anything; maybe everyone's moving to a different mode of political discourse?

Going to a street demonstration could sort-of be convincing way back when the demonstrators really were the outsiders... but Kerry got a much larger fraction of the vote in 2004 than McGovern did in 1972, and the antiwar people don't have to gather together in crowds in order to get their viewpoints validated: they have CNN now.

(I'd like to offer the qualifier that I support Bush; but just like I don't have time or energy to go to any pro-Bush rallies or marches, the average liberal probably doesn't either.)

You may be right, Phil Fraering, but the difference in numbers of demonstrators the antiwar could generate earlier and now are striking. BTW, I voted for McGovern.

I don't believe ANSWER and Moveon put much effort into the current demonstrations. Wait until military action appears imminent once again. Or until W finally nominates someone for a high court vacancy.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that for both the left and right (and people in between and off to the side or above and below the line), marching is no longer an important part of the political expressive process.

I meant no offense by bringing up McGovern; this was meant as an example of a mismatch, as it were, between the amount of support-apparent-by-marching and support-apparent-from-voting-percentages.

I agree that the low numbers at the demonstrations by itself is not proof of low morale amongst the anti war crowd. But combine that with the MSM not trumpeting every death in Iraq on the front pages, the "I still hate Bush but maybe we were wrong" comments from Maher, The Daily Show, and various op-ed pundits and I think you are accurate when propose that the Anti-War folks have lost some of their bite. Even when you look at the content of the blogs you see less coverage. If things were going badly the coverage would be unrelenting. When you see the election in Iraq, the Lebanon situation. and the gradual movements towards democratic reform all over the middle east it is getting harder and harder for the far left to whip up the enthusiasm for big demos.Had these events not taken place the crowds would have been huge. If events turn south those anti war people who are using "other means" to transmit their views will be back on the street with their puppets and burning Bush displays.

If you haven't done so, be sure to stop on by Little Green Footballs. They have some protest (guffaw) pictures there, along with plenty of links.

There's a picture of woman angry with Bush. Angry Woman is flipping the bird. She has her finger painted purple. Get it? She's pissed because Iraqis voted. The most pathetic thing I've seen in quite some time.

Lies! Right Wing Lies! There were millions of antiwar protesters around the world and we have the bus-ticket receipts from Damascus to prove it!

Don't know how typical this is of other US cities, but here in Salt Lake the college campus has been plastered with flyers about the Big Day (March 19) for about two weeks. This afternoon when I arrived on campus there was one guy standing outside the library, collecting signatures on an antiwar petition.

That's it. That's the sum total of local expression of antiwar sentiment I saw today. It would be ridiculously optimistic to think that most of these people have learned anything over the last two years, but I think this particular episode of mooonbat fever has just about burned itself out.

I'd say the weak turnout's a result of a mix of battle fatigue, which affects both sides in this matter, and the effects on the Bush-haters of their bitter disappointment last November.

Imagine if you had been led all along to believe that your guy had the election in the bag, that the antichrist had a stake poised just above his right ventricle, and then, unbelievably, the monster gets away and emerges triumphant. Not only not wounded but proud, confident, stronger than before.

Of course we should not underestimate the force of reason here. Post-Jan. 30, even the most rabid anti-Bush partisan has to admit what I've been saying for over a year now: the war in Iraq is a contest between two groups of Iraqis, those who favor democracy and those who seek the triumph of fascism, be it of the secular ba'athist or the jihadist variety.

No wonder The Guardian buries its stories on Iraq and the arab world days. Middle east, you say? What's that?

Let's talk about African development, or Tony vs Gordon Brown, shall we? China's rise, anyone?

Granted, Utah (and Salt Lake in particular) is probably about as red as you're going to find anywhere this side of the Mississipp. But even here in LLL-infested Seattle they could manage only "About 1,000" according to a story on a local news channel's site. They've been putting ads on the local busses and plastering flyers all over the place. so my guess is for that crowd, it probably cost 'em $10 in advertising per protester. That low number surprises me somewhat, because it seems to me that you could normally get 1,000 protesters into Westlake Park on a Thursday afternoon for just about any lunatic fringe cause you could think of.

I caught the tail end of a newscast, and I understand LA had a whopping 2000 protesters...

thibaud — "...even the most rabid anti-Bush partisan has to admit..." That's the thing. Refusal is all they have left.

Granted, Utah (and Salt Lake in particular) is probably about as red as you're going to find anywhere this side of the Mississipp.

No, no, Salt Lake is a center of heathen liberality. A lot of the small towns, not to mention Provo, are quite a bit more conservative.

The ABC (Australia's BBC) reported 1000 demonstrators in Sydney, Adelaide 100, Fremantle 200 and a demonstration in Brisbane with no numbers provided - must have been less than 100 :).

An earlier ABC news report stated that there were 50,000 demonstrators in London. They must have got their figures from a Lancet survey where estimates ranged from 0 to 100000.

Harry, I've seen demonstrations for 38 years. The demonstrators always count more. To be left is to be innumerate. One, a million, murders or demonstrators, it's all the same to them. Anyway, history moves on, the current fascist fads of the left will fade, and next year they can build on this years momentum and demonstrate about genmod peanuts or some such.

but their reporter just said his police source had admitted that even that was a "generous" figure and that the real amount is about 20,000.

I'm in Toronto, where the figures for yesterday's rally are being given as about 500.

All the news sites I can see say about 45,000 for London. Can anyone send me to a reliable source about current estimates? In particular, Roger, what are the sources you say "further reveal" only about 10,000 participated.

As far as I know, the 45,000 figure is the police estimate. The 20,000 figure I gave came up during an interview on Sky News with a police official. I don't think you can do much better. One can conclude, based simply on the wild variations in the estimates, that crowd size numbers are pretty unreliable. The estimates also tend to follow political convenience, as you can well imagine; I don't think anyone actually goes out and counts a large crowd to check the figures. So perhaps the best one can do in a case like this is simply compare to the crowd two years ago and note a trend.

Wether it is 45,000 or 10,000 the numbers in London are still way down from what they were a couple of years ago.

Maybe they should try something new, like say just a good old plain America sucks march or something.

The lowest estimate is the 20,000 given by one British police source, although others say 45,000.

I would like to know too why Roger assumes that figures cited are inflated. A little basic research shows that this is dubious assumption.

Anyway, the BBC cited the official police figure of 45,000 and also said that the organisers believed it was higher. That is fair enough.

So, why should we believe Roger from Hollywood's unsourced figure of 10,000 over the British police or the BBC? Oh right, its just the Evil MSM right?

Well, Harry, if you really are interested, I got the figure from the MSNBC link above. It is no longer there. The quote from MacLean is also gone, leaving only some discussion of minor demonstrations in the US, not Europe. Of course, you are free to insist that I lied and made it all up for some reason or other. And 45,000 is of course a rather "large" number in London, if not in Beirut.

-The reader (such as myself) sees both Roger's claimed number, and your dispute, not to mention several other commenters' references and links to other sources, as well as an explanation by Roger as to where he got the number from.

What, exactly, merited the scare quotes for "self-correcting"? Are you equating "self-correcting" with "never makes a mistake"? If so, I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Or are you suggesting that deleting information, as various media outlets have been wont to do, w/o even a mention that it had done so is somehow a superior versoin of "self-correcting"?

March 19, 2005: The Big (Antiwar) Snooze

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