D6

Allen Abel

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OLNEY, Maryland - Every Saturday morning, rain or shine or snow, two small knots of protestors gather on opposite corners of the main intersection of the suburb where I live. On the southwest side, one group holds up signs that read:

LAND of the FREE

thanks to the BRAVE

And:

IF IT WERE NOT FOR THE

UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES

THERE WOULD BE NO

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

On the northeast side, they are countered by banners that say:

WAGE PEACE

And:

WE REMEMBER

AND MOURN

ALL THE VICTIMS

OF WAR

This semiotic stalemate has been going on for about three years now. Driving past these protestors on my way to the library or the bakery, I've always been curious about who they are. So I pause on a Saturday morning to chat with both sides.

In the ardently pro-military camp, a man named Phil Wilk is wearing a United States Marine Corps ball cap and planting American flags amid the ornamental shrubbery and smoking a Garcia y Vega Gallante. He is a professional surveyor and the former president of the local Chamber of Commerce and he was our town's Business Person of the Year, back in 2000.

Mr. Wilk and his half-dozen cohorts are waving signs that invite drivers to press their car horns if they support the U.S. military effort. The din is constant.

"Our honks are 15 times what they get on the other side," Phil Wilk says. "Their excuse is that they're doing a silent vigil."

Phil Wilk tells me that he has a son in the Marine Corps who served a tour of duty in Iraq, and that his own three brothers all fought in Vietnam, back in the 1960s. (His own number in President Richard Nixon's draft lottery was high enough that he was not called to serve.) One brother retired as a colonel, one came home "100 per cent disabled," and the third is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

"He knew he had a son," Mr. Wilk says, "but he was killed before the Red Cross could get a picture to him."

"If war has taken such a toll on your family," I ask, "why aren't you across the street protesting against it?"

"The United States doesn't start wars," he replies. "We're defenders of people who need our help. War is terrible, thousands die. But when we leave, MILLIONS are killed."

I take my life in my hands and venture across 12 lanes of traffic and approach the other side. The kitty-corner crowd turn out to be Quakers. Most are rather elderly members of the Religious Society of Friends, which has had a presence in this part of Maryland since the 1700s.

"When you look across the intersection," I ask one man, "what do you see?"

"They're all about winning," Marvin Shapiro replies. "They're just super-patriots. They refuse to look at the fact that this country could do anything wrong."

In contrast, my Quaker friends are unconvinced of America's infallibility.

"We are extremely aggressive, especially the last eight or 10 years," a woman named Judith Simmons tells me. "It's in our history. We ARE imperialistic.

"Perhaps Obama is trying to reach out and have a dialogue -- that's what he SAYS. But what he's DONE is to increase our military intervention in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq and we're killing thousands of innocent children and mothers and grandmothers and grandfathers.

"We do not like what the Taliban is doing. We do not like what China is doing. In Ireland, there was a 50-year war, and we didn't like that either. But we can't solve the problems of the world."

"What would YOU do about the Taliban?" I ask Mr. Shapiro.

"It's not our country," he replies. "We have no right to be over there. I don't know if we know enough about them to make an informed decision. We get 24-hour hate information about the Taliban, because the media want war."

The Quakers took down their IMPEACH NOW banner when George W. Bush left office, but they're keeping it in reserve. I wonder aloud if they already feel betrayed by Barack Obama. Mr. Shapiro shrugs and says, "I'm not happy with him, but there's hope. I don't know for how much longer. People forget that he's a politician first."

At some point after a few hundred Saturdays, this was bound to get personal.

"You'd be surprised how many of those war protestors give me a hard time about smoking 'Cuban' cigars," Phil Wilk puffs. (Garcia y Vegas are rolled in the Dominican Republic.) The other camp complains that some young yahoos once stomped over to their corner with signs that said "Quakers are stupid."

"I guess it's all part of the game." I suggest.

"Supporting the troops is not a game," Phil Wilk fumes. "The harassment IS."

It turns out that surveyor Wilk once did some work on the historic Quaker meeting house a few miles up the road. "It's a business thing," he explains. "I have nothing against them. All I'm doing is countering their message."

"When will you stop protesting every Saturday morning?" I ask.

"We're not going to change, and they're not going to change," Mr. Wilk says, relighting his Gallante. "We used to say that when they stopped their protest, we'd stop ours. But we've had so many people thank us, so many mothers of soldiers and families of our troops. So, until the troops come home, I think we'll be out here."

Across the street, I pose the same question.

"When will you stop protesting every Saturday morning?" I ask Judith Simmons.

"When we die," the Quaker says.

* Allen Abel is a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen who after more than 25 years of journalism in Canada moved to Washington, D.C. He has been a reporter, foreign correspondent, documentary film producer, columnist and author. His column observing U.S. politics via Canadian eyes appears here every Monday.