From the Guardian no less:
Many local people seemed genuinely happy to see the army rolling past, laughing and joking even as they were stopped to be frisked at the checkpoints into and out of the city. A jubilant crowd of about 100 Iraqis surrounded two British tanks sitting side by side near a mural of Saddam Hussein and started cheering the soldiers inside and giving the thumbs-up sign. Soldiers were handed pink carna tions and yellow flowers. Abdul Karim, an English teacher, was wandering through the city late in the day. He was standing opposite a burning building, painted with the inevitable portrait of Saddam He said it was used as a food warehouse by the Ba’ath party and that it had been looted and set on fire. He said he had a BA in English. “It’s great, it’s great,” he said with an expansive gesture. “The Fedayeen have gone. They left on Saturday and Sunday. It is fantastic.”
One obvious point: if it weren’t for Bush and Blair, these people would still be in a living hell. But the U.N. would be happy.
THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT: It now commands 16 percent support in the population at large. Boomers, the group most likely to be seeing this war through the prism of Vietnam, now support it in greater numbers than any other age-group. Here’s an email from someone perhaps typical of his generation:
I am part of that baby boomer generation and like many I demonstrated against that war in Viet Nam. But unlike some I do realize it is not 1969 anymore. Viet Nam was a very long, costly and ugly war. The divisions did not come overnight and for many they will not go away. It is part of their identity, their very purpose in life. Many felt the same after the American Civil War. It took a generation then and it might take a generation now for enough time and distance to come about to see that war and its legacy in proper perspective. I supported the government in this endeavor for the simple reason that I am an American and I don’t like fascist dictators the likes of Saddam Hussein. They can call that simplistic, but then again so is their knee jerk anti Americanism. There is nothing sadder than an old hippie trying to regain his/her youth through the manipulation of others and at the expense of a suffering people they claim to feel sympathy for. I hate the destruction, but I also hate doing nothing while hundreds of thousands of people die. I guess some of my generation and the UN security council have no such qualms.
Has any large protest movement been this much of a failure so soon?
The Dish 