http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1928823,00.html
By Frances Romero
Oct. 07, 2009
Oct. 7 marks the eighth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of
Afghanistan a war that has slouched from campaign to crusade to
near quagmire as the U.S. has rethought and redefined its strategy in
the war on terrorism. According to a recent CBS/New York Times poll,
53% of Americans now say things are going badly for the U.S. in
Afghanistan. And few are saying that as vehemently as those who have
picked the anniversary as their day to demonstrate. Student
organizations on 25 college campuses, along with members of antiwar
groups like the coalition Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER)
and Veterans for Peace are holding rallies on Oct. 7; others have
already descended on Washington. On Oct. 5, 61 people were arrested
in a demonstration in the capital, including Cindy Sheehan, the
onetime face of the Iraq antiwar movement, who chained herself to the
fence of the White House.
Demonstrations such as these against the nation's military adventures
have cropped up at nearly every important conflict in U.S. history.
The Peace Democrats of the 1860s became pejoratively known as
Copperheads after a Southeastern snake that attacks without warning
for their opposition to the Civil War. Peace Democrats were mainly
recent settlers of the Midwest (Ohio, Indiana and Illinois) with
Southern roots and an interest in maintaining the Union, and they
made common cause with Northern groups who opposed emancipation and
the draft. The antidraft riots of 1863 dramatized in the 2002
Martin Scorsese film Gangs of New York were sparked by opposition
to the government's recently passed Conscription Act and, in part, by
fears among Irish immigrants that freed slaves would come North and
take away jobs.
Conscription played a recurring role in protests for the next
century. At the start of World War I, Socialists and isolationists
opposed the draft on the grounds of civil liberties: Charles Schenck,
the general secretary of the Socialist Party of America, was
convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 for distributing
leaflets that urged men to resist the draft. In the famous case
Schenck v. the United States, Schenck argued (unsuccessfully) that
conscription was the equivalent of "involuntary servitude" and thus
prohibited by the 13th Amendment.
World War II proved less of a platform for antiwar activists; the
surprise attack on Pearl Harbor coupled with the global effort to
halt fascism and a determination to pull the country out of the Great
Depression combined to limit antiwar sentiment. Vietnam, however, was
an entirely different ballgame. Unpopular from the start, the war
incited the most vocal and widespread antiwar sentiment in U.S.
history. Draft-dodging, protests and the burning of draft cards and
American flags abounded in a protest movement that had something for
everyone. Young adults from middle-class backgrounds hippies
allied with working-class opponents of the war who felt that an
expensive war in a foreign land did not serve their interests.
Antiwar protests built on the momentum of the civil rights movement
and borrowed many of its nonviolent tactics: among the iconic images
from the time are flowers in guns, Abbie Hoffman and the Chicago
Seven at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, sit-ins, bed-ins,
peace-ins and the ubiquitous peace sign. The 1970 shooting deaths of
four students at Kent State University during a protest against the
invasion of Cambodia became a rallying cry (and the inspiration for
Neil Young's haunting song "Ohio").
Not until George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003 did the
peace movement come near the level of anger that defined the Vietnam
War. Sheehan held vigil outside President Bush's Texas ranch,
demanding an audience with the man who ordered the war in Iraq that
killed her 24-year-old son. Michael Moore's 2004 documentary
Fahrenheit 9/11 created a firestorm of antiwar and anti-Bush
sentiment, while thousands of civilian protesters have staged
"die-ins" in Washington and across the country to give a vivid
picture of the costs of the Iraq war. As that conflict appears to
draw to a close, however, the U.S. military is again focusing on
Afghanistan. And as it does, those who want the war over are not far behind.
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