The war over the war is coming to Washington next month, with an event sponsored by the Pentagon one weekend, a peace rally organized by antiwar groups another and rancor swelling on both sides.
The Pentagon's Freedom Walk on Sept. 11 is billed as a memorial to victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks and a show of support for those serving in the military. Some have welcomed the event as a counter to the antiwar movement. The antiwar protesters say it's an attempt to boost the war effort that is orchestrated to preempt their peace rally.
That rally, planned for Sept. 24, is being organized by the ANSWER Coalition and other groups as a major protest against the Iraq war, but other causes have been tossed into the mix, including support for Palestinians and opposition to U.S. policy in Haiti and the Philippines.
Some who support the rally say it is gaining momentum and supporters, motivated by the recent protests outside President Bush's ranch near Crawford, Tex., and the Freedom Walk.
Planning for the Freedom Walk began in July, when folks at the Department of Defense said they wanted to create a national movement on Sept. 11 that would begin in Washington and spread across the country in years to come, said Allison Barber, deputy assistant secretary of defense for communications.
In the past few years, she said, "people rang bells, lit candles and held vigils to remember lives lost on that tragic day. . . . But as a nation, we didn't have a unified way to commemorate Sept. 11."
So officials at the Pentagon, where 184 people died in the attack, decided to open the attack site and memorial chapel to the general public for the first time Sept. 10. Then, for the next day, they planned the America Supports You Freedom Walk, which will wend its way from the site to the Mall.
Some critics weren't originally against the commemoration. "I thought it would've been a nice gesture if that's all it was. But I don't believe in tying Sept. 11 to anything else," said Craig Sincock, whose wife died in the Pentagon attack. "Now it's too big and there's too much. I'll go and support the troops any day, but I won't support the troops on the back of my wife's death."
What soured Sincock and raised the hackles of antiwar groups was the Freedom Walk's tie-in to the military's "America Supports You" campaign -- a Department of Defense effort to bolster support for all U.S. troops, but primarily those in Iraq.
"This is yet another attempt to link the war to Sept. 11," said Patrick Resta, who served in Iraq last year as a combat medic and a member of the Army National Guard. "My aunt and uncle were killed in the World Trade Center, so I have strong feelings about this, and it's not right."
Sincock and some other family members of Pentagon victims will participate in the less controversial Unity Walk, which will take mourners along Embassy Row, stopping at churches, temples, mosques and other places of worship on the afternoon of Sept. 11.
The Department of Defense has tried to be careful in shaping its walk, using such words as "freedom" and avoiding any specific mention of the war on terrorism.
