Online Fervor Over the Iraq War Hits the Streets With a Big Thud

ANSWER blames a splintering of the antiwar movement. Some of the largest and best-funded antiwar groups neither embraced nor publicized yesterday's protest. Some organizers no longer see street actions as effective in changing minds or policies.

Does it advance a cause when people stand a few feet apart on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, some chanting, "Hey Bush, what do you say, how many kids did you kill today?" while a man on the sidewalk shouts back, "Treason! You should be hung. You hate our country?" Do ritualistic antics and arrests for climbing over a barricade change any minds?

Hardly anyone on the streets seemed eager to discuss where to go from here. Many of those chanting slogans such as "out now" and "stay the course" find it hard to digest the notion that there are antiwar diehards who believe we must stay in Iraq to prevent wholesale slaughter or that there are true pro-war believers who have concluded that it would be immoral to allow more Americans to die in a war that cannot be won.

It would be a shame if our fascination with connecting electronically leads to the end of our history of gathering in throngs in the shadows of democracy's marble temples. But new ways of pressuring the powerful are evolving. It's hard to persuade someone who believes in the efficacy of online organizing that walking on a D.C. street is a better way to put the screws to politicians than, say, a demographically targeted e-mail fundraising campaign. Two hundred million MySpace members can't be wrong, can they?

Political organizers sound much like entertainment executives these days, as they wonder how to get people off their couches and into public places. But the real question isn't how to get people to engage in the old way -- it's how to use new ways to engage them where they are.

The same goes for reporters. Like flies drawn to a porch light bulb, we keep covering people who take to the streets. And we should.

But it's at least as important to get into the heads and hearts of those who spent yesterday in their living rooms and back yards or driving around doing errands, wondering, if only for a moment, whether their country is doing the right thing.