Did You March / Protest / Write A Strongly Worded Letter Against The 2003 Iraq War?

No, I didn't.

I did go on a march, but only one, when the opportunity was there to go on several more. Of course, it all seems kind of pointless now, but at the time I felt like I should've participated more.

I marched.

didn't march, wish i had, but opportunities were limited.

but at the time, opposition to the war in ireland was pretty much universal anyway (except from politicians), and wasn't making any difference.

went on the London march
moaned about it generally

What, the marching? Should've worn some sneakers, Stevem. ;-)

I was inexplicably, at the time, completely oblivious to the big London march but I did, out of curiosity, go on one in DC a few days after Mission Accomplished.

I admit to being broadly in support of the war in 2002/3 but that was before I did my degree and knew nothing of how royally america was gonna fuck it up. i also didn't have a clue about the various sectarian factions that were gonna use the "liberation" as an opportunity to unleash decades of pent of frustrations and start killing each other. I'm pretty sure that most of the people who marched didn't either though.

I marched, and bumped into Alba!

I put my foot through the TV and sent Bush the bill

I marched in London, but actually I've become more in favour of the war in principle as the years have gone by. In practice though, yeah, what a complete and utter fucking cockup, as Denis Nordern might say.

That's assuming in a rather naive way that you can seperate out the principle and practice of these things.

I accidently voted as an American. In 2003 I wrote a strongly worded letter to the Discovery Store in protest. After that I didn't work for a month as a further stand.

I marched, even though deep down I knew it was pointless.

I went to a rally! I did it! HURRAY FOR ME!

I went to the Christchurch version, which was sitting in a park listening to some bands.

how could you become more in favour of a war in principle (even leaving out the practice).

have the reasons for it become clearer/more rational in your head as time goes on?

not a sarky question, genuinely interested.

At the time I was highly concerned by lots of things: the illegality of the war, the concept of pre-emption, the way the war was being presented as part of the war on terror, how the west might be seen as imperial.

At the time I thought those things outweighed the (potential but not yet realized) humanitarian benefit of a ridding them of Saddam, but now I'm not so sure. Perhaps today I could stomach an attack without a UN resolution in, say, Sudan, if I thought the job would get done properly.

Don't misunderstand me though, if I went back I'd still march, only this time it'd be 90% about my mistrust of the American administration and 10% about the issues I've mentioned, as opposed to vice verca.

Although I realise that drawing a comparison between Iraq then and Sudan now is stretching things somewhat.

I marched, even though deep down I knew it was pointless.

yah this, except not just deep down

t/s tom clancy's rainbow six take out of america's enemies by satellite pinpoint missile vs invading countries to establish 'presence'.

it wasn't completely pointless - we had the hilarity of Blair saying the blood would be on our hands if there was no occupation.

i bided my time for mark c to turn up and accuse everyone who marched of taking the moral high-ground.

i don't think it was exactly pointless. of course it wasn't going to stop the war. but if we hadn't marched it would have been an endorsement.

I joined the march for a bit and then broke off to walk through the Aldwych underpass on foot. That was fun.

I marched, signed a bunch of petitions, knew it was all pointless at the time, and would do it again.

A pointless protest against a pointless war.

WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR

can't think of many protests in the west that have achived anything directly. it's not pointless though.

i think marching and protesting is fine because it makes people feel better about themselves and when people feel better about themselves they are less likely to physically assault you on the street. or is that more likely...in any case, it makes for colorful news footage!

if only there could've been strike action

strike action would have restored my faith in the western world.

I didn't go to any, even though I opposed the war, but I wish I had, even though I know it's sort of pointless. At least I could have vented some rage and maybe met some nice folks.

That's what bars and clubs are for.

Masses of people will engage in meaningful, effective social action when their BlackBerries and joysticks are ripped from their hands.

Morbs = Elton John

then why don't his posts rhyme?

if protesting isn't going to achieve anything, i'd prefer not to protest

Sean Penn being arrested was probably the best thing to come out of it.

morbs would give up his cares if people give him a blackberry, a joystick and a place at the head of the line

Yeah Enrique I sort of see where you're coming from but endorsement in whose eyes? What gives a bigger impression in the eyes of the rest of the world - millions of people marching in Britain or the country re-electing Blair two years later even after things had gone to shit in Iraq?

