Transcript: An Analysis of Opposition Movements

At the White House earlier today, a reporter asked President Bush for his reaction to the worldwide anti-war protests this past weekend.

GEORGE W. BUSH: Two points. One is that democracy is a beautiful thing and that people are allowed to express their opinion, and I welcome people's right to say what they believe. Secondly, evidently some of the world don't view Saddam Hussein as a risk to peace. I respectfully disagree. Saddam Hussein has gassed his own people. Saddam Hussein has got weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein has defied the United Nations. Saddam Hussein is providing links to terrorists. Saddam Hussein is a threat to America. And we will deal with him.

Three days after millions marched in hundreds of cities, the administration appears to be unmoved. At the United Nations, the United States and Britain are said to be working on a new Security Council resolution. Negotiations continue for the use of Turkish bases in the event of an attack. And forces are gathering in the Gulf.

So what can anti-war activists do as a follow-up? Where does the drive to stop the war go from here? Given the history of protest movements, how much opportunity is there now to sway public opinion? And why is it that the opposition, any opposition, finds it so difficult to counter a president once his mind is made up?

And joining us now from his office here in Washington, DC, is Tom Andrews, national director of the Win Without War coalition and a former congressman from the state of Maine. And good of you to join us today.

TOM ANDREWS: Thank you, Neal. It's great of you to have me on.

After all those people turned out over the weekend, are you disappointed with what President Bush had to say?

ANDREWS: Well, obviously, Neal, the president didn't get the point. The issue is not whether we like or dislike Saddam Hussein. I would say that virtually everyone in that march in New York and across the world don't think very highly of Saddam Hussein, nor do we trust Saddam Hussein. The issue is war and whether or not we should invade Iraq when there are viable alternatives to war, alternatives where no one has to die. And that was the point of those protests.

ANDREWS: And, you know, even if you weren't at a protest, we learned last week that the vast majority of Americans—The New York Times in a poll released last week indicated that 59 percent of Americans believe the president should give the United Nations inspection process more time. We agree with that majority, and that's the point we're trying to get through to the president.

Do you think the demonstrations did make a difference, and if so, how?

ANDREWS: I think they made a great difference. Number one, every nation that the United States is bringing into this coalition of the willing, so-called, without exception, their people are against this war. So we're putting these allies, these governments in a very untenable position of forcing them to go against what is clearly in their political interests.

ANDREWS: In terms of the domestic situation, Neal, clearly, you know, it's one thing to answer a pollster's question, it's another thing to take the time and bother of going and demonstrating your opposition. That indicates a very deep level of commitment and concern and willingness to do what it takes to change this policy.

ANDREWS: That can be translated in any number of ways, and I think politicians who have been under the false assumption that this could be just a quick and easy war, we could get out of it quickly, you know, we'll be regarded as heroes and we can move on, I think they have got to stop and take some pause, particularly those members of Congress, for example, that were in marginal districts. That is to say, if they won by less than 10 percent and they relied upon those mainstream voters that were taking to the streets over the weekend, that will give them pause.

What is next? Where do you go from what happened this past weekend?

ANDREWS: Tomorrow we are going to be announcing another major action, a national action that will focus attention on Washington. We're going to be using all of the power of technology that we can. We'll be announcing this in a news conference both from Washington, DC, and Los Angeles, California. And we're developing a way, and ways, that this growing number of citizens who are very concerned about this will have additional ways that they could stand up and be counted in terms of their opposition to the war and to find even further ways for them to translate that opposition into political activity.

How do you do that? I mean—and the window of opportunity for you to do that, from everything the administration says, is going to be very limited.

ANDREWS: Well, there's two answers to that. First of all, as far as the president's concerned, just think back to last October. The administration was saying very clearly in very uncertain terms that they didn't need to go to the United Nations, they didn't need any kind of United Nations Security Council vote. They had every right and authority to go in and do what they had to do militarily.

And the president says that again today.

ANDREWS: He says that again today. But what's the difference? They have stopped, they have backtracked, they have gone to the United Nations Security Council. They've realized that they are in a weak political position. So we've seen progress and movement as a result of the voices of opposition out there to this war. We've seen it already has affected the administration. We know it can affect Congress. So we're going to keep pushing.

