Seems to me he skated on just about everything, but I don't remember the circumstances.
Posted on 11/16/2005 6:29:51 PM PST by SJackson
I joined the anti-Vietnam War movement as an 18-year-old freshman at Columbia University. It was the fall of 1965, just months after the United States began sending ground combat troops to Southeast Asia.
The older members of the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society explained to me that unlike World War II, Vietnam was an imperial war, a war of occupation whose purpose was the repression of a national liberation movement.
We were a small group then, but over the next three years SDS became a critical part of a larger antiwar coalition. Our anger mounted, our protests grew and our ranks burgeoned. Unfortunately, we got ensnared in the hallucination of revolution, and by 1969, it became more important to fight each other over the "correct revolutionary line" than to fight against the war itself.
Early the next year, while the war was still raging, my own faction, the Weathermen, made the stupid and ultimately disastrous decision to disband SDS and opt instead for "armed struggle," our middle-class version of urban guerrilla warfare. Predictably, we became isolated and irrelevant over the ensuing years, even as the larger antiwar movement went on to achieve its goal: U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.
I often wonder what would have resulted over the long haul if SDS - which represented the radical, anti-imperialist wing of the antiwar movement - had not chosen to self-destruct in violence and fantasy but instead had kept plugging away, encouraging more and more people to understand and oppose the building of an American empire.
This question seems particularly relevant today, 40 years later, as a re-awakening antiwar movement prepares to confront many of the same issues. Who benefits and who loses from an American empire? What are the moral and economic and spiritual costs to Americans? Is a system of international law possible as an alternative to American military power? Viewed against the bleak future that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice are offering Americans and the rest of the world, these questions seem more practical than idealistic.
What's hard to understand - given the revelations about the rush to war, the use of torture and the loss of more than 2,000 soldiers - is why the antiwar movement isn't further along than it is. Given that President Bush is now talking about Iraq as only one skirmish in an unlimited struggle against a global Islamic enemy, a struggle comparable to the titanic, 40-year Cold War against communism, shouldn't a massive critique of the global war on terrorism already be under way?
Yet the movement has remained small and politically isolated since the original outpouring of opposition in the spring of 2003 - the spontaneous demonstrations involving millions of people in the streets here and around the world trying to stop the war before it began. When this initial outburst failed, many became demoralized.
Then, in 2004, most of the pent-up antiwar energy flowed into John Kerry's presidential campaign, with little to show for it but further demoralization. The movement caught a second wind with the energizing presence of Cindy Sheehan, but it remains small compared to the outpouring against the Vietnam War.
Probably it's because there's no military draft now. Clearly, the fact that middle-class boys across the country were receiving draft cards and lottery numbers went a long way toward spurring resistance to the Vietnam War. Nor is there a countercultural movement today that questions authority like the one that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.
But building a movement can be done. To increase our ranks, we'll need to break through the too-common belief that change is impossible.
We'll also need to take on the larger war. As the next battle heats up, perhaps against Iran or Syria, the movement will have to ask the American people to look honestly at who we are in the world.
Throughout American history, popular movements have made vast transformations in the social and political geography of this country - the abolition movement, the women's suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, the labor movement, the gay movement.
My own contribution is to tell the story of how an antiwar movement involving millions of people accomplished something unique in American history and almost unique in the history of empires: We helped stop a war of aggression by our own country. This was American democracy at its best. I lived through it, I saw it with my own eyes.
If all of us "grayhairs" were to tell our stories, we might be able to make a contribution, and perhaps help people find hope in this dark time.
Mark Rudd, who led the student uprising at Columbia University in 1968 and then became a member of the Weather Underground, teaches math at a community college in New Mexico.
Yes Mark, for those few you remember you, you became irrelevant, than and now. My thanks to Madison, and New Mexico, for your soapbox.
Sorry, meant to ping this to you for your list. Someone may remember him.
Who would hire this commie turd to teach our kids?
