Size Doesn't Matter
Size does not matter! One of the most successful anti- Vietnam War protests, the telegenic Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) weeklong series of activities in Washington in April 1971 (the one where we first heard of John Kerry), involved fewer than 2,000 protestors. Like Ms. Sheehan, the antiwar vets had a good deal of credibility with Americans, so much so that like the Bush Administration, the Nixon Administration defamed and demonized them. And like the Bushies, Nixon’s people came close to forcefully evicting them from their encampment.
Ultimately, the VVAW protest did not hasten the end of the war. But we now know that it did have an immediate impact on Nixon and his operatives. They feared that the relative handful of veterans, engaged in often highly emotional and imaginative demonstrations, would influence far more Americans than the hundreds of thousands of media-created rag-tag “hippie-communists” who showed up for routine mass rallies.
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Jim B. Harris - 8/17/2005
Is there an anti-insurgent movement out there? You know, a potential group that opposes the folks who would load up a car full of bombs and drive into a gathering of Iraqi children getting some candy from US Soldiers.
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