Listening to the anti-war stance

I remember being six or seven years old and hanging upside down from the furniture. All of a sudden, the table was on the ceiling and the lights were on the floor. "Mom, everything looks so weird from over here!"\nFifteen years later, I say the same thing when I call home. Anyone who has studied abroad or even gone to college outside of his or her home state will tell you that "home" starts to look very different when approached from a new angle. Now more than ever, as our country takes a controversial stance in the world, we are learning that not everyone thinks as highly of the United States as our second grade teachers did.\nOn Nov. 18, about 30,000 protesters gathered in Hyde Park to express their feelings about U.S. and U.K. involvement in the war in Afghanistan. Parents pushed children in strollers, senior citizens carried "Stop the War" signs and leaders of Socialist and Communist student groups spoke from makeshift podiums. London police closed an entire tube station to outgoing travelers, just so those pouring in for the protest could fit up the escalators and through the doors.\nAs schoolchildren meticulously practiced their marching in preparation for the group's departure to Trafalgar Square, one speaker said, "(The war) is about Americans' revenge not for the thousands who died Sept. 11, but for their dented pride and prestige." A cheer rose from the crowd.\nYoung and old echoed this sentiment for the duration of the protest. And while some Americans may share these very opinions, hearing strangers level them at our country in an unfamiliar place was unsettling. The sensation was something akin to the feeling many of us get when someone insults our brothers or sisters: it's one thing for us to complain about them, but it feels all wrong when someone else does. \nThroughout the afternoon, the United States' War on Terrorism was called racist scapegoating, capitalism in its worst possible form and even terrorism itself. One representative of the Socialist groups referred to President George W. Bush's assertion that there are no good terrorists; he then added, "There are plenty of 'good terrorists' when they're state terrorists, doing the work of capitalist Americans around the world." GAP-clad teenagers waved their arms in agreement.\n As this miniature army of pacifists left the park and began their march down blocked off streets, children on streamer-laden bikes chanted, "George Bush, we know you! Your daddy was a killer, too!" and "U-S-A, U-S-A, how many kids have you killed today?!"\nThe whole affair resembled a Fourth of July parade gone terribly awry.\nWhen the last of the group had left the park, we were, for better or worse, enlightened. The previously faceless anti-war contingent had just assembled, en masse, before our eyes. No longer were we dealing with public opinion polls broadcast into our parents' living rooms on the nightly news, but with real people, real reasons and real outrage. We were unsure whether or not to take it personally. As I turned around to walk back through the park, several Muslim men and women knelt praying quietly in the grass. In the wake of the chaotic confusion I'd just experienced, I wanted to do the same.