By Lauren Otis, Staff Writer
Wednesday evening’s rain and cold couldn’t keep a stalwart group of peace activists in downtown Princeton from protesting President Barack Obama’s military policy in Afghanistan.
”We think this is such a disastrous mistake for our country we have to be out here,” said Princeton Township resident Marilyn Jerry, as she and several dozen others huddled under umbrellas on Nassau Street at Palmer Square.
Several participants said their vigil was made all the more compelling by President Obama’s announcement that he would send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan in an effort to bring the war there to a quicker conclusion. The announcement came in a nationally televised speech to Army cadets at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point on Tuesday night.
”I think we are going in the wrong direction,” said Trenton resident Mike DeGregory, as he stood holding a vigil candle. “It was a tough decision, but I think he made the wrong one.”
”We need to tell the administration that this is not a good idea, it is a loser,” said Princeton Township resident Martin Oppenheimer.
”There are so many parallels to Vietnam,” Mr. Oppenheimer said, with troops sent in in hopes of quickly ending the conflict, only to have the opposite occur.
History does not support the view that pouring troops into a conflict curtails it, said the Rev. Bob Moore, executive director of the Coalition for Peace Action in Princeton and organizer of the protest.
”I just don’t see that happening. That is just a vague wish” on the part of President Obama, he said.
The Rev. Moore was sanguine about the weather.
”I tried pulling strings but it didn’t work. ”“Given the rain I am pleased,” he said of the 25 to 30 protesters in attendance.
”Rain might be appropriate because God is weeping every time war is chosen over peace. This will be a 20-year war if he keeps doing what he is doing,” the Rev. Moore said of President Obama’s troop increases.
”As you can see we are not sunshine patriots,” he said.
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Staff photo by Mark CzajkowskiPrinceton peace demonstrators in Palmer Square on Wednesday included, from left: Olivia Alperstein and her mother Cory and Rev. Carol Haag and her husband Carl.
