e Bundy in early 1966. This well-publicized debate made the antiwar effort more respectable.As supporters of the war found themselves more popular, they were driven increasingly to rely on equating their position with "support for our boys in Vietnam. The antiwar movement spread directly among the combat troops in Vietnam, who began to wear peace symbols and flash peace signs and movement salutes. Some units even organized their own demonstrations to link up with the movement at home. For example, to join the November 1969 antiwar Mobilization, a unit boycotted its Thanksgiving Day dinner. One problem of the antiwar movement was the difficulty of finding ways to move beyond protest and symbolic acts to deeds that would actually impede the war. Unlike college students and other civilians, the troops in Vietnam had no such problem. Individual acts of rebellion, raging from desertion to killing officers who ordered search-and-destroy missions, merged into mutinies and large-scale resistance. Between the late summer of 1965 and the fall of 1966, the American military effort in Vietnam accelerated from President Johnson's decisions. The number of air sorties over Northern Vietnam increased again, from 25,000 in 1965 to 79,000 in 1966. The antiwar movement grew slowly during this period and so did the number of critics in Congress and the media. A ban on picketing the White House was recommended. Instead, President Johnson and later Nixon combated the picketers through a variety of legal and illegal harassment, including limiting their numbers in certain venues and demanding letter-perfect permits for every activity. The picketers were a constant battle, which the presidents could never claim total victory.By 1967, US military authority was breaking apart. Not only was it the worst year for President Johnson's term, but also one of the most turbulent years in all of American history. The war in Southeast Asia and the war at home in the s...
