Sunday, Jan. 14, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.
Even as a majority of Americans slowly turned against the Iraq war, the anti-war movement remained eerily silent, aside from demonstrations in the run-up to the conflict.
In that silence, questions emerged: Where are the giant puppet heads of the anti-war parades? Where is Crosby? Where is Stills? Where is Nash?
To a large extent, anti-war activists say, they left behind the idea of rallies and turned their attention to politics, working behind the scenes to help deliver a Democratic majority in the U.S. House and Senate.
"It was vital for the anti-war movement to duke it out district by district," said Hany Khalil, organizing coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, which - with more than 1,400 member groups - bills itself as the nation's largest grass-roots anti-war coalition.
With the election over, however, activists are ready to make a significant pivot, and President Bush's decision to add more troops and money to the war effort provided an opportunity, in the view of Tom Mattzie, political director for MoveOn.org, a leading anti-war group with 3.2 million members. "We needed a moment of national consensus," Mattzie said.
The activists organized hundreds of local protests across the country, held Thursday - including at least two in Las Vegas - and are preparing for a Jan. 27 national march in Washington, followed by a day of lobbying in Congress.
Pressure is to continue in the form of more demonstrations and letter-writing campaigns, throwbacks to the Vietnam era. At the same time, the Internet will play a significant role helping to organize e-mail campaigns, meetings and street demonstrations.
The goal is clear. "We elected these Democrats, who ran on a platform of bringing the troops home," said Lisa Stiller of the Reno Anti-War Coalition. "Now anti-war activists are saying, 'We elected you, and we're going to hold you to it.' "
Although this "direct action," as activists call it, may harken back to the Vietnam era, this nascent movement is as distinct from Vietnam as the desert is from the jungle. The new strategy arose from a recognition that despite its romantic image, the anti-war movement of the 1960s wasn't always effective and created a backlash against progressive Democrats that lasted even into the 2004 presidential election, activists and historians say.
Today, said Matthew Yglesias, a widely read liberal blogger in his 20s, the movement is "trying to avoid the catastrophic mistakes made by the anti-war movement in the late 1960s.
"Specifically, rather than engaging in a lot of self-indulgent political theater, contemporary anti-war people have managed to get the vast majority of the Democratic Party - along with a few Republicans, like the desperate Chris Shays - to shift toward a position favoring an end to the war in Iraq."
Professor Jerry Lembcke, a Holy Cross sociologist and veteran of both the Vietnam War and the movement to end it, said he understands the need to learn from the earlier era. He warned of a coming "betrayal narrative," referring to a story line war supporters might deliver that would accuse war opponents of stabbing the soldiers and the country in the back:
"The commentary on Fox News after the president's speech was that if you cut funding for the war, you're going to cut off funding of the men and women who are serving in Iraq. That's the rhetoric you heard in the Vietnam era, and that betrayal narrative could return and leave Democrats vulnerable."
Lembcke pointed to significant differences from the Vietnam era, however. Today there is no draft, and so less motivation for draft-age college students to sustain major protests.
He noted this war hasn't seen a sizable contingent of anti-war veterans, who four decades ago were "an important, visible and vocal part of the movement, and helped provide legitimacy to the anti-war movement."
Still, some veterans are starting to play a role. In Las Vegas, four veterans, led by Marine Sgt. Elliot Anderson, delivered a letter to Republican Rep. Jon Porter's Henderson office Thursday, asking the congressman to oppose Bush's plan to increase troop levels.
"We're at a decisive point in Iraq," said Anderson, who's on active reserve after serving a tour of duty in Afghanistan. "We need a political - not a military - solution."
For Paul Lambert, an Air Force veteran from the Vietnam era, news of the troop surge brought back memories. "It's just like Vietnam," he said. "We're following the same path."
Just as during the Vietnam War, the anti-war movement is anything but monolithic. Some protesters say the movement erred by trying to work exclusively within the system during the elections. Other activists say the solution in Iraq is nuanced and not as simple as withdrawing troops.
"Critics say if we leave, that will leave a vacuum and that will lead to an Iraq without a government, a failed state," Lembcke said. "Whereas as the Vietnam War approached its end, it was clear there would be a government in Vietnam, and so you could answer the question, 'What happens if we leave?' Some in the anti-war movement today are afraid about leaving behind a failed state."
More strident activists say that by lending resources for the 2006 election - and not to anti-war demonstrations and other public actions - the movement watered down its message and allowed itself to be exploited by politicians, some of whom are now reluctant to oppose Bush's plan.
Eric Garris of Antiwar.com, an activist Web site, said the anti-war movement now needs to flex its muscle publicly.
"The anti-war movement needs to tell Democrats they don't get a free ride," Garris said. Activists should take a more decentralized approach, opting for local demonstrations over political campaigning, he said.
For the moment, some of that is occurring. Stiller, the Reno activist and mother of a son in the Army in South Korea, led a small rally at a military recruitment center Wednesday in Sparks. She said Democrats in Congress - and specifically Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada - need to do more than just offer symbolic opposition to the troop escalation.
About 30 protesters turned out for a rally in Spring Valley on Thursday. The hourlong rally got off to a bumpy start as police forced the group from Desert Breeze Park, the original venue, to a street corner because it didn't have a permit.
Mike Altishin, flying a large American flag, said he was protesting because he feared for his 14-year-old son's future. "Three months after we (voters) said we wanted to end the war, Bush decided to ignore us and escalate the war."
Nationwide, protests played out in big cities and small towns. The crowds in New York, San Francisco, Washington and many other cities were small - in the hundreds at most.
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