> Weak argument. Iraq War created massive discontent, debates were on the news every night for years.
All states, regardless of professed ideology, are only concerned with matters that affect their stability. Nobody in US power elite gave an F about people stretching for miles in DC and NYC. And many in the country were not even aware of the scale of the protests.
Look at what any state suppresses without remorse and that is where their vulnerabilities are.
In countries like Russia, China, and Iran, where the notion of a "leader" is significant in maintaining state cohesion, public displays of division undermine the psychological barriers that any person (anywhere) creates internally, in a very similar fashion to taboos. Public rebuke of leadership breaks taboos that maintain the 'magic circle' of power. It is all psychological, with local variations based on history, culture, system timeline, etc.
I took part in the protests. The bulk of the people largely accepted the arguments. The bulk of congress voted to approve the war. We didn't have to throw lots of people in jail because the protests weren't disruptive enough to matter. Everyone went back to work the next day. At work the average sentiment was that of course Hussein had WMDs and mostly neoliberal handwringing over if it was tactically wise to actually invade or not with a lot of acceptance that it was inevitable.
