The key thing is that we need to build a MASS movement. Militant tactics, civil disobedience, etc. can play a role. Massive militant tactics only become really possible in the context of a MUCH larger mass movement.
The question is NOT what is "fun" for the participants!
As someone involved for many years in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam years, it became clear that when there were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets relatively routinely, it became much easier for there to be "breathing space" for thousands to get involved in more militant tactics.
The day WILL come when we are far stronger than the opposition.
Unfortunately, that day is not yet.
The question is how we get there.
One wishes there were an easy answer to that.
All too often, small groups that go off and commit kamikazee style militant actions simply get picked off, brutalized by the police, and thrown either into prison or into prolonged legal battles to stay out.
That being said, sometimes small groups of people taking a militant stand CAN have an energizing role, but only if their message is clear and understood.
We absolutely need to get to the point that the anti-war movement is everywhere--and we are certainly not there yet. There are, as Carl Davidson notes above, all too many neighborhoods, schools, etc. where there is actually no organized anti-war presence at all--even if the polls show that there is a lot of anti-war sentiment.
We need to organize that sentiment.
Everywhere.
In every neighborhood it can be done.
At every school it can be done.
And at LOTS of workplaces!
The sniping at various groups because you don't like their slogans, their speakers, or their tactics is unproductive. That doesn't mean we can't debate political philosophy, ultimate goals, etc.
But the "rhetoric" of comparing Bush (or more precisely, what the direction this country is heading in in general) unfortunately is not rhetoric but reality. It is the very seriousness of that, for us, and for the world, that makes it so urgent to try to systematically organize a mass movement, and to try to unite everyone who can be united against the principal enemy.
I'm glad there were between 7,000-14,000 at this demonstration. If we had as many people at this one as there were at the immigration rally here recently, we could more realistically be talking about more "militant" action on a massive scale, shutting down the city to demand that the war end, etc. We need to get there!
Bush and company ain't sitting still.
Will they attack Iran?
Will they help israel massacre the Palestinians when the third intifada begins?
How will we react?
Let's do the necessary organizing so that we're in more of a positon to do so massively.