ANDREWS: Now, of course, the short run, everyone's predicting that we're going to be going to war imminently. That may or may not be the case. But even if it is the case, the reality is from any of the scenarios that we've seen projected by military experts, humanitarian experts and others, Democrat, Republican and otherwise, have said that this is not going to be a quick military operation where you just get out and that's it.

ANDREWS: It is going to mean a very prolonged, even under the best of circumstances, commitment and occupation of Iraq that will cost enormous amounts of money, that could have enormous geopolitical ramifications in terms of terrorism, in terms of the stability of very volatile states in the region. And there's any number of scenarios that could come back and bite the United States very severely. But...

There are—you'll excuse me, but there are a lot of scenarios which could change public opinion as well. For example, you were presented with, at least tactically, the gift of Dr. Blix's testimony before the United Nations Security Council, where he, you know, seemed to say Iraq was responding, more time might be useful.

ANDREWS: Yes.

If his tone changes, if Iraq refuses to deactivate those missiles that Dr. Blix said were prescribed, if something else happens and Iraq looks intransigent, the thing could go the other way.

ANDREWS: Well, it could, you know, and we have said—the Win Without War coalition has said all along that, you know, as long as these inspections are viable, as long as they're working, let's continue. And if it's clear that they simply will not work, and there's no evidence to suggest that they will not, if Mr. Blix needs additional inspectors, if he needs new tools and if he needs new strategies, there are a number of alternatives to war. And what we're saying is, let's use and exercise every alternative possible before we go to war.

ANDREWS: I mean, a lot of people don't realize that we took out more of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s through the inspections process than we did in the entire Gulf War. This process works. We've got to give them time.

Well, joining us now is Michael Kazin. He's going to help us get a historical perspective on this recent anti-war protest. Michael Kazin is a professor of history at Georgetown University, the author of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s, and he joins us from his home in Chevy Chase.

Thanks for being with us.

MICHAEL KAZIN: Thank you.

In your opinion, is this movement that we're seeing today, does it differ from past movements?

KAZIN: Well, it differs in the sense that it's probably the largest anti-war movement that's been organized before a war actually begins. The only one that's comparable to it is the America First movement.

That was before the Second World War.

KAZIN: Yeah. But, of course, the Second World War had really begun already. It just hadn't—the United States was not belligerent yet, though the US was giving aid to Soviet Union and Britain to fight against Nazi Germany. So it's quite remarkable in that sense. And also that it's linked up internationally as much as it has with the help of the Internet and with the help of a sort of larger anti-global capital, anti-globalization movement which has furnished some of the younger, more radical activists in this anti-war movement.

In an article that was published in The Washington Post before this most recent demonstration, you wrote about what you described as the less cynical attitude towards Americanism and how that undermined its opportunity to sway public opinion. Tell us a little bit about what you meant and whether you still think that's true.

KAZIN: Well, I was talking, first of all, about some of the organizers of these protests. Surely Congressman Andrews, but others in the Workers World Party and International ANSWER, a group that organized a big rally in Washington in January and some of the rallies last fall, and also some leading voices like Noam Chomsky's, the well-known intellectual, who I think are talking in such a way and pursuing a point of view that could alienate a lot of Americans in the way some of the more radical people in the anti-war movement, myself included, I should say, in the 1960s, alienated a lot of Americans who were actually opposed to the war, but were also more and more turned off by what they saw as a sort of unpatriotic, anti-American anti-war movement.

KAZIN: So I was basically urging the people who organized the anti-war movement to attract the mainstream, to talk about American values, talk about what Americans share. And I think one of those things is a desire to see democracy around the world and also, however, a desire to not push people around.

Well...

KAZIN: And that's something which I think, you know, was very important for the anti-war movement to stress, the values that they share with other Americans.

Tom Andrews, one of the organizers, do you think that the demonstrations pushed the values that Michael Kazin is talking about? There certainly wasn't an anti-American element.

