The road to hell is paved with good intentions (and some malevolence)

Apparently all was not love and light, even at a Bay Area peace vigil. How else to account for letter to the San Francisco Chronicle's editor from a vigil attendee:

As I attended the vigil Wednesday night in support of Cindy Sheehan, I was struck by two things. First, I realized I was shoulder-to- shoulder with people my age -- Baby Boomers. Very few young people were at the vigil. While we mostly received positive greetings from passing cars, I was troubled to see that the few negative responses were mostly from young men, looking to be between ages 17 and 25, who raced down the street in trucks and yelled, 'Support the war!' and 'Go Bush!' When I protested the Vietnam War, I was with mostly young people who were against the war. So, the people who held the ideal that war is wrong a generation ago still hold that ideal. [I like this one. It doesn't occur to her that these young people actually believe that a country should act aggressively to protect itself. Perhaps, referring to one of my earlier posts, these young people have been studying their Harry Potter, while the letter's author hasn't.] Could it be that not having the draft produces no threat, so the young people feel they have little to lose by jeering? [This paragraph highlights that the anti-War protestors are the Vietnam generation reliving the protests of their youth. The call for the draft is simply meant to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing Vietnam narrative.] The other thing was the perception that we who are opposed to the war don't support the troops. How much more supportive can one be than to try to save a life? [Ummm. How about if you didn't look as if you were denigrating the willing sacrifice made by a volunteer army to save the lives of all Americans? Maybe you'd look more supportive if you actually supported these soldiers' missions, so that you didn't give aid and succor to the enemy?] JULIE WILDER-SHERMAN Petaluma