Obama happened

Linton Weeks at NPR.com asks, "Whatever Happened to the Anti-War Movement?" Weeks cites Celia Cook-Huffman, professor of "conflict resolution" at Juniata College, who suggests the reasons may be as varied as lack of a draft to incite people to protest, guilt over the way Vietnam vets were treated, and the squelching of bad news from the war fronts by the military.

Well, lessee. There was no draft during the Bush years, protesters and media alike felt no guilt over calling the men and women in our armed forces murderers and brutes, and there was no end to the bad news coming from war fronts even with the "chill wind" of dissent-crushing blowing from the Bush White House.

To his credit, Weeks also cites David Boaz from the Cato Institute, who identifies the real reason:

[Boaz] concludes that the anti-war activity in the United States — and around the world — a few years ago "was driven as much by antipathy to George W. Bush as by actual opposition to war and intervention."

To buttress his assertions, Boaz cites a recently published study of anti-war protesters. The research was conducted by Michael Heaney of the University of Michigan and Fabio Rojas of Indiana University. It concludes that the anti-war movement in America evaporated because Democrats — inspired to protest by their anti-Republican feelings — stopped protesting once the Democratic Party achieved success in Congress in 2006 and then in the White House in 2008.

"As president, Obama has maintained the occupation of Iraq and escalated the war in Afghanistan," Heaney, an assistant professor of organizational studies and political science, said in a news release. "The anti-war movement should have been furious at Obama's 'betrayal' and reinvigorated its protest activity."

Should have been, but weren't. I'll give props to Dennis Kucinich, who is calling for Obama's impeachment for pretty much the same reason that he wanted Bush impeached. But everybody else in the protest movement? Partisan hacks, no principles. Hey, NPR, we knew this all along. You didn't?