Did Protests Help End the Vietnam War?

It is taken as a given among certain people, particularly many on the left, that massive protests helped end the Vietanm War.  The general idea here is that widespread resistence showed the government the unpopularity of continuing the war and eventually forced the government's hand, leading to withdrawal from Vietnam.  But is it true?  Is this a case of post hoc ergo procter hoc?  

Protests can be useful instruments of political and social change.  They can sometimes change public opinion and influence government policy.  But they do not necessarily always work, and there is the possibility that they will cause more harm than good to the movement that employs protest.  Much will depend on the group that uses protest, the methods of protest, the historical and political circumstances, and the response of any counter movement.  

So did Vietnam-era protests help stop the war? I think this is an empirical question that depends upon the historical evidence.  

One school of thought says that the protest may have actually helped prolong the war by polarizing the country, fracturing the Democratic Party, and allowing the election of Richard Nixon, who capitalized on the counter-cultural image of war protesters to appeal to Middle America.  Paul Berman has argued that a Democratic president would have almost certainly withdrawn earlier, and that protestors played into Nixon and Republicans' hands:

That's just what Paul Berman fears. Berman, author of the recent book "Terror and Liberalism," is a veteran of the '60s peace movement and an opponent of the Bush administration, but he believes no good can come of war opponents rampaging through the streets. "This is just going to create a real crisis within the country," he says. "It's a completely destructive thing to do."

He's done it, and now believes that the days of rage he participated in during the '60s helped prolong the Vietnam War. "At the time I did some of that myself and thought it was doing good, but now it's apparent to me that all that stuff just fell into a trap laid by Richard Nixon," he says. "That kind of stuff allowed Nixon to win in 1968 and again in 1972, and a Democratic president would surely have withdrawn sooner. And so in effect, although it's painful to say so, I think that kind of stuff had the effect of prolonging the war. It played into Nixon's hands. There were famous scenes where Nixon specifically ordered that his entourage drive through streets where he knew he'd be attacked by demonstrators because he wanted the right scenes to appear on TV. He presented it to the public: You had to choose between Richard Nixon or some long-haired marijuana-smoking lunatic communist. Guess what. The public chose Nixon."

 

I'm not saying I necessarily buy this argument, but I don't think it should be dismissed out of hand.  I know that the 1960's and the war protests conjure up all sorts of romantic images, but that should not stop us from coldly analyzing the effectiveness of our methods.  It is plausible that in certain circumstances protests can do more harm than good.  

Something to think about.