I've gotten some flak for referring to last weekend's protests in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere around the country as being populated by the loony left. Of course, the critics aren't members of the loony left and don't go to the protests. I've said it before: there are honest liberals who disagree with the war in Iraq and think it was a mistake to ever go in. What these people don't realize is that the people who go to these hate-fests aren't like them. Christopher Hitchens does a good job of explaining who they are.

To be against war and militarism, in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, is one thing. But to have a record of consistent support for war and militarism, from the Red Army in Eastern Europe to the Serbian ethnic cleansers and the Taliban, is quite another. It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as "antiwar" when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side. Was there a single placard saying, "No to Jihad"? Of course not. Or a single placard saying, "Yes to Kurdish self-determination" or "We support Afghan women's struggle"? Don't make me laugh. And this in a week when Afghans went back to the polls, and when Iraqis were preparing to do so, under a hail of fire from those who blow up mosques and U.N. buildings, behead aid workers and journalists, proclaim fatwahs against the wrong kind of Muslim, and utter hysterical diatribes against Jews and Hindus.

This is not like the Vietnam War (at least, not yet). The people out on the streets protesting are not "normal" people. They don't represent the majority, or even a substantial minority, of those who are opposed to the war. These people are the loony, hate-America left. They're commies and they have no credibility.