So let me backtrack-- I think the early antiwar movement did some very good work in public education, in town meetings, in organizing people to write their Congresspeople denouncing the war. But after 1968, much of the antiwar movement became obsessed with big rallies and public actions, rather than the grubby door-to-door organizing. And that is the failure that we should not emulate today.
-- Nathan newman
We know from Nixon's memoirs that the Moratorium march, when a quarter million peopole showed up on his doorstep, stopped the implementation of "Operation Duck Hook," Nixon's plan--at that time at an operational stage--to drop tactical nuclear weapons on the N.Vietnamese railheads to China. For more details, see Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod, To Win a Nuclear War (South End Press 1988) (disclaimer: I was the researcha ssistant on thsi book). Johnson explained after the Tet offensive that he could not use a nuclear bomb in Vietnam because "a million people will drag me over the fence out there ifd I do." There wasn't a specific plan that was stopped at that stage though. The mass antinuclear mraches of the early 80s helped bring both Reagan and, more importantly, Gorbachev around to the negotiating table. See Matt Evangelista's book, I forget the title, on the reasons for the end of the Cold War. Bill Gampson has done a lot of research on how large unruly mass movements have
been politically effective.
The basic point is that this is an empirical question. There's research on it. Spouting off your opinion about how effective (or not) various mass movements were is totally useless unless you defione the terms fairly carefully, effective for whatm what counts as mass, what are the parameters, etc. The reserach I have done an am familiar with suggests that Gampson's right. Big marches and mass movements rarely attain their announced goals, but they scare the shit out of die Herrschenden, the masters, and curb their misbehavior.
Speaking from mere personal anecdotal experience against my own advice, the pep rally effect is very important in keeping people mobilized, and offering moral sustenance to the activists. Knocking on doors is all well and good, and nothing is wrong with it, so are teach-ins and letter writing, But it doesn't hurt to kick out the jams every now and then.
I am very sorry to hear about Greil Marcus signing up for the war on terror.
jks
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