by Sharon Smith

With opinion polls consistently showing a majority of Americans against the Iraq occupation, some prominent liberals are stepping forward to take credit for this welcome development. The “antiwar movement is winning by staying silent,” was the theme of a recent column by American Prospect editor Harold Meyerson in the New Hampshire Union Leader. Congratulations are apparently in order to those responsible for the antiwar movement’s hiatus throughout John Kerry’s election campaign last year. “[H]owever perverse this may sound,” Meyerson wrote, “the absence of an antiwar movement is proving to be a huge political problem for the Bush administration.” Today’s movement has cleverly avoided the mistakes made during Vietnam, according to Myerson, when a massive, militant movement helped Richard Nixon get re-elected by alienating the “silent majority.” Today, he insists, the rising tide of antiwar opinion is a direct result of Democrats’ failure to oppose the war....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Smith0806.htm