The Quiet Majority

Successors to the Silent Majority, according to Daniel Henninger:

I would call this faction the Quiet Majority. These people are organized and they are pro-active. But they pass beneath our politics unnoticed because they're about something deeper than TV face-time. There is a large number of groups that have organized in the past three years solely to support the American troops in Iraq.

* Bill Robie recently drove three hours from Atlanta to Camp Lejeune, N.C., to help Jim Hake's Spirit of America--which has nearly 14,000 supporters--load school supplies bound for Iraq. 'Groups like SoA, Home for Our Troops, Operation Homefront, Fisher House and others don't get much attention,' he wrote me a few days ago, 'yet they represent the true character of our nation.'

* John Folsom is a Marine Reserve colonel from Nebraska, now in Iraq. Two years ago he 'passed the hat' among colleagues and raised money to create Wounded Warriors, which supports military hospitals by buying laptops for bedridden soldiers, TVs and overhead projectors for medical staff. His support base is small. 'It's almost like a family,' he told me.

* Soldiers' Angels was started in 2003 by Patti Patton-Bader, the mother of a sergeant in Iraq then. It now has 45,000 members. Its executive director, Don MacKay, says: 'Our members come from across the political spectrum. But there is one opinion they all share: Our soldiers deserve every ounce of support we can muster.'

The message boards some of these groups maintain make clear that troops are aware, in detail, of antiwar activity. Again, this isn't Vietnam. They have news access. If the Democratic left does levitate another antiwar movement, it won't be the unanswered opposition of the Vietnam years. The counter-opposition will draw numbers from these pro-troop groups. They, too, are Internet-linked. They are better informed than most people, they are committed, and they are articulate. And they have stories to tell.

Does this add up to millions of pro-Iraq voters? Who knows? But the quiet, mostly nonpartisan, pro-G.I. activism of these people has put them closer to the reality of the war--its pain, its losses, its successes and kinships. My guess is their kind of support is what the troops on the front want most now, rather than having to sit along the Euphrates River wondering if Chuck Hagel, Russ Feingold and the Rolling Stones are going to pull the rug from under them over the next two years.

Americans want to do something to help. Again, why aren't we selling war bonds?