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03-04-2003, 08:48 PM
<span style='font-family:comic sans ms'>Was I That Stupid?
By Gerald Posner
accessnorthgeorgia.c om | March 4, 2003
This past weekend, millions turned out in cities worldwide for antiwar protests – the largest since the Vietnam war – by groups opposed to US military action against Iraq. Tens of thousands in the United States recently braved frigid east coast weather and almost half-a-million people marched through Florence and Paris in what was promoted as one in a series in many Europe-wide anti-war rallies.
Many of my fellow Democrats have been gushing about the hordes that have taken to the streets, basking in nostalgia about the street demonstrations over Vietnam that were a factor in changing government policy in Southeast Asia. But the enthusiasm that the protests kindled in some seemed strange, as all they did for me was bring back shameful memories of my own political naiveté thirty years ago.
In 1972 I was a freshman at UC Berkeley, then proud to boast it had the only city council in America that refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Carrying around baby-doctor Benjamin Spock’s leftist manifesto on Vietnam, I quickly became an activist during the next two years in immense antiwar protests that seemed almost daily occurrences at Berkeley. As a political science major I thought I had all the answers. The North Vietnamese were merely freedom fighters trying to liberate their country from the shackles of western imperialism. The U.S. war was unjust and being waged against innocents. And Governor Ronald Reagan, who kept badmouthing us and sending in the tough Alameda sheriff’s department to disburse the crowds, was somewhere right of Attila the Hun.
I looked at the recent television images of thousands, almost in a party atmosphere, as they chanted their rhyming protests against a possible war. Was I that stupid? I hope not. (http://www.frontpagemag.com /Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6 444)</span>
By Gerald Posner
accessnorthgeorgia.c om | March 4, 2003
This past weekend, millions turned out in cities worldwide for antiwar protests – the largest since the Vietnam war – by groups opposed to US military action against Iraq. Tens of thousands in the United States recently braved frigid east coast weather and almost half-a-million people marched through Florence and Paris in what was promoted as one in a series in many Europe-wide anti-war rallies.
Many of my fellow Democrats have been gushing about the hordes that have taken to the streets, basking in nostalgia about the street demonstrations over Vietnam that were a factor in changing government policy in Southeast Asia. But the enthusiasm that the protests kindled in some seemed strange, as all they did for me was bring back shameful memories of my own political naiveté thirty years ago.
In 1972 I was a freshman at UC Berkeley, then proud to boast it had the only city council in America that refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Carrying around baby-doctor Benjamin Spock’s leftist manifesto on Vietnam, I quickly became an activist during the next two years in immense antiwar protests that seemed almost daily occurrences at Berkeley. As a political science major I thought I had all the answers. The North Vietnamese were merely freedom fighters trying to liberate their country from the shackles of western imperialism. The U.S. war was unjust and being waged against innocents. And Governor Ronald Reagan, who kept badmouthing us and sending in the tough Alameda sheriff’s department to disburse the crowds, was somewhere right of Attila the Hun.
I looked at the recent television images of thousands, almost in a party atmosphere, as they chanted their rhyming protests against a possible war. Was I that stupid? I hope not. (http://www.frontpagemag.com /Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6 444)</span>