I'm not really knocking the protests, I'm glad they happened and I'm glad I went - I'm wondering about the extent to which the rest of the world (especially the millions of really quite angry Muslims) think that the British people are opposed to what happened in Iraq.

(Disclaimer, a lot of this is thinking aloud).

Well again, maybe not a lot, but more than if people hadn't protested and then re-elected Blair.

Well yeah, there is that.

My own disclaimer being that I did exactly what you suggest: march and then vote Labour again.

if protesting isn't going to achieve anything, i'd prefer not to protest

practicalneb

it doesn't achieve anything *directly*, *at the time*, but is still worth doing. it plants something in everyone's memory. it shows that the political theatre of 2002-03 didn't win everyone over. it meant that, for example, people would keep asking questions about the falsified intelligence that got us there.

and *maybe* it makes the next war a bit less likely. the political class has to learn a bit.

xpost

yeah that probably doesn't mean much to the outside world -- maybe to other europeans and americans though. how much of that news would even have been reported in the muslim world?

protests do "achieve something." Obviously it's stupid to to think that they alone will stop a war, but they get media attention for the opposition and rally people around a cause who in turn can get motivated and organized for further activism. That said, hippies are the worst thing to ever happen to protests.

your post suggests they would achieve dissipation of rage and a social opportunity

it's not "rage".

have you heard of "principles"?

http://soundpolitics.com/SelmaMarchMartinCoretta.jpg

vs.

http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/Yeah_sm.jpeg

see jena six

angry Muslims know that the britishers were mostly against the war but the americans weren't

The difference I meant to illustrate is that one group knows how to stage an effective protest and the other doesn't because they think it should also be a crazy party.

if that were the difference, then the fact that the latter group is a small subset of protesters would actually matter

one good reason for americans to protest - angry muslims don't know very much about america

a not-so-small subset who tends to get a lot of camera time, actually, which is the point, hence "hippies are the worst thing to ever happen to protests"

angry Muslims know that the britishers were mostly against the war but the americans weren't

-- Heave Ho, Friday, September 21, 2007 3:44 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

and yet still they hate us ;_;

i get the point. it obscures the fact that if there weren't "hippies" (um, actually, it's "anarchists" who get the camera time), the protests still wouldn't achieve anything. but blaming them is a way of pretending otherwise.

http://people.csail.mit.edu/manoli/gallery/sanfrancisco/hippies.jpg

the solution is to enfranchise 16-17 year olds.

http://www.nopointsproductions.com/images/hippies_005.jpg

"don't tase me bro"

The integration of schools was not an achievement? The end of Jim Crow laws was not an achievement? The passage of the Civil Rights Act was not an achievement? (xxpost)

I mean I'm not saying a clean-cut protest movement would necessarily have ended the Vietnam War, but it might have been a more effective media message to merely say, "I don't want to die for an unjust war," rather than also "I don't want to grow up"

The integration of schools was not an achievement? The end of Jim Crow laws was not an achievement? The passage of the Civil Rights Act was not an achievement? (xxpost)

go back and refer to my post upthread re why the civil rights era was different

war protesters are advocates, not victims. big psychological difference.

There were a lot of protesters during the civil rights movement who were northerners and white people. They were fire hosed and jailed for being advocates.

i didn't protest because a) i thought some aspects of the case for war were good, at the time (ending tyranny, making good on '91 abandonment) and b) i thought some of the arguments against the war were pretty bad (sanctions and no-fly zones are working just fine).

but really i knew it just wouldn't work. i knew the administration was animated solely by its own myths, and they had no clue what they were really getting into -- and didn't want to know. they were hostile not just to 'realism' but to reality, from the start. and here we are.

and if anything it helped the movement that white people saw white people getting hosed on television (xpost to misery)

There were a lot of protesters during the civil rights movement who were northerners and white people. They were fire hosed and jailed for being advocates.

yes, i know. they were very far from the face of the movement, though.

xpost- they were looking for a change in law, not a reversal of a definite executive decision of the government, also.

gff, attributing ignorance is being too kind on the bush administration at the time of going to war.

huh? weren't they as close as a white person could get?

xpost i think i attribute a little more than ignorance, there.

what do you think the result would have been if the civil rights marches were *only* white people?

why are you asking these wierd, half-sarcastic leading questions?

white kids getting beaten up, hosed, attacked by dogs, and shot -- they're "in the movement," however "far from its face" (ie, being white?) they were.

i get your point about protesting a foreign occurrence vs. the actual victims of a domestic situation doing same, but you don't have pull this irritating fake-socratic shit about it, k?

