By Robert Sommer, Midwest Voices Panelist 2008

The final day of this year’s dreary winter should have come as a relief. But while the day itself was fair, March 19 also marked the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

That evening, as my wife and I waited to cross the street and join the vigil in Mill Creek Park, a minivan zoomed past. The woman driving shouted an obscenity and wagged a universal sign of disdain at the gathering. Her wailing horn seemed to echo from the depths of the war’s long winter.

Shades of Fred Phelps, I thought.

We make it a point to attend the vigils for anniversaries and landmark deaths — four years, five years, 2,000, 3,000. A recent Pew Research Center poll revealed that only 28 percent of Americans know that over 4,000 U.S. troops have died in Iraq. Our son did tours there and in Afghanistan. We find poll numbers like that disturbing.

News trucks lined J. C. Nichols Parkway. A TV reporter interviewed an attractive young woman, which seemed ironic since most of this crowd had also protested the Vietnam War, and a few had fought in it.

But the gathering bore little resemblance to rallies of that era. Antiwar sentiment here was universal, but the occasion was somber. We held candles. A bell-ringer tolled the dead.
Almost 60 percent of Americans now believe the Iraq War was a mistake, but only about 250 people were at the rally. Imagine that number at a Chiefs game!

Arguably, public protest helped change policy during the Vietnam War. But now, on a given Sunday only a dozen or so line the streets at Mill Creek Park to protest the American occupation of Iraq. With such small numbers, what impact, if any, do these events have?

On a recent blustery Sunday, Anne Pritchett displayed a sign with the number of American dead and the names of those killed in Iraq the previous week.

“I’d like to think that people passing by haven’t spent one minute all day thinking about the war,” Pritchett, 54, said, “and now they have!”

While we talked, a driver waiting for the light gave her an obscene gesture.

L.D. Harstin was also dismayed that many Americans seem indifferent to the war. Harstin, 62, is a board member of PeaceWorks, one of the five-year vigil’s sponsors. We spoke at a recent meeting.

“We’re getting more and more desensitized,” he said. “We can go on like it’s not happening.”
Kris Cheatum, the PeaceWorks secretary, remembered the minivan driver.

“What turns them off so much about our activity?” she asked. “Nothing about this war is impacting them.”

Cheatum, 71, who first marched for fair housing in Kansas City in the 1960s, wishes such people would stop and talk.

Her enthusiasm is infectious, and she’s available most Sundays at Nichols Park, even when she was confined to a wheelchair following a leg operation.

Ira Harritt, program director for the American Friends Service Committee and co-chairman of the Kansas City Iraq Task Force, said, “They allow people to have some expression of deeply felt emotions.”

“There are many different ways to protest,” he added. “Gathering with a group on a street corner is just one way. The objective is to support your own commitment to truth, justice, and equality, and communicate that into the world.”

Dave Pack, chair of the PeaceWorks board of directors, believes that the disenchantment of many Americans with the war reveals a fundamental misconception.

“They’re against it not because it was wrong,” he said, “but because it wasn’t going the way they wanted it to. They don’t see that it was the wrong thing to do initially.”

The result is ambivalence, which may be why the real quagmire isn’t in Iraq, but here.
The Bush administration set out to wage war under the radar of American life. In a weird irony, support would come in the charade of “normalcy” and the absence of sacrifice.
Apathy became affirmation. Opposition was marginalized.

The impact from the margins may not be measurable, but as Harstin pointed out, “With something that important, there needs to be a presence in opposition regardless of the outcome.”

Bob Sommer’s novel, Where the Wind Blew, is forthcoming next month from the Wessex Collective. He lives in Overland Park. To reach Midwest Voices columnists, write to the author c/o the Editorial Page, The Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64108. Or send e-mail to .