The Final Score

So here we have it: The final score.

Antiwar Protestors: 100,000
Prowar Protestors: "couple hundred"

Actually, it's kind of obvious that is how it would work out. The prowar protestors are trying the same old rubric that they used against the Vietnam antiwar protestors: That being anti-war means being anti-freedom, not supporting the soldiers, and helping the enemy. Hell: They were even carrying around signs saying "Arrest the traitors."

That doesn't work anymore... if it ever did.

Nobody today anywhere thinks badly of our soldiers... just the people that sent them to Iraq.

Nobody today thinks freedom isn't the highest priority... just that wading through chaos and carnage, explosions and terror for a doubtful outcome isn't a good thing. More importantly, freedom was not the reason we were given for sending our troops to Iraq in the first place. Weapons of mass destruction is why we are in Iraq right now... remember?

Nobody today supports our enemies. Liberals may be more willing to try and figure out what motivates the terrorists, and look for ways to eliminate those motivations. Conservatives primarily want to guard against, fight head on, and make difficult the operations of, the terrorists. However, neither side wants more bombings, more war, more bloodshed, or more terrorist successes in any form.

But... if you want to know the real reason that nobody supports the prowar movement, it is because of a dirty trick played by the antiwar side: Cindy Sheehan. They put an angry mother who lost her son in Iraq out there in front, and dared anybody to come forward and say bad things about her... to castigate a mother whose own flesh and blood was a casualty in this war. The prowar movement took the bait, hook, line and sinker. Now what do you have? People all over this country watching a couple hundred hysterics who hold signs proclaiming the necessity of war, hold signs saying a large majority of Americans should be thrown in jail for their desires for peace (starting off with one of the mothers who lost her son to war), and hold signs basically showing scads of what has come to be the new no-I'm-not / yes-you-are bugaboo for the American right: Blind, unthinking support for any and all conservative causes.

The fact is quite simply, America is having its second Vietnam. We were driven there on the back of a big burly white elephant brought to stampede by four hijacked planes and four fireballs. It took four years for many of us to open our eyes (and some still haven't), but the truth of our folly is there to be seen, playing out daily in the news.

What did we accomplish in Iraq? We replaced the stability of a murderous, brutal dictator with chaos, uncertainty, civil war, and Islamic extremism. That's it. That's all we are likely to get for the foresseable future: Not stability, not peace, not democracy. It's up to you to decide whether what has come is better than what went before... for the Iraqi people, for the Arab world, but most importantly, for America.