ANDREWS: That's exactly right. I think that we have matured a great deal as a movement. And he is correct that there are some elements of this organizing that is from the extreme left, World Workers Party and so forth and so on. And the message that they deliver is often—well, it's not productive, in my view. There's an alphabet soup of issues that they have before them and they use a line and tactics that do alienate.

ANDREWS: Our view is, is that the only way we're going to be able to succeed is if we have a message that reaches mainstream people and voters like we are that will sway them and move them and build a very strong and broad political base for this movement. It's the only way we're going to be able to succeed. It's the only thing that will get the attention of people in public office, is if the mainstream is with us and they are our target.

Well, Tom Andrews, you don't often get to choose all of your allies, nor your enemies for that matter. But I wonder if you worry that these kinds of, you know, fractious struggles could be a serious distraction and put people off.

ANDREWS: Well, I don't think so, Neal, because, of course, anyone and everyone can do as they will and on the basis of what they think is right, and there are lots and lots of agendas. But I think the key for our success is to identify those organizations who want to focus on this specific issue and these specific mainstream messages, and let those who are not interested in this approach to do what they're going to do, and that's fine, but to focus our energy and attention on this mainstream group.

ANDREWS: Win Without War is made up of 32 organizations, most of which are very active in the mainstream—the National Council of Churches, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, MoveOn, Veterans for Common Sense. And we've approached them with this message: 'Look, join us and help us to reach the mainstream of patriotic Americans with a message that we believe can be successful.' And so on the basis of that, they've joined us, and this is the foundation on which we're building this movement.

Just before we let you go, an e-mail from Dawn in Kansas City. 'Bush is listening to the majority of Americans who understand the possible need for war,' she writes. 'The problem is that most Americans are of the silent majority who will reasonably not take to the streets promoting the possible need for war.' And I'm afraid I'm going to have to limit you to 30 seconds or so, Tom.

ANDREWS: Well, we're going to give all of the—60 percent of those who agree with us and did not go to the those demonstrations, we're going to announce tomorrow a way that they can.

Well, Tom Andrews, thanks very much for being with us today. We appreciate it. We know you're busy, and appreciate you taking the time.

ANDREWS: Neal, thank you.

Tom Andrews is the national director of the Win Without War coalition, formerly a congressman from Maine, and he spoke with us from his office in Washington, DC.

And, Michael Kazin, I wanted to ask you about some of the other things that you wrote in that article talking about the history of opposition movements. And the co-optation of the idea of Americanism by what you've called 'the right' after the Second World War or is it abandonment of that idea by the left?

KAZIN: Yes. I mean, one of the awful things I think that happened during the Cold War is that—well, from my point of view, is that conservatives made political headway, I think, by embracing the idea of Americanism, and the left, which had really embraced it also for its own purposes before, began to feel that patriotism was sort of a plot by the elite to convince Americans to do the elite's bidding. And the patriots in their minds began being people like Joe McCarthy and later on Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, rather than putting forth the kind of patriotism that Franklin Roosevelt did, for example, in the 1930s, which was sort of a golden age for political patriotism. Even the Communist Party in the 1930s said its point of view was 20th century Americanism. 'Communism is 20th century Americanism' was the Communist Party slogan in the late 1930s.

KAZIN: So wrapping oneself in national traditions and national ideals was something that, until the Cold War, the left did quite well and quite successfully, I think, and ceased being able to do that and ceased wanting to do that. And the Vietnam War was an important turning point there as well because Americans who opposed the war most vociferously were accused of being anti-American and to a certain degree they accepted that label and said, 'Well, if we're anti-American, that's fine, because we don't want to wrap ourselves in the flag the way those who are prosecuting this war are doing.'

Joining us now is Calvin MacKenzie, a professor of government at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. He's with us from the studios at Colby College.

CALVIN MacKENZIE: Thank you, Neal. It's nice to be here.

I wonder, The New York Times in an article just a couple of days ago described the protests that happened this past weekend as a—the numbers they described almost as a superpower in their own right. Public opinion was countering the administration, it said. Do you agree with that analysis? Is this a mainstream movement like that?

