For An Effective Protest

An Orange County editorial offers an opinion on how to have an effective protest :

"Most of all, we hope that they reflect not just a radical fringe group of knee-jerk Bush-haters, but the growing number of ordinary Americans - around 60 percent according to most polls - who have come to see the war in Iraq as a mistake."

"Ms. Sheehan's statements have sometimes gone beyond understandable anger about the war to embrace a range of radical causes. We think that is a mistake. Ordinary Americans who love their country and don't see it as the source of most of the evil in the world but are upset about the Iraq war need to see a reflection of themselves, of a broader Middle America, in this weekend's events. Otherwise they are likely to dismiss the protests as the work of people who will leap at any opportunity to "blame America first."

"Some signs are less than hopeful. The Washington organizers might have asked for a speaker from Pat Buchanan's American Conservative magazine, which has opposed the war steadfastly from the beginning. But the speakers we saw listed on the United for Peace and Justice Web site were all from the left side of the spectrum. When the anti-war movement, to borrow a phrase, starts to look like America, the politicians will start to pay attention."

How does the writer know Buchanan or other conservatives weren't invited to speak? I'm not sure what radical causes or left-sided spectrum the writer is whining about, or what the movement needs to "start to look like America" in his eyes. The few minutes I caught of the rally yesterday on Cspan had a lesbian singing, a Black guy speaking on the victims of Katrina, and an American Iraqi for peaceful solutions. Are those the "radical fringe group of Bush-haters" he speaks of? Maybe the writer thinks straight, white Christians, upset with Iraq War, and who only request an end to this particular venture without assigning blame, would look more like his "Middle America,' the America he thinks politicians pay attention to.