COLUMN ONE : Anti-War Activists Regroup : Protesters, irritated by gloating over military victory, are left to reflect on why they failed to stop the war. Many take up additional causes.

They were overestimated, outmaneuvered, outpaced and finally overwhelmed. As the end neared, there was surrender and retreat.

Except for the bloodshed, America’s anti-war movement is not unlike the Iraqi army. Both forces had seemed formidable--and both crumbled in the fury of battle.

Only 10 weeks have passed since 47 of the 100 U.S. senators voted against the resolution authorizing war and polls showed that 4 in 10 Americans wanted to give economic sanctions more time. In the early days of the war, protesters numbering in the tens of thousands swarmed on the streets and President Bush complained that the incessant beating of anti-war drums in Washington’s Lafayette Park disturbed his sleep.

When the war was over, the President proclaimed victory not just over Saddam Hussein, but the peaceniks as well. “There’s no question about it,” he declared the day after ordering a cease-fire. “The country’s solid. There isn’t any anti-war movement out there.”

Many would dispute that assessment. But certainly, these are times that try a peace activist’s soul. As flag-waving celebrations continue for a war that claimed relatively few American lives and bequeathed unto Commander in Chief Bush a 91% approval rating, anti-war activists are coping with the realization that Americans indeed love a “good” war.

They are left to philosophize about why the mission first to prevent--then to stop--a war failed, to search for other causes to support and to salvage lessons for the next war--one that will surely come, they say.

“We’ve taken a tremendous blow and we have suffered,” said Blase Bonpane, director of the peace-mongering Office of the Americas. “But I think we understand that our work has got to be permanent.”

“We initially tried to prevent war, then we tried to stop it. Our job now is to try to create a political climate in this country so the kind of thing that happened in the Persian Gulf can’t happen again,” said Alex Molnar, a Milwaukee college professor and Marine father who founded an anti-war group composed largely of relatives of military personnel. Calling itself both pro-American and pro-military, the fledgling Military Families Support Network presented a new breed of activist while campaigning against the Persian Gulf War.

The anti-war movement’s failure to affect the progress of the Gulf War could be measured not only in the shrinking size of protests and fluctuations in opinion polls as the war continued, but in the perception that few of their arguments even received serious consideration in official Washington, the media and neighborhood debates.

Supporters of the Persian Gulf War--including many people who protested the U.S. role in Vietnam--suggest that peace activists lost this political battle wholly on its merits. After all, pro-war voices point out, there was little question who was wearing the black hat.

“This was God’s gift to war making,” acknowledged anti-war activist Todd Gitlin, a UC Berkeley sociology professor and a veteran and scholar of the Vietnam-era protests. In addition to “a villain out of Central Casting,” Gitlin said, referring to Hussein, the argument for war was aided by “a very cleverly staged movement” that included the buildup of forces in the region, the United Nations’ approval and the vote in Congress.

Anti-war activists argue that the point was not whether Hussein is an evil man. The anti-war argument remains, fundamentally, that it was a conflict that could have and should have been avoided. Many say it was not America’s fight, that a misguided foreign policy got the United States into the conflict, that it was a war that could have been halted earlier with much less death and destruction, and that history may not be a kind judge on what, in retrospect, seems a lopsided slaughter.

Activists ruefully credit the White House and Pentagon with managing an effective censorship campaign. They also accuse the American media of “cheerleading” the war effort by focusing on high-tech successes.

Many activists react with disgust to what they perceive as evidence of a gloating “We’re No. 1” attitude. Estimates of Iraqi dead and wounded vary widely; more than 100,000 is not considered beyond the pale.

“It’s not a war that America should be proud of,” said Carl Rogers, co-founder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, who helped organize an unsuccessful campaign for a cease-fire during the aerial bombardment.

“We ought to be grateful it was concluded much more rapidly than so many of us thought,” Rogers added. “Nevertheless, it’s not something we ought to celebrate. It’s that lack of sensitivity that peace movement people are discouraged by.”

The fact that the war failed to cooperate with dire predictions of heavy U.S. casualties is widely considered a key reason the anti-war movement all but dissolved. If U.S. losses had run into the hundreds or thousands, they suggest, Americans would have questioned whether Kuwait was worth it.

But that is an awkward topic for peace activists. “I don’t want to get close to suggesting in an anti-war movement (that) what we wanted was more people to die,” said Rob Schurgin, a volunteer with the Washington Peace Center, a clearinghouse for anti-war groups.

UC Berkeley’s Gitlin suggests that three conditions are necessary for dissent to make an impact.

“No. 1, the elites have to divide. No. 2, people have to feel there’s a politically convincing alternative. No. 3, people have to feel the war is going badly in its own terms,” Gitlin said.

“Because Americans love a winner. And, by the same token, are squeamish about a loser.”

The first two conditions existed between Nov. 8 and Jan. 16, Gitlin said. During that period, starting with President Bush’s post-Election Day order to double the size of U.S. military forces in the region, the economic sanctions were considered an alternative by such influential “elites” as Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), prominent foreign policy analysts and retired generals and admirals who testified before Nunn’s Armed Services Committee. The Senate vote showed profound division.

When war started Jan. 17, “these two conditions evaporated overnight,” Gitlin said. “The choice wasn’t no war or war anymore. . . . The elites lined up for the war. . . . (Politicians) expected a popular war and they didn’t want to be caught on the wrong side.”

Molnar and Rogers used the word “shameful” in describing the way that all but a few of the senators and members of Congress who had argued and voted against authorizing the war later closed ranks and voiced support for the combat. By abandoning anti-war sentiment, politicians proved that they were more interested in their political futures than in demonstrating the courage of their convictions, these critics said.

