antiwar research on abc news

Lee Dye of ABC news ran an article on our research showing how Democrats have abandoned the antiwar movement. A few choice clips:

“Democratic departures left the antiwar movement fragmented and empowered radical elements within the movement,” the study says.

That’s a vastly different picture than the one just six years earlier when protesters around the world took part in “The World Says No to War.” Approximately 10 million people were mobilized in hundreds of cities worldwide for that event, described as “the largest internationally coordinated protest in history.”

And:

“The threat to peace from the Obama administration, as perceived by the grassroots constituency of the antiwar movement, must have been very small,” the study concludes. The reduced numbers proved “devastating to the financial base,” leaving antiwar leaders with little choice but to move from the streets to the Internet.

“What’s left in the antiwar movement today is the hardcore,” Heaney said in the interview, “the people who are more or less professional activists. It’s just a small group of people that’s left.”

But the wars continue in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now, to a much lesser extent, Libya. So where have all the flowers gone?

As a former antiwar protester himself, Heaney was willing to go well beyond the scientifically-based research that resulted in the study and offer a few personal opinions. Does he feel “betrayed,” to use his study’s own word, by Obama.

“I feel disappointed he has continued some of the Bush policies,” Heaney said, but not betrayed. After thinking about a question for what seemed like a full minute, he said he never really expected Obama to bring a quick end to the wars, which he described as “very intractable.”

Check it out.