The U.S. antiwar movement is back. It took almost a year after the crippling debacle of the 2004 election campaign; but on September 24, hundreds of thousands of protesters were on the streets of Washington, D.C. and West Coast cities.
Several obvious factors underlay the renascence of the movement. Firstly, the Bush administration's callous and blatantly incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina ripped apart the ruling gang's carefully crafted image as a protector of our safety.
This can only worsen as billions of dollars in "recovery" contracts are let out to politically connected businesses and disappear in corrupt dealings. The raw politics of race and class will be fully on display in New Orleans, as the elites organize to "reinvent" the city without its Atrican-American poor majority.
Secondly, the news from Iraq itself ranges from bad to gruesome, without relief and without end. The argument that "we can't leave Iraq now because there would be a civil war and bloodbath" is crumbling as the actually existing civil war and bloodbath emerges more clearly by the day.
Thirdly, Americans are absorbing the reality that we will never again see the price of gasoline under $2.00 a gallon, and well over $3.00 is a serious possibility.
It is entirely true that European motorists routinely pay two or three times that amount, but it must be recalled that Americans in general drive huge distances to and from work, generally (outside a few big cities) have few and decreasing public transport options, and often feel compelled to drive large gas-inefficient vehicles if only for protection from the monster SUVs on our highways.
Some far-seeing pundits have suggested that proclaiming a time for national sacrifice and commitment is at hand, with recovery from the hurricanes and incentive for fuel efficiency to require a national $5.00 per gallon gas price. This suggestion overlooks not only the above considerations, but also the fact that a frightening proportion of American drivers have guns, with potential consequences too ghastly to think about.
The astonishing willingness of American consumers to spend ourselves into mountains of debt remains a bulwark of the U.S. and indeed the world capitalist economy, but at some not-toodistant point rising energy (including winter home heating) costs and people's growing sense of economic insecurity will stall out this engine.
Finally, the example of Cindy Sheehan and Camp Casey have brought the reality of Bush's lies and the Iraq horror into every movement and forced its permanent competing factions into temporary unity.
Most important, what's happened - even while the organized movement was in some disarray - is that an antiwar minority in the USA is now a majority.
Fifty-two percent in the latest polling results favor immediate withdrawal from Iraq; support for Bush's handling of the war has fallen to 32%.
The movement must recognize now that we represent majority opinion, and conduct itself with all the clarity and urgency that this responsibility entails. David Finkel is an editor of AGAINST THE CURRENT (www.solidarity-us.org).