This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2005, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
They gathered Monday in Pioneer Park to sweat out a humid afternoon together for a righteous cause. Most estimates put the number at 2,000. People carried signs with slogans ranging from the profound to the profane. They lined 300 West three bodies deep, chanting and leading their own anti-war honk and wave with the noontime traffic heading toward Interstate 15.
It was a noble effort, with roots planted right here in the soil of our own little red state. Perhaps in a lone paragraph of a history text someday, it will be noted that right alongside grieving military mom Cindy Sheehan camping out in Crawford, Texas, the people of Utah did their part in lighting the fire to end the war in Iraq.
A sampling of the placards carried by people who are plain fed up with their vacationing president and his ineptitude:
"Bush: Send your daughters to the war, but bring ours home!"
"Bush lies while our troops die!"
But then the noon hour ended, and so, too, the electricity of the moment. Protesters moved toward their parked cars, or the TRAX train or back to the high-rise offices they left behind. Which still left the question I brought to the park: What good will this do? How will a protest movement matter?
The most thoughtful people at this gathering - and they voiced this to me repeatedly - know that demanding an immediate withdrawal of troops in Iraq would spell disaster in the region. No matter what grand plans the Bush team has for a blossoming democracy in Iraq, the Shiite majority and Sunni minority aren't even close to embracing a constitution.
Pull out U.S. forces now, and we virtually ensure a Shiite Muslim stronghold of Iran and Iraq - a cleric-powered juggernaut that could take aim at the Sunnis and make Saddam's beastly human rights record look golden by comparison.
So here we sit, deep inside a conflict built on a series of Bush blunders. It began with his playing on this nation's deepest fears following 9/11 and taking us up to this moment, when more than 1,800 men and women have come home in boxes. After the terrorist attacks we wanted, like trusting children, to believe this president. We hoped the WMD claims and the Saddam connection to 9/11 were true. For that would at least give this action purpose.
We know better now.
Yet we are mired in a mess that keeps getting compared to Vietnam, but can't possibly end as that war did. The "secret plan" to end the war that Richard Nixon promised in his 1972 re-election campaign consisted of sending helicopters the following year to pluck Americans from the embassy roof in Saigon.
Now that we've learned that the domino theory of one Asian country after another falling to communism would not play out, we can acknowledge that Nixon's speedy withdrawal worked.
The forces at play in Iraq simply won't allow for a replay, much as every chanting protester might wish.
Our fair mayor knows it. Frequently blasted by his critics as impulsive and rash, Rocky Anderson told me as he exited the park that a "sudden pullout from Iraq would be disastrous. In no way do I advocate that."
Then, what, I asked, is the point of the protest? Because it feels good? Because people need to be heard?
"Because we are setting the Muslim world afire by having no plan to end the war," Anderson said.
I can buy that. It's time to give Bush a lashing, and by doing so, we may set the scene for 2006 midterm elections and a president in 2008 who can dissect these matters with true diplomacy.
Short of that, we can always hope that plummeting poll numbers on his war policies might force Bush into a realistic solution.
Until then, 2,000 Utahns swarming a park is a start. Or as one guy standing behind me framed it for his friend, "looks like we may have a growth industry starting."