BECAUSE THEY LOST THEN TOO?:

Why Is Opposition to the War in Iraq Seemingly So Muted (Compared with Vietnam?) (Robert Brent Toplin, 2/07/05, History News Network)

Many have pointed out that our current problems in Iraq resemble the nation’s earlier difficulties in Vietnam, but few have observed that conditions at home in the U.S. today are quite different than those of forty years ago. Strong public resistance to an unpopular foreign intervention, so evident in the 1960s, is missing. We hear familiar sounds of war in Iraq but not many familiar sounds of protest in the USA.

When Americans questioned the morality of their nation’s policies and suspected their troops were walking into a quagmire in the 1960s, they quickly engaged in participatory democracy. Within weeks of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision in 1965 to bomb North Vietnam, professors at the University of Michigan held a “teach-in.” Interest in the format spread quickly to other campuses across the nation, especially when the president committed U.S. soldiers to combat operations. More than fifteen thousand citizens gathered for a peace rally in Washington, D.C. in April, 1965, and demonstrations there and in other cities grew to hundreds of thousands in later years. These rallies did not, alone, reverse the nation’s course in Vietnam, but they helped to provoke discussions about changing America’s course.

The controversy over U.S. military engagement in Iraq has been in the news since the Bush Administration made its intentions obvious in 2002 (i.e., well before the bombing of Baghdad began on March 19, 2003), yet the public’s response to this news over the last two and a half years has been surprisingly mild. Recently, a few senators, such as Edward Kennedy, Barbara Boxer and Robert Byrd, have denounced American intervention in Iraq with the gusto that critics in the Senate demonstrated forty years ago when they complained about the Vietnam War. These days, however, most members of Congress seem afraid to challenge the war and occupation in sharp terms. They are also reluctant to take the debate to a higher level by insisting that American troops leave Iraq quickly.

NYC hard hats, Richard Daley, Ronald Reagan and Kent State ended the peace movement, by showing students that their antics were so appalling to mainstream America that there was broad approval for using even deadly force against them. Getting rid of the draft made it impossible to ever motivate students to oppose another war.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 9, 2005 08:48 AM