The Vietnam protests were people of draft age.

Whatever, Gabb is just doing mental gymnastics to avoid caring

what do you think the result would have been if the civil rights marches were *only* white people?

-- gabbneb, Friday, September 21, 2007 4:08 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

sike

it's funny that this question immediately went to the 60's, cos another of my beefs with neocon'ism was that it's messianism in foreign affairs was really just a domestic beef -- a big fuck you to america "internal enemies" for vietnam.

america's.

"vietnam" being shorthand for "pulling out of vietnam" obv

The Vietnam protests were people of draft age.

many of whom were enfranchised, especially after 1971, and had lost in the policy wars. also, unlike the civil rights era, far from everyone of draft age was drafted. also, i don't believe the substance of the vietnam protests was "i don't want to lose my life."

additionally, this argument clearly doesn't apply to a war fought by an "all-volunteer military."

I was at three of the protests in SF (two of which were unbelievably massive - the one the day the bombing started stopped traffic/shut down the city, etc.) and one in LA. Gave Moveon.org a bunch of money initially. Made a lot of angry internet postings.

i marched in DC that one day. it was cold.

i marched in mtl. it was also cold.

Not so much a march as a stand-around. Nation of Islam guy near me had a sign that said "No Iraqi Ever Called Me Nigger." Well played, sir.

I marched two days in a row (in SF), and was turned off by the marchers - to such a degree that I haven't marched since.

we had a little protest/rally with people playing music in support of funding the arts and not war

I marched. Not American. Canadian. Marched in our equivalent of the Bible Belt, along with maybe 50 others, which was depressing.

(Depressing because they get hundreds, maybe thousands out for their annual anti-abortion rallies.)

I wrote a strongly worded letter to my congressman prior to "the surge" and got a lovely hand-written letter back from him telling me basically "lol ur wrong." I thought I was going to keep the letter when I received it but I have no idea where I put it nor do I care.

Went to a sparsely attended, poorly organized march/protest in a very military city. Probably turned me off going to marches of any kind for a long time. Just a mess of various special interests trying to get face time, bad LOTR/Bush photoshopped posters, incoherent and moronic kids getting mic time.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

a mess of various special interests trying to get face time

the protests in SF are always like this and it is stupid and annoying - like no one can set aside their pet cause in the name of a united front, no we have to FREE MUMIA and stop eating meat and support Palestinians etc etc

I never saw this poll, but my answer would be "Yes, I am an American."

one thing I learned from this cycle of war protests is that the protests themselves serve no real political end - street protests in general are no longer a forum through which changes to policy are effected. The only useful purpose they serve is to psychologically bolster the protestors themselves - the protests serve as an emotional salve for those of us who feel a desperate need to do SOMETHING (ie, fostering a sense of belonging to a larger community and not being a "lone voice in the wilderness" etc.)

i marched in DC, maybe when max did.

Well they're also meant to get news coverage. When they closed down I-5, it made the news. This can be useful and important.

I thought it was important to march, not only because the war was probably illegal, certainly unjustified by any evidence, and without doubt a horrible policy move that seemed destined to lead to the sort of mess we are currently in, but partly because I figured the more middle-aged, middle-class, mainstream-looking marchers there were (like myself), the less the opposition to the war could be misrepresented as nothing but kids and kooks.

those burmese should just give up.

protests = substitute for the town-hall meetings that were supposed to be the central instrument of democracy in the american republic

(jefferson: "these wards, called townships in new england, are the vital principle of their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its preservation." and also: "if once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and i, and congress and assemblies, judges and governors, shall all become wolves.")

this explains why ppl who say "protests are so useless" invariably wind up sounding like they're basically disapproving of democracy. although protests are basically useless they're expressing something deep and vital in american life that nothing else satisfies.

unfortunately since most actual power is incredibly removed from the local level, or any level of accountability at all beyond "if he screws up we might not re-elect him," protests end up being little more than a pale shadow of what the town-hall meeting-based democracy could be.

Was on the 1st London March. Unfortunately full of anti-Semitic wankers, so didn't go on any subsequent marches. But did happen to meet and have beers with Andrew Lincoln (that actor) and then Sean O'Hagan (High Llamas guy) in the pub after it.