Did the anti-war movement sell out to consumerism?

It's a possible explanation as to why the movement has been ineffective and will continue to be so. Very few so far have been willing to risk compromising their lifestyle to protest what they perceive as illegal wars and the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Many have attended a protest or two, a candlelight vigil and may have made numerous angry posts but that about as far as they'll go. To go beyond the aforementioned activities, one risks their jobs and prison time. Too great a sacrifice for most I imagine.

And, those who are losing children tend to support the effort. That's why Cindy Sheehan was a big hit here at DU -- because she was rare.

and am about to head into the NC mountains. Maybe Rudolf left a lean to.

edit to add: sarcasm for the idiots

How about simply fear of losing your home, food, kids, etc and so on?

Most I know live paycheck to paycheck - and if they lose their job won't be able to find another in this economy.

Go and protest, potentially lose everything, and in the end the result will be as it has been before - leaders ignore all numbers except ones with dollar signs.

as one's own comfort and current lifestyle.

And that changed the people in power, whereas all the protesting for 8 years changed little or nothing.

Change will come by either becoming a lobbyist or through voting out those who are not doing the job we want.

March all day, your reps will be flying somewhere else for dinner with a lobbyist and the day after the protest no one will care you were there.

Sad indeed, but that is how it is.

and also they can't seem to tear themselves away from their iphones long enough to participate in anything...

At least temporarily.

A number of people thought that once Obama was in office these wars would somehow magically go away, failing to pay attention to what Obama had said about the matter during the election campaign. Now that it is becoming increasingly obvious that he is just another warmonger, the movement seems to be slowly but surely ramping back up. It could get to be a real problem for him next year and especially 2012.

it's never been important.

War is flag-waving patriotism and vast amounts of money moved around. And, sometimes wars even make some sort of sense-- try running a peace organization the day after Pearl Harbor. Exxon makes more money fueling military aircraft in a month than the American Friends Service Committee has in its annual budget. Any time a weapon or base is threatened with closure, platoons of congresscritters plead the world will come to an end because of the lost jobs in their districts.

We just can't compete against that sort of thing.

We've been in 130 or so conflicts in the past 150 years and NOT ONCE have any of the peace movements managed to stop any of it.

(If anyone comes up with a workable business plan for selling peace, we might see some of it.)

That is all there is to it.

That would take a truly gargantuan amount of money, given the aforementioned risk.

Raising that amount would be problematic if one were faced with idiots demanding vows of poverty, in addition to the war profiteers. Said idiots might as well be working for them, and should be treated as such IMFO.