Protesters took to the streets on March 19. (Photo courtesy of The ANSWER Coalition.)

On March 19, eight years to the day since the first bombs were dropped on Iraq, American planes flew into Libyan airspace. A week later, protesters took the streets in Washington D.C., New York, Texas, Florida and California to express their dissent.

That day, Brian Becker, the national coordinator of Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, one of the United States’ largest antiwar organizations, said:  “We are here to stand in opposition to the illegal, criminal bombing of Libya, and to assert that the Libyan people — and they alone — should determine the destiny of their country.”

These words are not much different to those that followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The difference this time was in scale: Unlike the images of large-scale dissent that were broadcast in the weeks following George W. Bush’s invasion, the lightly-attended Libya protests in America barely made a blip on the media’s radar.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the women’s antiwar group Code Pink and a leading organizer of the recent protests, admits that there has been a disappointing lack of reaction from U.S. activists and citizens. “It’s been so much smaller than expected,” says Benjamin. “At the beginning of the Iraq war we had tens if not thousands if people on the streets. Now we’re talking hundreds.”

Benjamin and others say that having a Democrat in the White House is proving a serious obstacle to America’s progressive movement. “It was a problem even during the primaries, and it’s worse now,” she says.

Benjamin says that many previously vocal Americans stopped being active because they believed Barack Obama would take care of their concerns after being elected, and have been further demobilized by the realization that “even with him in office, we’re nowhere near getting out of these wars.”

The problem is two-fold and intractable, says Benjamin: a lack of motivation resulting from unkept promises, teamed with the fear that to criticize Obama could aid the Republican cause and lead to an even worse situation. “We’ve seen our movement almost disintegrate as a result,” she says.

Jason Pye, the 30-year-old editor of UnitedLiberty.org and onetime Republican and supporter of the Iraq war who became a libertarian in 2006, also says that Obama’s role in spearheading the Libyan campaign hinders the reaction of the country’s usually vocal leftist and liberal organizations. “Now we have a center-left president invading a country for no reason. Naturally the people more closely aligned with him are going to find reason to support his actions.”

Groups such as Code Pink have taken a different tack in recent weeks, focusing their activism on support for the Libyan people and voices from the Arab world, rather than criticizing the president outright. Indeed, when they do so, as can be seen in Becker’s statement, criticism tends to be aimed at the government rather than at Obama himself, in stark contrast to the pointed focus on George Bush as the face of the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Benjamin says that the movement has been further divided by the decision by some groups, including Code Pink, to make alliances with the antiwar right. When she and other antiwar activists recently attended a Tea Party rally with placards reading: “Get out of Libya/ Bring our war dollars home,” they received a very favorable response.

Ben Becker, a national organizer for the ANSWER Coalition, a multinational antiwar group, does not deny that Obama’s presidency has proved difficult for antiwar activists. He believes, however, that the problem is temporary. “The antiwar movement did well responding to Libya,” he says. “There’s a lot of confusion and hesitation right now, which is why the magnitude of the protests hasn’t been the same as Iraq.”

“Of course we want more people, but the antiwar sentiment is still large,” he says, pointing to the United National Anti-War Coalition’s 10,000 head count at the New York protest in Union Square on April 9.

Eric Garris, director of Antiwar.com, agrees with Pye, but says there is also a time-scale issue. “It’s moved so quickly without any real debate or review,” he says. “It seems like with each subsequent military action presidents are usurping more and more power to act unilaterally, in terms of getting advice and consent from the rest of the government and the people.”

Pye asserts that there could be another cause for this change: the government’s emphasis on the humanitarian effort. He says there has been almost no attempt to suggest that Libya poses a credible threat to the U.S., but rather a complete embracing of the humanitarian terms of the U.N.’s mandate.

In the meantime, leading groups on the left are taking action, attempting to reform a broad base of support among the currently estranged but traditionally progressive sectors of society like unions, environmentalists and women’s groups is now, Benjamin believes, the key. “Through outreach we can rebuild an antiwar movement,” she says, “and force them to take a position.”
Email: ldm2135@columbia.edu