THE FACE of the anti-war movement.

(Via Damian Penny.)

UPDATE: This says it well:

But what is the antiwar movement actually saying?

Most of the new antiwar groups express an entirely personal opposition to war, one based more on moral revulsion than effective political opposition. Protesters voice a personal distaste for violent conflict, rather than organizing a collective stand against it. And when opposing war is about making pompous moral statements about me, myself, and I, you can count me out. . . .

Protesting wars today seems to be a way to cleanse one’s private conscience rather than effecting public change – a case of opting out instead of getting stuck in and having the hard arguments. Going on an antiwar demonstration has become a way to declare your whiter-than-white credentials, and demonstrating to onlookers that you have cleared your own conscience.

Has it really come to this – where being antiwar is more about saving ourselves than anyone else? If so, then it’s not in my name.

Indeed. David Corn has a different criticism:

The October 26 protest–one of the more prominent antiwar actions so far–had been organized by International ANSWER, a group dominated by the Workers World Party, a small revolutionary-socialist outfit with a fancy for North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il and the goal of abolishing private property. So it was no surprise that the antiwar message–which, according to polls, resonates with at least one-third of Americans–was accessorized with the demands of the fringe far-left. Nor was it a shocker that many speakers did not adopt a give-inspections-a-chance position. The WWP, which hails world leaders that stand against US hegemony (such as Slobodan Milosevic), opposes weapons inspections in Iraq and has assumed the task of trying to steer the antiwar movement away from endorsing them. ANSWER eschews criticism of Saddam Hussein.

Corn notes that there are efforts to put together an anti-war movement that’s (1) not stupidly solipsistic; and (2) not just anti-Americanism disguised as opposition to war. Good luck.