The anti-war protests probably had at least one benefit

I'm not going to comment on the anti-war protests this weekend in Fayetteville and San Diego per se. I think the conduct of the protesters was reprehensible (protest the policies, not the soldiers - as so many other people have pointed out, protesting in Washington DC is acceptable; protesting at military bases is just wrong), but I don't really have anything new to add to the analysis. Lt Smash was there for the San Diego protest, while Ray was at the one in Fayetteville.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't a total loss for the military side, though - my experience from back when I was in living in Fayetteville is that SF operators view confused left wing radical college females as legitimate targets, and, by busing in out-of-town protesters, Code Pink et al,created a target rich environment. (If you accept 1500 protesters in Fayettenam, I'd guess a good thousand or more would be female - based on my instinct that college age women are overrepresented in these things, and heterosexual males of any age are severely underrepresented.)

I'm sure that the approach was pretty much the same as the one guys I knew used to use up at the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area when fishing for coeds: play the tortured, conflicted soldier to the hilt - a sensitive soul who's been forced by circumstance to become a dangerous killer, maybe with a touch of the warrior-poet thrown in. It would be interesting to see some statistics on how many of these earnest young women, after marching against the war, went out to celebrate their victory and found themselves providing "aid and comfort" to one of the poor victims who were forced into involuntary servitude as soldiers for the man. I'd bet it would be more than you'd think. I certainly hope so.