To say the least, Sheehan is a bomb-thrower, which many on the right hope will knock her from her new perch as the head of the antiwar movement. During the past couple of weeks, Matt Drudge has put forward a constant barrage of some of her most impolitic statements about foreign policy -- her criticisms of Israel, or the "foul-mouthed tirade" she delivered at San Francisco State University in April, in which Sheehan called members of the Bush administration "fucking hypocrites" and declared, "We are not waging a war on terror in this country. We're waging a war of terror. The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush!"

Could Sheehan's rants derail the antiwar movement? It's conceivable, if what happened in Vietnam is a guide. In late 1969, the war, which had initially been approved by a huge percentage of the country, had become quite unpopular. As Harold Meyerson pointed out recently in the Washington Post, "The Gallup Organization found that 49 percent of Americans favored a withdrawal of U.S. forces and 78 percent believed that the Nixon administration's rate of withdrawal was 'too slow.'"

But here's the odd thing: A large number of Americans -- 77 percent -- said they didn't like the antiwar demonstrators, either. "That disapproval was key to Nixon's political strategy," Meyerson wrote. "[Nixon] didn't so much defend the war as attack its critics, making common cause with what he termed the 'silent majority' against a mainstream movement with a large, raucous and sometimes senseless fringe. When Nixon won reelection in a landslide, it was clear that the strategy had worked -- and it has been fundamental Republican strategy ever since."

Nixon was able to score points off the protesters' theatrical condemnation of the war, Gitlin says. "Many Americans accepted that the war was awful, but at the same time it was an embarrassment," he says. "It wasn't something you could wall off as belonging to Lyndon Johnson. It had been the nation's war. So here are these people out there who are culturally and theatrically odd, and they are a living reminder that the country is doing something idiotic and worse." The way the public reacted, Gitlin says, was to condemn the war as well as the protesters, "the long-haired, sandal-wearing, bearded types burning American flags."

In the past, Gitlin worried that the protests against the war in Iraq would produce the same sort of backlash. In October 2002, when International ANSWER (a group that supports Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, and Kim Jong Il) and Not in Our Name (affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist Party) were launching the first large protests against the war, Gitlin told Salon's Michelle Goldberg that he feared "a gigantic ruination for the antiwar movement."

Gitlin says the antiwar movement has become broader and wider in its appeal. "There's a much larger, more diffuse and variegated antiwar sentiment in this country now," he says. People calling for an end to war are not just located on the political fringes. And Sheehan, in particular, doesn't strike Gitlin as an ideologue but someone who's responding, if in a highly public way, to personal tragedy. "She's taking the position that what she wants is a conversation," Gitlin says. "It's hard to object to that. The dramaturgy of her appearance is quite powerful. She's simply asking for a personal contact, which is clever."

Also, the public may forgive Sheehan her indelicacy for the simple reason that, as Maureen Dowd has pointed out, "The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute." Pariser puts it this way: "There's literally almost nothing you could say that cancels out the grief of a mother who lost her son, the strength of that voice. Conservatives, the smart ones at least, know that you can float all sorts of rumors and allegations and lies, but you can't challenge the integrity and the pain of a mother who lost her kid."

The antiwar movement is not pinning all its efforts on Sheehan, certainly. It still plans street protests; United for Peace and Justice is organizing a march on Washington on Sept. 24. And even if Sheehan is not damaged by her past statements, the movement could well stumble with the public in other ways.

One lingering question is the movement's position toward Iraqi insurgents, which is undefined, and which may leave the people who are against the war vulnerable to the charge that they are comforting terrorists in calling for a withdrawal from Iraq. According to Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, the group has adopted no formal response to Iraqi insurgents because there is a wide range of opinions about the matter among UFPJ's member groups. Cagan says that within the group there is "a general feeling that we understand why people are using many tactics to fight against the occupation by the U.S. military, but we do not support terrorists or organized paramilitary groups."

Still, the antiwar movement remains determined to broaden its focus. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, the women's group that has worked closely with Sheehan to publicize her protest, says that wide appeal finally seems possible. Benjamin is a hard-liner in the movement but "that's the direction the country is moving in," she says. "As the peace movement gets more and more organized and reaches into faith-based organizations, unions, teachers, youth in the schools," more and more people will come to believe that "fighting in Iraq is not worth it."

This story has been corrected since it was originally published.

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