”The incompetence of the prosecution of the war has been at times bewildering.
The incompetence of the anti-war effort remains surpassingly bewildering.”

This is the closing sentence to a commentary on the front page of Global Security.
The article talks about Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who is camping out in front of the Shrub’s ranch in the Texas heat.
It turns out, according to this article that the P.R. firm of Fenton Communications who has been allied with Move On.Org is generating a lot of the publicity. It now seems the plight of this woman is part of a larger, national P.R. campaign that may or may not have her best interests at heart.
A look at Move On.Org’s page will find it plastered with Mrs. Sheehan’s image and articles of the vigils that are surrounding her.
The article in Global Security asks;

“Media relations firms serve an essential function in the information food chain, and David Fenton is certainly a fine fellow. But what purpose is served by the high visibility of this PR firm in the Cindy Sheehan matter? After all, the entire point of the Cindy Sheehan phenomena is that she is simply a citizen, speaking truth to power. Now she has been visibly repositioned as simply a pawn in the Washinton spin machine.”

After the march in New York in February before the U.S. went into Iraq the anti-war movement just dried up. The article chronicles Fenton’s involvement with Win Without War which purported to be a not for profit anti-war organization. The article goes on to state;

“On closer examination, Win Without War was revealed as a paid media buy. It was an advertising campaign, hosted at Fenton Communications, with a cast of hundreds of thousands hauled out at demonstrations to give the media buy legitimacy.
Once the war actually started, the paid media buy ended, and the anti-war "movement" as well.”

The point here is that there is no “organic” movement to end the war. By the fact that marches and now Mrs. Sheehan are touted by a P.R. firm once the heat is off and there is no more money paid to the P.R, firm the issue just dies.
This gets back to my post yesterday wondering where the actual anti-war movement is.

The incompetence of the anti-war effort remains surpassingly bewildering.

Indeed.

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