The “Anti-War” Movement Is A Bigger Problem Than You Think

For over a year our country has been at war with a terrorist foe that can infiltrate our borders with weapons of mass destruction. We are divided in our homeland on two fronts. Reasonable people may disagree over tactics and priorities in fighting this war -- for example over which hostile agency or state to take on, and at which point in time. There have been critics of the Administration’s war policy from both the Democrat and Republican side of the aisle. But these critics share a common concern for the defense of this country, and in the end they support our government and our nation against its foes.

Not so the other opposition to the war, which is a radical movement with Marxist roots, whose origins go back to the Vietnam War and whose political base is American universities. This opposition to the war on terror manifested itself within weeks of 9/11 with aim of opposing an American military response to the al-Qaeda attacks. Its agendas are not “pacifist” and are not inspired by dissatisfaction with any particular American war or policy, but with the American system itself. It is a movement which cannot be appeased and which is willing to collaborate with America’s enemies.

Every major “anti-war” demonstration to date, including the demonstrations on the Capitol Mall in October and January has been organized and controlled by a self-styled Communist group called the Workers World Party, and its front “International A.N.S.W.E.R.” The figurehead of this organization is former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and its organizer is Brian Becker, a member of the secretariat of the Workers World Party. The WWP is aligned with the North Korean Communist regime and along with its figurehead has supported the North Vietnamese torturers of American POWS, the Ayatollah Khomeni regime in Iran, Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.

At the Mall, the speakers – all selected by the Workers World Party – denounced America as an imperialist aggressor and “the axis of evil,” and called for “regime change” and “revolution” in the United States. An imam from a Washington DC mosque led the crowd in chants of “Allahu Akbar,” which is the cry of the suicide bombers as they blow up innocent civilian targets. Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 suicide bombers, gave these instructions to his team: “When the confrontation begins, strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world. Shout, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers.”

John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee was a featured speaker at the Workers World Party “peace” rally, as was former Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. Representative Charles Rangel, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee sent a letter of support. In a sister demonstration in San Francisco, also organized by the Workers World Party, California State Senator, Democrat John Burton, told the protesters that the President of the United States was “full of s___” and was “f---ing America.”

So appalling were these demonstrations that older members of the left disassociated themselves from this movement in articles that appeared in leftwing magazines like Salon.com and the L.A. Weekly (the latter article was written by David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation).

On February 15, an anti-war protest will be held in New York City, organized by a new group called “United for Peace and Justice.” This group is headed by Leslie Cagan, a Sixties Marxist with a long history of supporting Communist causes. She was a member of the Venceremos Brigades organized by Cuban Intelligence. She was a member of the Committees for Correspondence, a faction of the Communist Party USA, and she is co-chair of the National Network on Cuba an organization whose purpose is propaganda and political support for the Castro dictatorship. Cagan has warned that, “If marches do not work, we will escalate. We will have to do things to disrupt the normal flow of life in this country.”(NYTimes, 2/04/03) This threat of sabotage should not be taken lightly given the history of more than 1,000 domestic bombings during the Vietnam War.

The agendas of the so-called “peace movement” are pro-Communist and anti-American. Its organizers have worked with America’s enemies in the past and are continuing to do so in the midst of this war. This is the very definition of a political “fifth column.” Honest dissenters and Americans concerned about the future of their country should take a hard look at these protests and those who support them.