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Date Posted: 00:48:13 02/25/03 Tue
Author: Weird_Enigma
Author Host/IP: 209.252.119.4
Subject: Antiwar rallies not irrelevant

Antiwar rallies not irrelevant
New York restricts protesters exercising their patriotic rights
E.R. SHIPP
Knight Ridder/Tribune

Albert Einstein once said, "You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time." We are sorely testing that hypothesis as President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair lead the drumbeat for war against Iraq while much of the world -- including 6 million to 10 million who marched across the globe Saturday -- say no.

Even before the rallies ended, some hawks were calling them irrelevant. In this country, those protesting were seen by the Bush camp as leftovers from the hippie, anti-Vietnam era. But this is a new movement, and many of its supporters were born post-Vietnam.

Iraqi officials gloated, of course. But that does not make irrelevant the protests of the millions, many of whom believe this is a personal vendetta against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, a war to gain control of Iraqi oil fields and/or a war to reshape the Middle East to the liking of the United States.

Recent opinion polls show Bush still has the approval of a majority of Americans even in his handling of the Iraq situation. But majorities are not always right. Our constitutional system realizes that and thus provides an avenue for the voices of the minority to be heard through speech, assembly and protest.

In New York, that heritage is being forgotten as the city gives in to terror. A rally was permitted, but marching was banned, ostensibly for security reasons, though other world capitals permitted far greater numbers of people to march.

People were hemmed into pens. And according to some, a number of police roughed them up while calling them commies and other derogatory terms.

Sometimes the greatest expression of patriotism is protest. As Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient, said, it was because of such acts that blacks won their civil rights in the 1960s, the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and South Africa dismantled apartheid in the 1990s. "Can you imagine," Tutu said, "what we'd be able to do if half of what we invested in war, we invested in peace?"

The question, unfortunately, is going unheard. Once on the path to war, there seems no turning back.

And so we muddle on, struggling to do what Einstein deemed impossible: simultaneously preparing for and trying to prevent war.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E.R. Shipp is a columnist for the New York Daily News, 450 W. 33rd St., New York, NY 10001. Write her by e-mail at ershipp2003@hotmail.com.

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