The letters section of The New York Times is sometimes more penetrating than the editorials. A March 23 letter from Lawrence Borok: "As someone who was very active in the [anti-Vietnam War] protests, I think that the antiwar activists are totally wrong on this one. Granted, President Bush's insensitive policies in many areas dear to liberals (I am one) naturally make me suspicious of his motives. But even if he's doing it for all the wrong reasons, have they all forgotten about the Iraqi people?"

And, in the March 23 New York Times Magazine, Michael Ignatieff, a longtime human rights investigator, wrote of "14,000 'writers, academics, and other intellectuals'—many of them my friends—[who] published a petition against the war . . . condemning the Iraqi regime for its human rights violations and supporting 'efforts by the Iraqi opposition to create a democratic, multi-ethnic, and multireligious Iraq.' " But they say, he adds, that waging war at this time is "morally unacceptable."

"I wonder," Ignatieff wrote—as I also wonder—"what their support for the Iraqi opposition amounts to."

When the Village Voice is publishing articles extolling the virtues of this war, you have to wonder what it is the anti-war protesters are protesting.  I suspect it's more about protesting against Bush and using the Vietnam protests as a model.  If you want to protest Bush, then protest Bush, don't protest against the war - it just makes your completely legitimate points easy for the masses to dismiss.  I'm not saying don't protest, just make sure it's clear what you're protesting against.  And you know what the best way to protest against Bush is?  Make sure he has worthy challengers awaiting him in 2004.  Regime change begins at home.