some questions:
pro-war the majority position since the majority was responding to the usual devices of patriotism, etc. if some on the left switched to a pro-war position because of hateful speech on the part of a few others, isn't that a bit of an illogical action?
the most hateful things i remember about the weeks after 9/11:
1) the rounding up of arab/brown-skinned people in jails all over the US 2) the killing of a sikh man in texas, and similar hate crimes 3) the call for invading countries, raping women etc (ann coulter?) 4) the different rates of compensation of WTC victims
these actions/ideas were concrete, they affected the lives of others, and some of them were widely supported by the majority of the population.
> It was at the mass meeting in New York of antiwar activists that the
> coalition was destroyed in the weeks after 911, because a minority refused
> to call for the 911 killers to be brought to justice under international
> law, since they argued that imperialists had no right to call for such
> justice. It was a sickening set of arguments then and hateful in the
> extreme.
this seems to be a different argument than calling those who died in the WTCs "little eichmans".
as for the anti-war rallies and turnout, some anecdotal info: i was in the large feb 15 (i think) NYC rally that drew a huge crowd. i wasn't there because of ANSWER or UFPJ, or not in others because i was against them. this was true of the others i was with and many of the folks i spoke to at the rally. the reasons were simple: we opposed the war and we wanted to be part of the protest, which we had heard a lot about.
i didn't make it to the women's rights rally in DC due to logistical problems, but though the presence of madeline allbright would have distasteful to the core, it would not have prevented me from going.
the point being that: it is possible that the primary role left organizations play in the US may be one of organizing (logistics), not leadership. of course i am generalizing from sparse data, and could be entirely wrong.
--ravi