MacKENZIE: Well, I don't know if we can characterize it as a mainstream movement in America. I think the scale of it around the world and the capacity of the leaders of these demonstrations to mount demonstrations in major cities around the world all at one time suggests at least a change in the ability of people using this tactic of street demonstrations to get their tactic up and running and in very smooth-running fashion.

MacKENZIE: If we think back to the '60s, that was—many of those demonstrations were organized around mimeograph machines, and today we have much better ways of doing that. And I think these are advantages to people who want to mount these demonstrations.

OK. Let's get some callers involved. Our first caller is Mary, who's on the line with us from Minneapolis.

MARY (Caller): Hello. I'm calling because I have some friends who live in London, and I was interested in their take on the demonstration, especially Tony Blair, the prime minister's response to criticism. His response seems to be, 'Well, Saddam has things and possesses things that we can't tell you about and it's all very top secret, and so trust us,' whereas President Bush seems to dismiss us and say, 'We don't have the proper patriotic fervor and aren't willing to stand up for our values.' So I'm just interested in the difference in the leaders' response to the protests.

Well, Michael Kazin, have you been watching Tony Blair as well?

KAZIN: Yes, and clearly Blair is doing something that's not that different from what Bush is trying to do, which is that he's saying that we have a larger moral claim here, trying to help the people of Iraq. And the demonstrators are not looking at the terrible things Saddam Hussein has done to his own people. They're only looking at opposing what their government wants to do in Iraq. And Bush is beginning to talk in those ways as well, but it's not very successful because, as the caller implies, Americans aren't really thinking primarily of what Saddam Hussein has done to people in Iraq. They're thinking primarily of what their own country can do and the moral claim that their own country would have invading Iraq.

KAZIN: And so really you've got competing moral visions here. And right now, at least, at least in Europe and to a certain degree here too I think, the morality, which argues that a pre-emptive invasion is a bad idea, is trumping the morality that says we should help the people of Iraq suffering under this dictator.

Calvin MacKenzie, Tony Blair is also in a different position. He is, of course, the prime minister from the Labor Party, the leftist party in Britain.

MacKENZIE: Right. Indeed. It's very interesting, and I think the caller suggests an important difference between these protests and the protests that occurred during Vietnam. And you asked earlier, why before the war has started are these happening? If we go back and look at the context of the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s, we find that one of the things that the social scientists measure regularly is trust in government: Do the people trust the government in Washington to do the right thing? And in the early 1960s, levels of trust in government were extraordinarily high compared to the current time, often 75 percent of the people saying they trusted the government in Washington to do the right thing. And we recall...

I don't think they've been that high since.

MacKENZIE: No, nowhere—and they've fallen precipitously down to often in the low 20s these days. So it's not a surprise that the government had to prove that the people didn't earn its trust in the 1960s, and that proof seems no longer required today, either here or in Great Britain.

OK. Mary, thanks very much.

MARY: Thank you.

Let's go now to Lonnie, who's on the line with us from Jacksonville, Florida.

LONNIE (Caller): Hey, how you doing?

OK.

LONNIE: I was calling in reference to the protests.

Yeah.

LONNIE: Basically what I was saying is that during the time of 9/11—and my thing is that I'm siding with President Bush because of the fact that he is looking out for the best interests of our homeland. And like I say, 9/11 really had a major impact on things.

Well, Michael Kazin, worried not so much about what the United States is going to do to Iraq, but what perhaps Iraq or terrorists might do to the United States.

LONNIE: Iraq, exactly. Exactly what the terrorists is gonna do to the US.

Yeah.

LONNIE: It's not Iraq that I think he's after. I think he's just after the guy, Saddam. And like they stated earlier throughout the week on the news, on CNN and everywhere else, is that Bush is basically also freeing the peoples in Iraq. I mean, look at the turmoil and look at the punishment these people have been suffering for the last 12 years now, that I know of. And also we don't want to have a repeat of what took place on 9/11. I think we should be aware of that, and Americans should, too.

Well, Michael Kazin, certainly 9/11 has, tactically if no other way, allowed the president to dominate the patriotism issue.

