Text by Solomon Bell

Photographs by Bennett Stevens

San Francisco, California

It didn’t take long to gauge the tenor of the crowd gathered in San Francisco to march in protest of the Iraq war. They HATED George W. Bush. They said he was the real terrorist, and that America was the true terrorist nation. They carried signs depicting the president as Adolph Hitler, complete with swastikas and little black mustache. 

Next to Paris and Havana, San Francisco may be the most far left city in the world, full of generally good hearted, angry democrats/communist/socialists living in a bubble of mind-warped reality. One understands where their anger comes from, from a perception of the world as a cruel and wretched place ever willing to trade blood and suffering to line the pockets of the power elite. The problem is that their perception is one-sided; everything wrong with the world comes from the right. Apparently they’ve never heard about the deaths of 25 million Soviet citizens at the hands of their own government.  

The far left also tends to believe any wild conspiracy theory out there, as long as it serves their hatred for the right. “Bush Knew” was a popular sign this day, sponsored by “insaneReagan.com”. Their hatred allows them to take a facial expression (Bush's reaction when told of the attacks) and some Arab propaganda (Jews were forewarned not to go to the World Trade center on 9-11) and transmogrify it into an evil conspiracy (Bush and the 12 Jewish bankers who run the world set the whole thing up) without any evidence whatsoever. To equate Bush with Hitler and his 11 million strong genocidal horror fest isn’t a political opinion—it’s a sign of mental illness.  

Death to McEvil!

It should come as no surprise that very few in this protest crowd could articulate their own positions against the war. The simplest fact based question opposing their view was usually met first with a blank stare, and next by the parroting of far left talking points and/or angry slogans that avoided the question. Typical.  
 

The man in the suit holding the simple “No George!” sign, seemed to be a reasonable sort. He understood that the sponsors of the protest were communist activists and saw some of the crowd as extremists, but saw most as just good people against war. I asked him if he were a pacifist and if he ever thought war was necessary. He said he wasn’t and yes, sometimes war was necessary. He went on to say that he was disturbed that our government was going against the United Nations, and that therefore this war would definitely be illegal and unjustified. “Do you mean?” I asked, “that if the UN approved the war then it would be OK?” He nodded. “That’s right.”  

My reply was swift and well practiced: “So let me get this straight, what your saying is that if an organization that has Libya chairing the Human Rights Council and Syria chairing the Counter-Terrorism Committee, that literally stood by in Rwanda and did nothing while 800,000 men, women and children were slaughtered with machetes, that literally stood by and watched while 7,000 Muslims were slaughtered at Srebrenica, and that now has France, Russia and Germany blocking the US not for any altruism against war but to protect their own financial interests, that if this proven corrupt and incompetent organization just gives the OK, even though no other facts on the ground will have changed, then you will stand in support of the war?” His eyes left mine and stared blankly back towards the protesters. He offered no answer. It was the most reasonable response I got all day.  

There was a good argument to be made against the war, though I rarely heard anyone make it. It was certainly not made here. Instead what I heard was an awful lot of unfounded hysteria fueled by a visceral hatred of Bush that was astonishing in its venom. Of course there were good, basically middle of the road people in attendance as well, parents and Grandmothers for Peace, and one could easily empathize with their genuine concerns.

I think the way the Bush team sold the war and played patty-cake with the U.N. was flawed and meandering and thus gave the left much more anti-war ammo than it would have otherwise had. They chose WMD as the main selling point, but in retrospect should have spelled out various other legitimate factors. After all “regime change” has been official US policy since 1998. But since they didn’t argue their other points effectively, the left now argues that they were sold a lie. Think logically: if the Bush team really thought no WMD existed, do you really think they would have used them as the thrust of their argument? Regardless, neither an elitist government nor an elitist media can be trusted to present a clear and true picture to the common man. Now more than ever individuals must learn to do their own due diligence.  

What my own due diligence revealed—that Iraq was more deeply involved in terrorism and had much stronger ties to Al Qaeda than either the administration or the media was willing to articulate (sounds odd but please see “Quagmire of Spin: Saddam’s Links to Al Qaeda” for details)—made the ouster of Saddam a complete and utter no-brainer. Even without such links, Saddam the genocidal psychopath and war criminal had to be brought to justice, and it was quite clear that an American led precision war was the only way that was going to happen. The fact that roughly ¾ of Iraqi’s agree, don’t consider us imperialists and want us to stay until the country is stable and able to stand on its own, doesn’t seem to phase the left one bit. (Post war protest photos at bottom). They are as ideologically blind and angry as ever.  

The bloodied man yelling and pointing, was pro Bush. Or at least I thought he was until it became apparent that his shouts of “More blood for oil!” were meant to be sardonic. The blood of course, was fake. Only the baby in the stroller and me didn’t figure that out immediately.  
 

When the anarchist anti-capitalists in black (I couldn’t resist asking the guy with the “Stop Buying Shit” sign where he bought it) broke off from the main throng and began to block traffic and pound

on people’s cars, it was nice to see that those who really did come to march for peace, marched home peacefully. (Even the trolley driver was flipping a peace sign. Or was it for victory?)
 

* * *

Bonus Snaps from the Post War Protest:

“Bring the Troops Home Now!”

(and plunge Iraq into a three way civil war!)

October 2003

""Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains."

--Winston Churchill

"It's not about liberal vs. conservative; it’s about truth,

and as every schoolgirl with a passable IQ knows, the truth is usually

somewhere in the middle. Just where, and how deep, is what the Radical Middle is all about."  

  --Bennett Stevens

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