Back in this country, antiwar protesters have staged marches, rallies and “die-ins” in which protestors lie down mimicking civilian casualties. Last week, massive demonstrations immobilized portions of downtown San Francisco. On Thursday, protesters temporarily shut down a stretch of New York City’s Fifth Avenue.
But in contrast to intense opposition overseas, polls show most Americans continue to support war with Iraq, a number that has only increased since armed conflict commenced last week. There have even been smaller rallies supporting the troops and their mission. Michael Kazin, a professor of history at Georgetown University and coauthor of “America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s,” talked with NEWSWEEK about the state of the antiwar movement in the United States over the past few days.
NEWSWEEK: How has the antiwar movement changed in the days since war began?
Michael Kazin: The main face of the movement right now is tactical; people stopping traffic, people getting arrested. But I think that is a tactic that has diminishing returns.
Why?
Civil disobedience in which the intent is to stop “business as usual” is a tricky thing. You can do it once and it seems like it’s a way of getting people to pay attention, but if you keep doing it, then the tactic itself becomes a fetish and people begin to really resent it, even if they’re against the war. It’s a real bind the movement’s in. To keep having more marches, it seems like that’s been done already and it didn’t stop the war from starting, but if you decide to just keep stopping traffic, it’s not clear what that gets you.
If it doesn’t get results, why is it happening?
Organizers may think they need to make this sort of dramatic push to get media attention, since the movement has just dropped off the radar this past week since fighting started. But frankly, when you do this sort of thing you just end up pissing people off.
What would work better?
A campaign to try to influence Congress, maybe that would work. Maybe. In the end, and this was true in Vietnam too, the antiwar movement will not be successful if the war is going well, and if the polls are right, most Americans continue to support the war.
In general, how well has the American antiwar movement reacted in these past few days?
It’s fair to say that the past week has made it pretty clear the antiwar movement in this country was not really prepared for war. The demonstrations over the past few months were very successful, but organizers didn’t really plan for what was going to happen once the fighting started. So they’re in a tough spot right now. But movements take a while to educate themselves, and this one is only a few months old. It’s been a long time since there’s been a large antiwar movement in this country. It’s not surprising that they didn’t really plan ahead.
Does it seem as though this president is facing much greater organized opposition to military action than, say, President Clinton did during any of the missions that took place during his administration? If so, why is that?
Well, for one thing, Bill Clinton never attempted anything as ambitious as what’s going on right now. Honestly, many of the people who are protesting now thought the Clinton administration meant well. But most people on the left don’t trust Bush’s motives and didn’t support his election. So they’re not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this.
So is it the person or the policy that’s the bigger problem for protesters here?
There are ways this could have been handled better, and maybe another president wouldn’t have inspired this much of a reaction. But I think this particular option [of invasion] was never going to be completely popular.
Where does the antiwar movement go from here? Does its future completely depend on how well the war goes for the U.S.?
Definitely if the war goes badly, you’ll see a lot more people raising questions. It was quite clear after the Tet Offensive in 1968 that most Americans started to believe the war could not be won, and demonstrations got a lot larger and much more mainstream after that. That’s generally the history of domestic dissent in this country; if we start seeing more bodybags, the polls will start to reflect that, and the movement will grow. Antiwar movements in this country’s history haven’t actually stopped wars before they began, but the longer a war drags on, the more mainstream the opposition tends to become. In a democracy, that’s pretty significant. We have an election in about 18 months.
Did you go to any protests in the ’60s?
Oh, yeah. I was a student back then.
Why haven’t we seen the kind of massive anti-war protests on college campuses that we did during the 1960s?
I think we’re starting to, a little. Again, this is still relatively early in the conflict. This anti-war movement is only about six months old; during the Vietnam War, it took years for the peace movement to get to the point where we are right now.
Some campuses have been very active, especially traditionally activist campuses like Berkeley. Other campuses are more conservative–you won’t see as much open protest, but people are organizing in other ways. They’re lobbying their elected representatives, they’re educating the public.
Have you observed any this time around?
I’ve been to a few.
How do they compare?
The speeches seem a lot worse now. I remember some really wonderful speeches. But maybe that’s just me being a middle-aged nostalgic.
