The new face of the anti warzzzzzzz.....

So the New York Times magazine has a five page article on an anti-victory outfit (how about that impromptu coinage?) called AAEI and--

--look, I read and think about some pretty freaking dense stuff for (what passes for) a living. I just can't work up an interest in this new group of political hotshots no matter how edgy and earthy and intense they are. Ordinarily, I'm telling you, follow that link and go read the whole thing! Today, I say unto you: don't bother. This group is actually trying to be boring: they've learned not to take to the streets and invite contemplations about "civil society breaking down".* The grizzled hippies aren't happy, since this interferes with their nostalgia trip:

For some of A.A.E.I.’s older members, their work is the continuation of something bigger, a movement that began in the 1960s but was temporarily knocked off course. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time,” said a wiry, fast-talking New Yorker named Alan Charney. It was early June and Charney, the program director with the liberal grass-roots group USAction, was speaking onstage in a Baltimore auditorium at a training session for roughly 100 A.A.E.I. activists who would be dispatched across the country to stage rallies, protests and door-knocking campaigns against Republicans who back the war. “The moment we’re in can change the course of American history,” he said. “We can show that conservatives can never again be trusted to run the foreign policy of this nation.” The very name “Iraq Summer,” Charney told the assembled activists — nearly all of whom appeared to be under 30 — was intended to echo the “Vietnam Summer” of 1967, “and even hearkens back to the Freedom Summer in the South.”

But while today’s antiwar activists may draw inspiration from those times, they hardly seek to emulate the 1960s. Nor is that possible. There is no draft, taxes remain low and the economy has been fairly strong. For most Americans, the direct cost of the war amounts to a few more dollars at the gas pump. Nothing today compares to what Tom Hayden, the antiwar celebrity of the 60s, calls the “existential dread” of the draft.

A.A.E.I. is far more integrated into the political and media establishments than the hippies ever were. “They couldn’t figure if they wanted to take their clothes off, smoke pot, burn the Capitol or end the war,” Wiley Pearson, Matzzie’s other deputy, says of the 1960s counterculture protesters. Pearson, who is 59, spent 22 years in the Marines before finding a second career promoting progressive causes. Matzzie says political and lifestyle radicalism was a gift to supporters of the Vietnam War that his allies will not give again.

I also thought it was interesting how they've been targeting General Petraeus for a long time. That tells me that they knew far in advance that Petraeus' report would probably be a good one, and because of that they chose to attack his character:

Even before summer’s end, Matzzie and company were working to undermine the credibility of an upbeat progress report from Petraeus, who appears to oppose a substantial drawdown of troops in Iraq. “Most of what we have to do will be done before he lands in Washington,” Matzzie told me in late August. “We have to frame his statements before he makes them. He’s not Saint Petraeus — he’s General Petraeus.”

That Petraeus was very much on A.A.E.I.’s radar was clear from another conference call I witnessed late last month. ...But the main topic of conversation was a story in that day’s Washington Post reporting that Petraeus had “softened” judgments in a recent White House National Intelligence Estimate to reflect improved conditions on the ground in Iraq. The operatives saw a chance to bash the White House for distorting intelligence and to depict Petraeus as a calculated spinner. “I’m gonna move it around like it’s a big deal,” said Brad Woodhouse, a progressive gadfly with Americans United for Change, an A.A.E.I. coalition member, who specializes in bombarding reporters with advocacy e-mails.

*You know who I credit with diverting attention away from these mass protests? Zombie. And to a lesser extent lately, Protest Warrior--a group that has largely brought about its own obsolescence. Zombie's coverage of what actually goes on at these awful Bay Area events--taking pictures the MSM would never publish--has devalued the tactic. Since the Left's protests are often attended by unhinged, threatening morons, you never know when someone will show up with a sign like this (dirty word warning). Wasn't a problem with MSM sycophants writing the record; but with Zombie taking pictures and the blogosphere publishing them, the angry protests have become counterproductive.