KAZIN: That's true. And if he could make the argument successfully, Neal, that he's been trying to make and that Colin Powell tried to make at the United Nations, that there is a link tactically, not just spiritually, more tactically, between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, then you'd have most Americans on his side and might even see some large pro-war demonstrations. But he hasn't been able to make that link very successfully, and there's been lots of questioning of it. And so he's really lost some of the credibility, I think, that he built very successfully during the year after 9/11, that he still has on the issue of terrorism.

Well...

KAZIN: But, you know, the fact of—you know, historically most Americans have not wanted to go to war to liberate another country. Those claims have been successful only really once, during the Spanish-American War way back in 1898 to liberate Cuba. And...

Let me ask Lonnie, what convinced you?

LONNIE: What convinced me?

Yeah.

LONNIE: 9/11 was a major impact. Homeland security now is one of my biggest concerns here. We as Americans, why are we walking around here on eggshells? It ain't so much—like I stated earlier, basically to make sure Americans are safe. That's my biggest concern.

Thanks very much.

LONNIE: Thank you.

Appreciate the phone call.

LONNIE: Uh-huh.

Here's an e-mail we got from K.M. 'For several hours in San Francisco on Sunday I watched thousands of people march by. More than half were middle-aged and middle-class with plenty of upper-middle-class and many young families with children. Different from the 1960s, very mainstream.'

Calvin MacKenzie, are the demographics one difference?

MacKENZIE: I don't think they're that different. I think that it was pretty mainstream, a lot of the anti-war movement in the 1960s. There are some differences here, though, Neal, and I think we need to point those out. It's important, first of all, to note that there is no Cold War context surrounding this issue at this point. It was very easy in the early days of Vietnam for the government to say this wasn't about North Vietnam or South Vietnam. It was about communism and it was about communism sweeping down over the Asian peninsula. And if we didn't stand up to communism in Vietnam, we'd be fighting in San Francisco.

Fight 'em in Saigon or fight 'em in Seattle, I think, was...

MacKENZIE: And on the beaches of San Francisco, right. And that argument isn't there anymore, and that argument, at least for the early part of the anti-war demonstrations in the '60s, was a deterrent to people getting in on the opposition side. They believed that it was about communism and we wanted not to surrender to communism. The trust in government problem I cited before, I think, has changed the context significantly. And then the capacity of groups to communicate with each other and to build movements and to get them into the street, and the potential at least, to create a kind of contagion of opposition through that on 24-hour cable news networks and NPR and things of that sort is also very different from the '60s. So the backdrop here is plainly, I think, very different from what it was 40 years ago.

All right. Let's go to Mark, who's on the line with us from Zurich, in Switzerland.

MARK (Caller): Yes. Hi, Neal.

Hi.

MARK: I wanted to make the comment, I'm one of the more than, as the US State Department estimates, 4.5 million Americans who live abroad, and I did participate in a protest with my family this weekend in Bern, Switzerland. Believe it or not, the staid alpine fortress, the neutral fortress of Switzerland actually had a protest protesting against the war, which had more than 40,000 people participating. And for Swiss society, that's quite a big deal. I also have friends who participated, Americans, friends who participated in protests both in London and Berlin. And I think you would find that Americans residing abroad, the civilians anyway, are some of the most critical of US foreign policy, and we're a great resource that can be tapped in to contribute our opinions and make a lot of noise with regard to trying to stop this war.

Mark, I didn't see pictures from the protest that you were at, but I happen to have been in London on Saturday and saw some of the protests there. And a lot of the signs, a lot of the speeches there, mainstream Americans would have been very turned off by the kinds of politics they would have heard.

MARK: Well, I think that you'd be surprised by some of the attitudes of the Americans living abroad. We have access to more public media than most Americans do in the US. I pay a radio license fee every month, and I have access to lots of great public radio, and I think one of the reasons people would be turned off is because their news is coming from Rupert Murdoch and the General Electric corporation and Westinghouse and so on. And so the access to a wide range of opinion is not available within the US.

OK. Mark, thanks very much.

MARK: You're welcome.

And appreciate your listening all the way in Switzerland.

MARK: Yep.

