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Notes -
There were very big or even huge (500k+) anti-war rallies, especially outside of the US before the war started, notably in Uk and Italy.
But inside US, very few pundits were openly against the war. Largest demo was cca 100k.
Exiled Online did an accounting of pundits, it turned out practically everyone who was wrong either nothing happened or got promoted, pundits who called it correctly were mostly fired.
Not sure about public intellectuals at the time. I'd be that it was similar though to a lesser degree. After all, that was a war against brown people, a totem. Now we're talking war against Russia, which symbolises hateful white man's past in many ways. I believe it's worse now - everything is aligned in favor cheerleading.
Well that's terrifying if that's the trendline and the anti-war movement was that strong recently... certainly ups the odds of a world war if that's the case.
Why would westerners protest this war? It's painless, morally and geopolitically easily justifiable. You casually cheer on nukes and civil war, why would you be squeamish over a little proxy special operation, especially if, as you say, both sides are terrible.
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