WASHINGTON — Sitting in the front row of a Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing, directly in sight of committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., two women discreetly held up two pink cardboard signs that read, “U.S. War =Terrorism” and “Drone Attacks Kill Civilians.”
The women, Toby Blome and Martha Hubert, belong to Code Pink, a nationwide anti-war group that began in 2002. They were quietly protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as former CIA agent Robert Grenier testified that a significant increase in troops is required to fend off al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
Since the start of the Iraq war in 2003, Code Pink anti-war protesters had been a common, often colorful, presence on Capitol Hill.
But starting in 2006, when the Democrats took control of Congress, Code Pink and other the anti-war groups noticed a decrease in the number of active participants. After Barack Obama was elected president, the anti-war movement went into an almost complete stagnation of activity.
“Fewer and fewer people were showing up for national meetings and the fundraising dried up to almost nothing,” said Susan Lamont, former president of the board of directors of the now defunct “Not in our Name” anti-war group.
However, the decline in public support for the war in Afghanistan in recent months has caused an increase in interest for some anti-war groups.
Lamont said anti-war groups had assumed that Obama’s election would mean a speedy withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, but they placed too much hope in him, considering his calls for escalation of the Afghanistan war.
However Scott Keeter, director of survey research for the Pew Research Center, said that people got what they wanted from Obama.
“The protests that were associated with the war in Iraq have declined, but that’s because the war in Iraq is winding down,” he said.
Keeter said it’s important to make a distinction between the general public and anti-war movement. “Generally speaking, Americans have never been much on movements,” he said.
The public, according to Keeter was staunchly opposed to the war in Iraq, but not the Afghanistan war. “In public opinion, only a minority opposed both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars,” he said. So when Obama announced the Iraq withdrawal timetable, many people were satisfied and no longer saw the need to actively protest.
But the current decline of the anti-war movement has more to do with just the election of Obama or ending the Iraq war. according to Eric Garris, director and founder of Antiwar.com. He cited a combination of war fatigue, domestic issues taking the forefront in public debate and the Bush administration leaving office.
“Unfortunately, a lot of the anti-war movement during the Bush administration was more anti-Bush than anti-war,” Garris said. People are more occupied with domestic issues, such as health care reform and the economic crisis, and many people were left disillusioned after many years of protesting without results.
But with the waning public support of the Afghanistan war, anti-war groups have started noticing an increase in numbers and support. “We’ve had a lot of decentralized action in October,” said Gael Murphy, co-founder of Code Pink.
Anti-war actions such as the committee hearing protest in which Blome and Hubert participated in early October have slowly started to rise. So far this year there have been eight official Disruption of Congress arrests, compared with only four in all of 2008, according to Capitol Hill Police. These types of protests will only increase, said Murphy.
“There is a growing dissatisfaction with Obama’s foreign policy and people are mobilizing,” she said. “And I think we’re going to see much more activity in the fall.”