(FORTUNE Magazine) – Social activism in the 1990s is going to be more relevant than it ever has been. Just look at what's happening in Rumania, look to the students in Tiananmen Square. In many ways, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War may have been ahead of our time. We were fighting for a more truthful dialogue. We fought for a new country, and millions of people joined us in that struggle. We who opposed the war were good citizens, just like the Czechs who filled Wenceslas Square. When a system goes astray, it is the right and obligation of citizens to oppose it and change it -- for themselves and for generations to come. Today we are all more aware of the huge gap between what politicians tell us and what we know to be true. If our action in Panama had lost more lives, approval ratings would have dropped drastically. The American people will never allow what happened in Vietnam to happen again.