OK. And, Michael Kazin, I did see some of those rallies in London, and there was a very strong anti-American element to it, and that, I think, would have turned off a lot of Americans.

KAZIN: That's probably true. Of course, people protest in their own countries for their own issues and against their own politicians, so...

That's true. I think it...

KAZIN: I think also, that there's a much larger, more vocal Muslim community, I think, in Great Britain which is, you know, hostile to the United States because of their perception of US policy in the Middle East, and here, the Islamic community is just beginning really to organize politically.

And now let's go with Michael, who's with us from Raleigh, North Carolina.

MICHAEL (Caller): Hello.

Hi. You're on the air.

MICHAEL: Nice to be on your show. Listen, I'm a Democrat that happens to agree with Bush on this one. I think that it's hard to imagine how your guests think that we should tolerate Saddam Hussein's intransigence, no matter what he does. And to me, it's like a murderer who's killing someone in another state and we kind of look on and say, 'We've got to stop this guy,' and then he starts to target us, and we say, 'Well, let's try to push him out of the way.' We never go in and just nail this guy. It's hard to imagine that the French, the Germans, they appear to me to be people who are only blocking our position in the States because of economic concerns, as if—it's just amazing to me how people don't see the danger of a person like this that will kill his own people. What do you think he would do to someone like us?

Michael, thanks very much.

MICHAEL: You're welcome.

Calvin MacKenzie, how does the movement, if it wants to have an effect, bring around people like Michael, whom you just heard from?

MacKENZIE: Well, I think it's important to recognize that this is a movement about the political tactics, not about political objectives. I haven't heard anybody standing up for Saddam Hussein here or in Europe or lionizing him in any way. If we think back to the '60s and how, particularly as the '60s went along, we began to see Ho Chi Minh treated very favorably among the protesters and North Vietnamese flags being waved at protest demonstrations. We're not seeing any of that at this point. The question seems to be what's the right way to deal with this evil tyrant in the Middle East? Is it to attack him with arms or to try to freeze him out of the play? And I think that's the disagreement we're seeing take place right here.

Michael Kazin, is there a fundamental fracture in this movement, though? Some people would say, 'Well, you know, maybe if the inspections aren't working,' and we heard earlier from Tom Andrews, you know, if at the end of the day Iraq becomes intransigent, then we might have to reconsider. Others, though, would say, 'Under no circumstances.'

KAZIN: Yes. I think really, there's sort of the—right now, there's unity in order to stop this war before it begins. But, in fact, there is a more of an anti-war faction, which Tom Andrews represented, and more of an anti-imperialist faction, which I think some of the people at International ANSWER, the group that organized the demonstrations in the fall and in January and the one on March 1st represent, who really are not critical at all of Saddam Hussein. They don't raise Iraqi flags, but they feel that sanctions were a mistake. They feel that Saddam Hussein is a sort of hero standing up for those who oppose the American empire, even if he doesn't treat his own people very well. And if a war begins, and especially if there are crowds greeting American soldiers on the streets of Baghdad, then you'll see a rift, I think, in the anti-war movement, but then you'll also see a decline in the movement itself. So right now, before the war begins, unity is quite possible. Once a war, if it does happen, begins, then the terrain will change, and some of these rifts that are right now sort of bubbling under the surface will probably break out. I hope they don't, but I think they probably will.

And, Calvin MacKenzie, we just have a little time left in this segment, some groups have said, 'We're not going to go away. If a war starts, we will do civil disobedience and, you know, put our bodies in front of troop trains, that sort of thing.'

MacKENZIE: Well, some of the people in this anti-war movement at this stage are people who have been in the anti-globalization movement and who have demonstrated that they are not only capable of doing that, they're willing to do it. So that may, in fact, happen, but some of that, of course, happened during the Vietnam War demonstrations, too, so that's not uncommon, when people aren't getting what they want from a demonstration, to go to plan B, and plan B is often some stronger tactics.

Let's get back to the phones, and our next caller is Khalid, who's with us from Overland Park, in Kansas.

KHALID (Caller): Yes. Hi.

Hi. You're on the air.

