I am apparently looking at a much bigger picture than you are.

You have to remember that I have a long history with the anti-war movement--the professional protestors and organizations, not the local grocery clerk that happened to oppose the war--and the Left in general.

These groups opposed not only the Vietnam War, but the first Gulf War, pretty much any policy or action that confronted the Soviet Union on any level or in any other nation, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan*, and of course, the invasion of Iraq.

It would be a very unpleasant world right now if our foreign policy has been strictly according to the ideals of the Left over the past thirty years. It would include a healthy U.S.S.R., unilateral nuclear disarmament, many more communist nations, a nuclear-armed Saddam, and a number of other consequences.

The anti-war movement has every right to criticize American policy in any way they see fit. Although I would never support any legal actions to stop them, I also have every right to point out that this current activity, carried out the way it has been on many occasions, supports and feeds our enemies, who operate more on a political level than a military one. The general's statement was just one example of this consequence from a previous era. Al Jazeera liberally quoting Ted Kennedy might be another example from the current era.

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*Despite a number of people trying to rewrite this history, there were massive protests across the world when we went into Afghanistan. A.N.S.W.E.R. still opposes this action. Some reasonable liberals (including many here) are against Iraq and for Afghanistan, but they are not the whole picture.

I would bet that if we weren't in Iraq at all, all the coffin photos, war dead counts, civilian deaths, torture photos, and all the rest of the constant drumbeat against the war, would all be coming in right now from Afghanistan.

It's just not front page enough right now, and not as easy a target as Iraq.