BOB ABERNETHY: As fighting intensifies in Iraq, antiwar demonstrations continue at home. Some accuse the protesters of undermining the morale of the troops. The protesters counter that they are standing up for democratic values. Lucky Severson reports.LUCKY SEVERSON: On day ten of the Iraq war, scenes like this are playing out in big and small towns across America. This one is at the entrance of a division of Northrop Grumman, a defense contractor in Charlottesville, Virginia. Jessica Forman is a third-year English student at the University of Virginia (UVA), and this is not her first protest.
JESSICA FORMAN (Student, University of Virginia): I think it's important above all else now to continue showing disapproval of the war.SEVERSON: Another increasingly familiar scene: war supporters, protesting the protesters. Courtney Hagen is a fourth-year foreign affairs student at UVA.
COURTNEY HAGEN (Student, University of Virginia): I think most people who were in favor of the war thought they shouldn't speak out in favor of it because there was so much protest. I think now that troops have been sent out overseas, more people are speaking out in favor of the war.
SEVERSON: Here at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall, the VFW, war protesters have never been particularly popular with veterans like Bill Koski.
BILL KOSKI (War Veteran): It brings the morale down in the troops. A lot of these people don't have a clue of what they are protesting about. Nothing. This is freedom we are fighting for.
SEVERSON: People here in Charlottesville, Virginia may disagree about the war, but they do agree that dissent is what democracy is all about. The question then becomes: Is it morally defensible to protest the war, take to the streets, once the war has begun?
SAM BRODY (Student): To me, it seems like it is important to keep up pressure at all times so our society does not fall back into a kind of scared and quite society that is just waiting for the bad things to be over until it speaks out again.SEVERSON: Sam Brody is a second-year student from New York. Well meaning, but probably naive, if you listen to veteran Jerry Beninate.
JERRY BENINATE (War Veteran): I think when people in the U.S. protest about something that we are doing overseas, they are extremely subject to manipulation, propaganda.
SEVERSON: His view is shared by many veterans and their wives. This is Vicki Shiflett.
VICKI SHIFLETT (Wife of War Veteran): I believe most of them don't have a clue what they are protesting about. I mean, they have had everything handed to them. And they really don't know what losing quality of life is all about.JOHN BUGBEE (Graduate Student): It's a strange argument. It suggests people who are as young as I am or as young as undergraduates can't read history.
SEVERSON: Like many college campuses, the students at UVA are probably more inclined than nonstudents to oppose the war. We were told that is true of the faculty as well, UVA professors like James Childress, an ethicist, opposed to what he calls an unjust war.
Professor JAMES CHILDRESS (University of Virginia): I have strong views that various forms of dissent, including even sometimes civil disobedience, can be ethically justified with appropriate limits.
SEVERSON: Dissent, even during a war, is as American as Abe Lincoln, who dissented loudly and publicly against the Mexican-American War. And the founding father of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, wrote the ultimate document of dissent, the Declaration of Independence. Professor MICHAEL SMITH (University of Virginia): Certain values must come about even over loyalty to your country.
SEVERSON: Michael Smith is a UVA professor of politics and social thought
Prof. SMITH: World War I was a case when there was a great deal of dissent about our getting into the war and a great deal of repression of dissent.
SEVERSON: At the outset of this war, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle got caught in a withering crossfire of accusations that he was unpatriotic when he criticized President Bush's diplomatic failure to avoid war.
And what about the Dixie Chicks? After their lead singer told a London audience Americans were ashamed of President Bush, conservative radio stations boycotted the group's latest album, called HOME. And sales dropped.
SEVERSON: Dave Maurer knows about Vietnam -- in his book, he called it "the dying place," and he should know. He served two tours there in Special Forces, and he has very strong views about protesting once the war has begun.
When I came home and then it felt, you know, that your country had turned on you. One of the lessons that these folks need to learn is the last person in the world who wants to fight these wars are the soldiers. And they were blamed for Vietnam. And I think very unjustly so.
SEVERSON: The distinction doesn't work for Dave Maurer, who thinks there is a time when free expression goes too far.
NAWRAZ ALAN (Student, University of Virginia): I saw a five-year-old girl holding a doll covered in blood, crying over her dead parents' bodies and asking them to please get up and "Let's go home."
Prof. SMITH: A measure of a society's confidence in itself is its ability to tolerate dissent even in the midst of war. And if one of the reasons we are fighting the war is to uphold the values of democracy and respect for other people's moral convictions ... it is even more important during a war that we respect those convictions.