KHALID: OK. Just one quick comment. I don't think that our administration is paying attention or getting the message from all these protests. It is not a Muslim issue. It is not any religious issue. It's a matter of principle and a matter of morals. We, as Americans, have already taken a big toll of the Iraqi people. It's enough. We don't need to keep on doing that to the people, to the women, to the children, to the people who are going hungry and the people who are going without medical attention in that country.

And what do you think is the best way to get that message to the politicians?

KHALID: Be at the protests. They need to start paying attention. I write to the congressman. I write to my senator. I have even written to the White House. I mean, let me qualify myself for a minute, if I may. Could I do that?

Well, briefly, yes.

KHALID: Yes. I have been in this country—this is my adopted country. I'm a citizen of the US for the last 32 years. I am a builder. I build buildings all over the US and all over the world—hospitals, schools, you name it. I don't destroy things. But does that count for anything just because my color is brown in this day and age, with some people, not with all of them? I have some excellent people all over this state who are personal friends who care about what I do and who take my advice on what I am.

KHALID: But the point is that we're seeing a view that is coming across through the media over here; when you compare that with the media overseas, you get a more realistic picture of what is going on, people who are paying attention to the people. And is this not a country of the people, for the people? So somebody needs to listen to the people. Because, you know, come 2004, we are going to vote. There are seven million of us in this country, and that vote is going to count. Seven million votes are a lot of votes.

OK. Khalid, thanks very much.

KHALID: And, you know, one last comment.

OK, quickly.

KHALID: I like President Bush, but I think his policies is wrong, his stance on Middle East is wrong, and he's surrounded himself with all these PhDs in his Cabinet who are not giving him proper advice. There is somebody who's got to think with a cool mind and a logical mind and say, 'Look, what are we doing wrong that is causing the world and Islamic nations across the world to not like us?'

I have to ask, Khalid, if you don't like all of that, what do you like?

KHALID: This is my country. I have sons that are of fighting age, and they are willing to take up arms for the defense of this country. I am for that. I would take up arms if I was young enough at this point to defend this land and this nation that I love so much. But good Lord, I mean, we are forgetting some of our basic principles that were put out by our Constitution.

OK. Thanks very much. I want to get a comment from our guests before we have to leave this subject.

KHALID: Sure.

But thanks very much for the phone call.

KHALID: You bet.

Michael Kazin, how do people get through?

KAZIN: Well, through a lot of things the caller was discussing: writing to congressmen, staging demonstrations. You know, Neal, successful protest movements are always a combination of the outside and the inside. It's always a combination of protests and people who feel they're not being listened to. And people on the inside, in Congress and the business community, other institutions, who are, in fact, listening and see that it makes more sense to side with the movement than with those who are in charge of the policies. So to the extent that that begins to happen, then you see change. And so everything he's saying is part of the process.

Calvin MacKenzie, we also heard, again, during the '60s that, well, you know, the protests—we're not listening to them. But you go now to the history books now and it does look like they were listening, presidents Johnson and Nixon.

MacKENZIE: Well, they couldn't help but hearing, I don't think, Neal. Demonstrations of this sort I think are largely climatological or contextual, that we rarely can measure some direct effect on public policy. There isn't a protest on Saturday and a policy change on Monday. And Lord knows there are many inputs into the policy-making process. But I think those protests and demonstrations, particularly over time, can affect the climate for policy-making. They can encourage potential opponents to come forward who might not otherwise have done that. They can cause policy-makers to trim their sails a little bit. I think we've already seen some of that. They certainly dull the sound of the presidential trumpet a little bit because it's not the only sound we're hearing out there. So history doesn't give us many examples of short-term direct impacts of street demonstrations, but I think over the long term, they do have a kind of grinding, wearing effect in the political debate that presidents have no choice but to pay attention to.

Calvin MacKenzie, thanks very much for being with us.

MacKENZIE: My pleasure. Thank you.

Calvin MacKenzie's a professor of government at Colby College. He was with us from the studios at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. And, Michael Kazin, thank you for being with us, snowbound as you are.

KAZIN: Thank you, Neal.

Michael Kazin, professor of history at Georgetown University, author of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s. And he was with us from his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland.