“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Welcome to Sanctimonious Sunday, a collaborative series published by members of the following groups: The Amateur Left, Team DFH and Frustrati. Feel free to get your sanctimonious on. It's welcome here.
Hundreds of protesters attended the rally and marched around the White House, but the crowd — which included many military veterans — thinned considerably as the U.S. Park Police warned that they'd be arrested if they didn't move. As officers moved in with handcuffs, one protester who clutched the gates outside the White House shouted, "Don't arrest them! Arrest Obama!" and "You're arresting veterans, not war criminals!"
Authorities said 113 protesters were arrested, processed and given violation notices for disobeying an official order. They could pay a small fine and be released, or be freed with a future court date.
"The majority were cooperative," said U.S. Park Police spokesman David Schlosser.
From NPR and AP, yesterday...
More than 100 anti-war protesters, including the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, were arrested outside the White House in demonstrations marking the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
The protesters, some shouting anti-war slogans and singing "We Shall Not Be Moved," were arrested Saturday after ignoring orders to move away from the gates of the White House. The demonstrators cheered loudly as Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon's secret history of the Vietnam War that was later published in major newspapers, was arrested and led away by police.
In New York City, about 80 protesters gathered near the U.S. military recruiting center in Times Square, chanting "No to war" and carrying banners that read, "I am not paying for war" and "Butter not guns."
Similar protests marking the start of the Iraq war also were organized Saturday in San Francisco, Chicago and other cities.
In California, hundreds of people marched in downtown San Francisco. Hundreds more, including students from more than 40 high schools and community colleges, marched in Los Angeles in protest of the U.S. presence in Iraq, organizers and police said.
Some used the rallies to draw attention to the new military action in Libya.
"You can't stand by and watch people being slaughtered. At the same time you don't want to foster war. It's walking a very fine line," Bishop Otis Charles told KCBS-TV at the San Francisco protest.
snip
One military veteran who showed up for the rally was Paul Markin, a 64-year-old retired U.S. Army colonel from Lynn, Mass., who said he's frustrated by what he sees as the U.S. government's escalation of the wars. He said he's been against wars since coming home from Vietnam.
"Ever since that time, I've gone to the other side. Instead of a warrior, an anti-warrior," Markin said.
NPR
The Guardian reports protests took place outside Downing Street as well.
"This is the beginning and in the beginning, it's difficult to motivate people to protest," said Andrew Burgin, of the Stop the War Coalition.
"The first flush of war is always accompanied by jingoism. We saw it with Iraq too. There's the added complication that the waters are muddier than Iraq. There's been a shorter lead-in and there's been a UN resolution," he added.
"But if people are supporting the war because they think it's wrong to do nothing, then they're not asking the right question. On the surface, it seems hard to argue against that question.
"But that's always how it is with war: people feel we have to do something. The real question is about the motives of those who are taking action.
"In this case, the motives of those who are going into Libya with all their guns blazing, are clearly duplicitous. They're not really going to protect the poor people in Benghazi: they're going in to re-establish their power, position and strength in a strategically important place."
Decided to re-visit Howard Zinn's piece, Just and Unjust Wars...
One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression. Patriotism becomes the order of the day, and those who question the war are seen as traitors, to be silenced and imprisoned.
Mark Twain, observing the United States at the turn of the century, its wars in Cuba and the Philippines, described in The Mysterious Stranger the process by which wars that are at first seen as unnecessary by the mass of the people become converted into "just" wars:
The loud little handful will shout for war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously protest at first.... The great mass of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes, and will try to make out why there should be a war, and they will say earnestly and indignantly: "It is unjust and dishonorable and there is no need for war."
Then the few will shout even louder.... Before long you will see a curious thing: anti-war speakers will be stoned from the platform, and free speech will be strangled by hordes of furious men who still agree with the speakers but dare not admit it....
Next, the statesmen will invent cheap lies...and each man will be glad of these lies and will study them because they soothe his conscience; and thus he will bye and bye convince himself that the war is just and he will thank God for a better sleep he enjoys by his self-deception.
This is the beginning. This time around.
10:03PM: Updated to point to, and thank, frandor55 for the video embed of protestors peacefully marching at the White House in this comment below.