Anti-War Offensive : Newcomers Reinforce Ranks of Protesters as Gulf Deadline Draws Ever Closer

Sharon Jordan was driving down Main Street on her way to Trader Joe’s on Saturday when she spotted a throng of anti-war demonstrators. She parked her car, walked up to a woman with a sign that said, “Sanctions Not War,” and volunteered to join.

“I didn’t demonstrate against the Vietnam War, but I would like to demonstrate against this coming one,” said Jordan, a 46-year-old counselor at a chemical dependency clinic with a husband who was a helicopter gunner in Vietnam and three draft-age sons.

“I was so unsophisticated then,” Jordan said. “I had no idea what was going on. I’m not willing to sacrifice my sons for this. No way.”

Peace groups have been staging weekly demonstrations in Orange County for several months, but with the Jan. 15 United Nations deadline for Iraq to leave Kuwait looming, Saturday’s protest also drew a number of political novices like Jordan, several self-described conservatives and one man who, asked why he was there, replied: “Fear.”

More than 100 people lined the streets at the intersection of Main Street and Town & Country Road, a substantially larger showing than last week, said organizers with the Orange County Coalition for Peace in the Middle East.

Among their signs and banners were: “No Blood for Oil Profits,” “Oil Companies Should Fight Their Own Battle” and “We Are Better Than Our Foreign Policy.”

In a Newsweek poll released Saturday, 61% of those surveyed said U.S. forces should fight if Iraq refuses to leave Kuwait--up from 56% last month. And about half of the 759 people polled said they thought U.S. forces were “very likely” to fight, up from 31% last month.

Jordan and others said Saturday that President Bush’s ultimatum to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein--withdraw from Kuwait by Jan. 15 “or face the terrible consequences”--has spurred them to try to persuade Bush and the public that war is not inevitable.

“I’ve been thinking about it off and on,” Jordan said. “I have to do something this time. I can’t just stand by. . . .

“So whatever way I can protest it, I’m going to do it. . . ,” she said. “I’m going to write to my congressman, write to President Bush. They say that if just one person does it, it’s indicative of a hundred-something people who don’t.”

Passing motorists honked their horns. One passenger in a pickup truck hollered an obscenity about what the United States should do to Saddam Hussein. Other drivers waved.

“You do have to look, because every now and then you’re getting the finger, but I think by and large it’s positive,” said Dorothy Callison, 56, of Fullerton.

Callison wore a button that read, “U.S. Out Of” and then underneath, a space and the words “Fill in the blank.” She had pasted in a label that said “Persian Gulf.” She said she has been active in the peace movement since 1978, “when my kids started approaching draft age and it got real.”

“To me, the tension and the urgency is a physical thing,” she said. “I think, ‘It’s only a week and a few days until the 15th,’ and it just gives me cold chills.”

The picket line included strange political bedfellows. Alongside peace activists and aging hippies were five UC Irvine students from the conservative group Young Americans for Freedom. How did they hear about the demonstration?

“The liberal leftist types have a hot line,” said Craig Zurgules, 25, a graduate student in political science. “It’s weird because we are usually opposed to these people, but they agree with us on this one.”

The students carried signs that read, “King Saud Wants You,” “Defend the Constitution, Not the Kuwaiti Royal Family” and “Oil Drilling Today Saves American Lives Tomorrow.”

The students said they believe Bush has no right to attack Iraq without a declaration of war by Congress. They oppose any effort to reinstate the draft, and favor offshore oil drilling and loosened regulations on nuclear energy to reduce American dependence on foreign oil.

“We’re fighting side by side with Syrian troops who have a worse human rights record than Iraq,” Zurgules said. “It’s outrageous.”

Next to them stood Beverly Nicol, 58, of San Clemente, a veteran of the 1960s anti-war movement. “This is an antique,” she said, pointing to her sign, circa 1968: “War is not healthy for children and other living things.”

“I think it’s wonderful,” she said of the young conservatives on hand. “I think if young Republicans take to the streets, then maybe George Bush will listen to them, instead of crackpot old ladies.”

Her husband, Robert Nicol, said he has voted the straight Republican ticket for years, has given money to the GOP and last week wrote to all 535 United States senators and congressmen to oppose the use of force in the gulf.

“I’m an architect and a businessman, and I think it’s a very poor investment all the way around. . . ,” Nichol said. “We can get rid of Saddam Hussein through sanctions and economic isolation.”

Earlier Saturday, about 30 people from the group Beyond War met in the Mount of Olives Lutheran Church in Mission Viejo. They wrote letters to political leaders and to their friends, urging them to act quickly to prevent war.

“I’m just stirring off my duff--and you can quote me on that,” said Nanci Brounley, 51, of Laguna Niguel. She had scoured her address book for friends that she believed would respond quickly, and sent each a leaflet and a personal note.

“If you feel as strongly as I do, please let President Bush and the powers that be know about it--and pray,” the note said.

“I’m very Catholic,” Brounley explained. A mother of three and a grandmother, she said she had once been active in the peace movement, but for the past few years has “found excuses” not to get involved. But the Jan. 15 deadline has been weighing on her mind.

“It’s like a pressure on your shoulders,” she said. “It’s like a threat. We need to do something about it. . . . My feeling as a Catholic and a Christian is that war is not the solution. To threaten or to kill someone is not the answer. That spreads from us to our families to the country to the world.”

Barbara Rosenbaum, a longtime political activist from San Juan Capistrano, sat next to Brounley, talking quietly and writing steadily.

“In a democracy, we are at a disadvantage in dealing with people like Saddam Hussein. . . , “ she said. “I think we should use the United Nations to find a new way of coping with these wars that are going to come. This is not going to be the last one. We have to find ways to cope.”