Salon.com News | Why are these people smiling?

With war underway, and a Bush victory a possibility, the antiwar movement appears to be in denial about its future influence.

When Bush “won” the election, I heard smart lefties assuring each other that things wouldn’t look so great for the republicans come mid-term elections.

It smelled like hubris to me at the time, and it was no surprise (to me, at least) that the mid-term elections worked out pretty well for the right. Of course, those smart lefties couldn’t have foreseen 9/11 (though many of them also argue that 9/11 was the inevitable outcome of American imperialism), but thats really part of my point. Don’t get cocky, you never know whats going to happen to upset your complacency.

I can’t really say what the general mood is of the Anti-war movement, since I don’t have much to do with it, but they certainly seem to be in their own world to me. Perhaps though, they have already surrendered influence for the next 2-10 years (whether they know it or not) and are instead massing for later battles.

Whatever is going on, I find it troubling. I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know that we need credible opposition to Bush & his gang in the near term.