Protest organizers miss point

The UCLA anti-war protest held March 5 was a hodgepodge of
several organizations and ideologies.

Some were protesting Israel’s settlements in Palestine,
some were protesting class warfare, and some went so far as to
shout that the war was about oil. While they were disparate in
their message, they were all without a doubt united on one issue:
To them Bush and the United States were the enemy, not Saddam
Hussein. At no point did the rally for peace focus on asking
Hussein to step down or for him to disarm. 

While many people in the United States are opposed to war for
valid reasons, this protest was not their rally; this protest was
for those who believe that Bush and the United States are evil.

What the majority of the protesters missed was the anti-American
agenda of the rally’s organizers. While some were there
because they honestly believed that war is a dangerous or immoral
precedent, the vast majority were there to express their anger
against the United States. 

Under the guise of legitimate anti-war protests, the organizers
wanted to exploit the student body of UCLA for their own political
agenda. Few noticed how the organizers tied the anti-war protest to
demands for lower tuition; few noticed the affirmative action
chants that were shouted alongside the anti-war chants; and few
noticed all the socialist and communist banners. They probably
didn’t notice because very little substance emerged in the
mismatch of slogans.

At the end of the rally I told the protesters that I and all
South Koreans were free because American soldiers fought for our
freedom in the Korean War. A fellow Korean came up to me and asked
me if I knew about the two young Korean students who had been run
over by an American tank several months ago. Not only did I know of
that accident, like my fellow Korean, I was also very upset about
how the American soldiers were shielded by Status of Forces
Agreement ““ the American military treaty with South
Korea. 

However, unlike her, I didn’t combine the two separate
issues into one. She let her anger against the U.S. military policy
in Korea decide how she felt about American military actions in
Iraq. She said I shamed Koreans for my support of Bush’s
possible war in Iraq. I found that ironic because I found her
shameful for forgetting about the Korean War and the American lives
that were lost in that struggle.

Too many people at the rally were there for reasons similar to
hers. They were there because they thought America’s policies
in the Middle East were unfair to Muslims because they thought that
the American government was unfair to minorities and because they
thought that U.S. money funded genocide in South America. To
these protesters, all American actions, regardless of intent, are
evil and are never justified. To these protesters, the protest was
not against war, but against all and any American actions
worldwide.

While I support America’s impending military actions
against Saddam Hussein, I also acknowledge that there are many
valid reasons against such actions, such as the fear of inspiring
more terrorism. Sadly, these reasons were conspicuously absent at
the rally where spurious slogans and chants dominated.

The student body, whether it supports or opposes the impending
war, must become informed about who is leading their protests. I
ask the educated liberals to stand up and make their case
known. For too long the extreme radicals have dominated the
scene. Without the liberal leadership’s public denunciation
of the extreme left, the radicals and their anti-American
protestations will continue to pollute all rational and logical
debate. 

What happened to the educated protest, where facts and reason
dictated action? It disappeared under the barrage of the uneducated
radical, whose appeals to emotion and anti-Americanism now
dominate.

Choo is a fifth-year English student.