Esther Short Park in Vancouver WA hosted its own celebration of peace and justice today; there were groups from the Democratic Party, the American Friends Service Committee, the Unitarians, the Presbytarians, the Ba'hais, the Buddhists, the Peace Corps (yes they were there), the Lutherans, the Congregationalists, the Muslims, the NAACP, AU, and a host of others.
We now have a Clark County chapter of Americans United. Cool. As Democracy for Vancouver notes, Royce Pollard's bad Koizumi does Yasukuni Shrine imitation with the Full Gospel Men's Fellowship might receive some attention now.
Now let me just say one other thing: these folks at the Vancouver for Peace and Justice Fair were nice people. I don't share all their views- for example, I think there ought to be a plan in place - made by people smarter and more ethical than Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney - that gets us out of Iraq before we just pull out, so as to minimize loss of life and maximize stability. There's ways to do that, and they need to be looked at.
Moreover, sometimes war is the answer- when you have to defend the lives of those around you. But war is a failure of policy, and only if conducted in such a way as to bring about its end will it result its continuance (common sense, unless you're a Republican).
But, given a hard choice between the Vancouver for Peace folks and the Bush/Cheney crowd, it's not even a contest. The Vancouver for Peace folks have the moral high ground, and want to move in the right direction, even though their tactics are wanting.
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