Politicians say that self-preservation was not the only force at work. Instead, many say their behavior reflected the difficulty of the war powers debate and the feeling that, once the vote was taken, it was important to present a united front.

“They saw we did need to support troops and close ranks as a democracy to fight a war to win,” said Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), who had protested the Vietnam War but voted for war with Iraq. “I respect members who had their deep misgivings, but turned around and gave the troops their support.”

As it turned out, the anti-war movement suffered from a leadership void. Prominent activists such as former Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark and Daniel Ellsberg were perceived as anachronisms of the Vietnam era. Disabled Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic--whose story became familiar to a new generation of Americans because of the film “Born on the Fourth of July”--inspired crowds at Los Angeles rallies, but was frustrated in getting his message to a wider audience. Many activists were heartened by the anti-war stand of the Rev. Jesse Jackson because of his existing constituency and ability to command media attention. Then they were disappointed that Jackson, a political survivor himself, seemed to eschew the leadership role.

Even if new leaders had emerged, they would not have had time to make a difference. The sheer speed of the conflict also conspired against anti-war sentiment.

As anti-war activists struggled to stage rallies, raise money and build organizations, the stunningly successful military blitz of Iraqi forces by U.S. and allied armies created its own popular momentum, giving an apprehensive America something to cheer about. “The generation of patriotic fervor kind of quelled dissent in a lot of ways,” said Schurgin of the Washington Peace Center.

The anti-war movement created problems for itself as well, but there is wide agreement that their own controversies and glitches were dwarfed by the impact of the war.

Gitlin and Rogers suggest that the movement would have been more effective if, from the start, every anti-war faction had condemned Hussein’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait.

The fact that some groups never did--including the Washington-based National Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East--served to alienate would-be protesters, they say. Suspicions that a significant part of the movement was anti-Israel alienated many Jews, traditionally a prominent financial supporter of the peace movement.

The broad, diverse makeup of the peace movement also had its downside, presenting a baroque range of images that seemed to confuse and turn off some potential followers. Protesters might identify with environmentalists decrying war as an energy policy, or parents holding pictures of military sons and daughters deployed in the Gulf. But radical Marxists, John Birchers and militant gays such as Queer Nation left many folks shaking their heads.

Like many activists, Francis Fox Piven, distinguished professor of political science at City University of New York, dismissed the notion that philosophical differences were a significant problem. The movement “seemed to me to be in the main reasonable and judicious. No important segment said the Iraqis were right, or that Saddam Hussein was not a tyrant. And almost everybody went on to talk about the uncertainties, the costs of the war.

“This seems to me to be a reasonable view. That doesn’t mean it will prevail in a political climate being whipped up in a kind of jingoistic manner. This war was pretty carefully stage-managed. . . . The anti-war movement was way outshouted.”

Americans have no experience with combat on their native turf, Piven said. “Unlike Europeans, we have a kind of naivete about war which allows us to be manipulated more easily.”

Looking to the future, anti-war activists offer skeptical forecasts of efforts to draft a formula to pacify tensions in the Middle East. Without a second superpower to deter American military might, peace activists fret that Bush and other leaders will shun diplomacy in favor of “smart bombs,” Stealth fighters and other technological marvels to deal with geopolitical problems.

So peace groups are back at their spadework. Even though the “Vietnam syndrome” was supposedly kicked, the war did bring new recruits to their cause, activists say. Several groups scattered across the nation that formed to protest the Gulf War are trying to hold together, activists say.

The Military Family Support Network, claiming 6,000 supporters, has set up an office in Washington and says it will advocate military benefits while keeping a keen eye on American foreign policy.

The group was organized by Molnar after he received hundreds of letters and phone calls following his open letter to President Bush published in the New York Times in late August, the day after Molnar’s son was dispatched to the Gulf. Molnar said his son, who survived the war and is expected home soon, is still forming an opinion on America’s role, but as a Marine never questioned his duty to serve.

The group, which supported the deployment of troops to protect Saudi Arabia but opposed offensive military action, talks of working with such conservative groups as the Retired Officers Assn. on military benefits issues and liberal groups such as the Vietnam Veterans Foundation on anti-war issues.

Whether the group will have staying power remains to be seen. Very few traditional military organizations accept the argument that one can logically claim support for warriors without supporting the war, said Sydney Hickey, spokeswoman with the National Military Family Assn., a 21-year-old group that lobbies for better service pay and benefits.

Several members of Southern California’s busiest anti-war group, the Los Angeles Coalition Against U.S. Intervention in the Middle East, are now raising their voices in police brutality protests aimed at bringing about the resignation of Police Chief Daryl F. Gates.

While waiting for the next war, the Los Angeles group is debating a name change and pondering whether to continue its focus on the Middle East or become more active in domestic issues of social justice. Organizer Leila Rand said a core of more than 100 members attends meetings. “People are really, really, really committed to keeping things going,” she said.

While some activists try to reach out to broader constituencies, Office of the Americas’ Bonpane is among those who want to organize tribunals to try Bush for “war crimes,” such as the killing of Iraqi civilians.

“We feel it’s a battle between power and truth,” said Bonpane. “The President tries to define truth his way, but the peace movement has been more in touch with truth, I believe.”

Like David in the Book of Psalms, activists “should speak the truth before kings,” Bonpane said.

Not that the movement should be self-righteous, he hastened to add.

“The last thing we should be,” he said, “is self-righteous.”