THE EBBS AND FLOWS OF GULF-WAR PROTESTS

Operation Desert Storm was not a ''patriotic triumph'' for many U.S. c itizens. Numerous Americans silently disapproved of the war, while oth ers defiantly created a movement of Gulf War dissenters. This reenactm ent of the antiwar movement will be the focus of this paper. More spec ifically, the paper will trace the inception, growth and decline of th is oppositional movement. Methodologically, this paper studies the mov ement's ebbs and flows through a content analysts of newspapers and an ethnographic case study. In the end, this study reveals that the slow and steady growth of the movement during the last months of 1990 was surpassed by a rash of movement activity around the January onset of t he war. Yet, this flurry of activity around the middle of January beca me a two-week milestone as the protest size began to shrink in Februar y and early March.