More nonsense about Iraq, Afghanistan

“We cannot live normal lives.”

That’s a powerful thing to say. Yet, the proclamation from local peace activist Ed Vasquez to rethink our attitudes as Iraqis live in misery seemed self-righteous given other slogans at last Wednesday’s anti-war protest.

Banners read “War is terrorism.” Vasquez, involved with Indiana Students Against War, lambasted into his megaphone that “bombs don’t bring democracy” and referred to the U.S. invasion of Iraq as a “colonial war for oil.”

Vasquez’s comment about “normal lives” made it clear that the protestors were not fighting oil companies or the military industrial complex, but rather a public that was never committed to ending the war.

I hope they lose that fight.

There is no reason to stereotype anti-war activists as America-hating troop-bashers. They don’t deserve to be blasted with profanities, as they were by two men claiming to be Iraq War veterans when they drove past the marching protestors on Kirkwood.

But it must be said that last week’s protest, in which students and Bloomington residents marched from the red clock near Ballantine Hall to the Monroe County Courthouse, displayed a willful and timid ignorance.  

IU student James Cooper engaged the two veterans with tired platitudes about how they are “protecting oil companies.” IU sophomore Dave Hamilton put most of the blame for the war on weapons contractors. While the rally was meant to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, Vasquez shouted that Afghanistan “had nothing to do with 9/11.”

Vasquez blamed the protest’s lower turnout on the election of President Barack Obama, and one drive-by heckler did yell the “war is already over.” But there is more involved than misconceptions about Obama’s foreign policy.

Student activism played a big role in the 2006 midterm elections, when Rep. Baron Hill and other elected Democrats promised change in Iraq. But the success of the surge – with help from favorable circumstances – made it easy to question the benefits of leaving.

A debate between Cooper and a passing ROTC student focused on weapons of mass destruction and 9/11. The ROTC student was wrong when he trumped up the terrorism connection as a reason for invading. But again, six years later, the question about whether we should have invaded and whether we should stay are largely separate.

I hope that is how more students see Iraq these days. More importantly, I hope they can look at our failures in Afghanistan and see an option besides withdrawal.

The Taliban allowed Osama Bin Laden to plan 9/11 out of their county.

When I asked Vasquez how he would have responded to the attacks, he said he wanted “a full investigation” and that he wanted to go after the CIA and Americans who dealt with the Taliban’s progenitors first.

Some, like Hamilton, acknowledged withdrawal from Afghanistan could be staggered. But I got the impression protestors had boxed themselves into an argument that forced them to care more about leaving than the actual people of Iraq or Afghanistan.

If the anti-war movement is not about those people, they should think about going home.