Once again, showing up for peace

The priest at the church I attend remarked to me one day, "you know, we can't expect people to show up out of a sense of duty anymore ..." As it happens, I don't go to church out of duty; I like the values and community I find there.

But when it comes to small, necessary, urgent, demonstrations against the latest U.S. imperial atrocity, duty is what gets me there. Sure, I see a lot of friends ... but must I go? Well, yes.

That said, rallying Saturday in San Francisco against escalating U.S. hostilities against Iran, was surprisingly interesting.

The good people of Code Pink set a theme that seemed to resonate generally:

We know what happens when the U.S. turns its military loose on some place we've decided we don't like: a lot of people -- mostly innocent of any crime -- die. And the unfortunate country ends up a violent failed state. The last 20 years have provided irrefutable evidence of this conclusion.

A slogan from several signs from slightly different tendencies caught my attention. One example:

And here's another:

In most any antiwar protest I've ever been part of those signs would have had a different slant:
"No war ON Vietnam" "No war ON Afghanistan" "No war ON Iraq"
Does the "No war WITH Iran" slogan reflect that antiwar people now understand that the countries we attack fight back? That our vaunted military might find itself someday retreating with tail between legs? This seems the most likely outcome after we make a cruel and horrible mess of Iran ... have the lessons of last 20 years (and of the last 50 years if we'd paid attention) begun to get through to the willing?

It becomes the task of the peace movement, once again, to spread the bad news that overkill is just that -- overkill from which nothing good comes.

One more sign that looked backward:

Actually, 2003 was a crime. But the connection is made.