THE PEACENIKS ARE GETTING IT

Well, some of them are. I've blogged before about the Traprock Peace Center--they're the ones who recently called for the French, Germans and Russians to insert troops into Iraq to oppose ours. That's hardly a call for peace--it's a call for a much larger and more dangerous war between at least four nuclear-armed states (counting the British). Obviously that call went unanswered by their European heroes.

Today's missive from the Traprock groups strikes a decidedly milder tone. They seem to understand that their stridency, and their endless and factless comparisons of Bush to Hitler, aren't gaining them any traction with the majority of Americans. So they're calling for a milder demonstration next month:

We recently held a national conference in Chicago, in which 138 schools came together to plan a nation-wide student-led day of action on April 5th. Our festival will be held in conjunction with massive actions in both Chicago and Oakland. To find out more about CAN, please visit www.antiwarnetwork.org. April 5th information for DC, Chicago and San Francisco is found at http://www.antiwarnetwork.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=23

The festival, which will include a host of different groups and a range of activities, will hopefully be a welcome break from the old, march and rally style protests that we have all become accustomed to. We wish to bring in as many groups and ideas as possible, so as to create an atmosphere fit for the celebration of life and peace. We feel that this would portray another side of the antiwar movement. Perhaps we do not always need to march and scream to make our point. Perhaps the best way to work towards peace is to demonstrate it ourselves. We believe that it is imperative that the peace movement be portrayed as the diverse and multi-faceted movement that it is. We hope to abolish the stereotype that we are more about protesting than we are about peace. (emphasis mine)

Go figure--a peaceful demonstration for peace. Interesting. But I expect that the radicals will still manage to turn even a mild anti-war event into a scene of anarchy.