He's right about one thing, though.
As long as no one is being drafted out of his comfortable life, there will be no significant antiwar movement.
Rudd was this rich Jewish kid whose folks used to be slumlords in the Newark ghetto which made Rudd feel inccredibly guilty at his priveleged status.
He went underground after the Days of Rage in 1969 and resurfaced in the early Eighties.
He now teaches Voc-Ed at a New Mexico Junior College.
What this fool mourns is the fact that antiwar movements are composed of three parts. And that is their weakness.
1. Hard core leftists who will throw themselves at the feet of anyone who is America's enemy.
2. Pacifists.
These two groups are insignificant. Antiwar opposition only becomes significant when
3. People who originally supported the war but now question the cost and goals.
... emerges.
The problem is that once the war is over group 3 rejoins the mainstream and never wanted anything to do with groups 1 and 2. Most people who doubt the Iraq war now want nothing to do with the ANSWER or Cindy Sheehan types.
"Who would hire this commie turd to teach our kids?"
Nearly every learning institution in this country...sadly.
"let me tell ya sonny, when I was young I protested the war, and helped the communists take over Vietnam. Millions died! And another thing, ya young whippersnapper -- I joined the Weather Underground! We were so dumb we blew ourselves up like Palestinians! Now, you listen to me -- you might learn something! Don't be a fool like I was. Support your president. Support the military, and thank God you live in such a great country. Now -- dang! -- where's my bong?"
Uh, Mark? Remember whose side you were on during that titanic 40-year Cold War against communism? Remember who won?
Now shut up and go away.
Who benefits and who loses from an American empire? >>
Who benefits? Everyone but leftist Nazis who want to shove their .... er .... symbols of their power down our throats. Who loses? Those who think America evil.
What are the moral and economic and spiritual costs to Americans? >>>
Nothing compared to the benefits.
Is a system of international law possible as an alternative to American military power?>>>
No. International law is a three-dollar whore.
Don't know what you mean by resurfaced, but I think he solved his legal problems in the late 70s. I haven't thought of him much since 69-70, so to me I guess he's "resurfaced" now, for another few seconds of fame. The Capital Times doesn't provide many fame points.
I wish him a long life, but there hasn't been much reason to think about him. Amazing what the current climate is bringing out of the closet.
From what I remember, he was a pretty effective speaker.
The citizens of the State of New Mexico.
Was this idiot awake on 9/11/01? Or is he one of those that blames the victims?
What's interesting about the old anti-Vietnam war fools is that there are so few of them who will admit it today.
I notice that Rudd didn't mention anything about the millions of innocents who died after the US left Vietnam...
Or the neighboring nations who fell like, what are those things called - black, rectangular, small dots on them...
Weather Underground hunh? So you were a member of a homegrown terrorist organization that specialized in killing cops? I'd like to spit in your hippy face.
Mark Rudd was a leftist SDS superstar. He came to my college and was was speaking ten feet away from me. To a group of twenty students
Seems to me he skated on just about everything, but I don't remember the circumstances.
Of course anti-Americans can and did make the case that WW2 was also repression of a national liberation movement - after all Germany needed to liberate the Sudetenland and the Jews ran everything anyways and needed to be put in their place.
I often wonder what would have resulted over the long haul if SDS - which represented the radical, anti-imperialist wing of the antiwar movement - had not chosen to self-destruct in violence and fantasy
The exact same thing would have happened. What this aging fool fails to realize is that the "radial anti-imperialists", i.e., Marxists are inseperable from violence and fantasy. Maybe in theory you can seperate the two, but in practice it never works out that way.
Nor is there a countercultural movement today that questions authority like the one that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.
Actually there is a countercultural movement today that questions authority. It's made up of those young people that could be termed "South Park Republicans" and also young conservative Christians. They sure as heck question authority - unfortunately PC, commie, blowhards such as yourself are the authority now.
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