Living in the Portland Metro Area (sorry, that is as about as specific as I am willing to get on my location) I have been priveleged to sample a wide swath of views on both the pro-war and anti-war movement, and am going to comment in length about it. But first, as a jumping-off point, I would like to use Christopher Hitchens new article detailing the recent anti-war protests in DC:

To be against war and militarism, in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, is one thing(my emphasis added). But to have a record of consistent support for war and militarism, from the Red Army in Eastern Europe to the Serbian ethnic cleansers and the Taliban, is quite another. It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as “antiwar” when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side. Was there a single placard saying, “No to Jihad”? Of course not. Or a single placard saying, “Yes to Kurdish self-determination” or “We support Afghan women’s struggle”? Don’t make me laugh. And this in a week when Afghans went back to the polls, and when Iraqis were preparing to do so, under a hail of fire from those who blow up mosques and U.N. buildings, behead aid workers and journalists, proclaim fatwahs against the wrong kind of Muslim, and utter hysterical diatribes against Jews and Hindus.

Some of the leading figures in this “movement,” such as George Galloway and Michael Moore, are obnoxious enough to come right out and say that they support the Baathist-jihadist alliance. Others prefer to declare their sympathy in more surreptitious fashion. The easy way to tell what’s going on is this: Just listen until they start to criticize such gangsters even a little, and then wait a few seconds before the speaker says that, bad as these people are, they were invented or created by the United States. That bad, huh? (You might think that such an accusation - these thugs were cloned by the American empire for God’s sake - would lead to instant condemnation. But if you thought that, gentle reader, you would be wrong.)

I see both attitudes on display in my day-to-day interaction with the people of my city, and I've noticed a broad spectrum of people on both the pro and anti Iraq war sides. However, this is a phenomenom that the far-left seems either unable or unwilling to understand: that they have alliesin the center-left and center-right who, while they don't agree on all leftist issues, they agree on the wrongness of the war. Two anecdotes from my life illustrate this.

The first one happened at around the time of the lead up to the war, I worked for a centerist Catholic man who looked and dressed like your stereotypical young Republican. He wore khakis and nice polo shirts to work, drove a SUV, and was fairly socially conservative (though he did not have strong feelings on this issue). His attitude towards the war? He was against it and felt that diplomacy should reign. This did not matter to the far-leftist Graduate student in our lab though. Don't get me wrong, the Graduate student was a nice guy, but he exposed some truly wacky left-wing beliefs.

So, a conversation on international issues would begin with agreement on the wrongness of attacking Iraq, and of using assasination on terrorists, but would quickly devolve in the PhD candidate flinging out hatred on Israel, supporting the Taliban government, and thowing out truly bizarre comments about Freemasons (his big issue he always came back to). My boss would try to steer the conversation back to the main issue (Iraq) but his student kept wandering off topic. The discussion would end with my boss walking away frustrated over the fact that the Graduate student would either try to convert him to his general way of political thought, or he would chide my boss for not being a "true believer".

Fast forward a year (early '03), I was getting coffee at a local coffee place and was standing in line behind a well-dressed woman with a "don't attack Iraq" pin on her lapel. A young man approached her and praised her for it, she thanked him and started talking about why she was against the war. The young man fell into a screed about global capitalism, Bush, Israel and the usual leftist bromides. The woman lowered her head and meakly said "I'm a conservative Christian who voted for Bush. I support the removal of Saddam, I am just against war since many innocent people will die" The young man smirked, shook his head, and walked off a little peeved.

I also like to point out that many in the anti-war crowd understand this. In the lead up to the war many of the Portland area anti-war demonstrations were organized through local churches and community centers and the lead organizer actually went on public access and asked the more radical elements not to come to his protests. And finally, Markos of Daily Kos has actually laid out a "what not to do list" for protesters on his site, a list that basically boils down to "keep it simple and stay on message"

But the DC protests, among others, show that the far-left are tone deaf on this broad spectrum of the anti-war movement. Either they are ignorant, or are unwilling to associate with people they consider heretics to the leftist cause, and so become their own worst enemies.

Look, the war is unpopular now and the people who are against the war come from many walks of life and have highly varying viewpoints. It would be in their best interest to not alienate these potential allies. But sadly, they will not do this, as the scorpion said to the frog he killed while riding on his back to cross the stream "It is in my nature."