What anti-war movement?

I would argue it is because people do not see this as really effecting their day to day lives. With Vietnam there were students protesting by holding hands blocking the Highway, now the Iraq War is something debated for 30 minutes in High School classes, then class ends and the debate is forgotten about and students move on. While protesters may set up boots and a few hundred were arrested on Wed, it's really nothing that moves people. From where I stand and from the college students that I talk to, they just don't care, for the most part, not enough to really put their life on hold at least. Fighting for an ideology isn't all too important, instead it is about issues made attractive by media outlets like MTV such as the Environment, Sudan or voting for Obama. However, I feel this might only hold true for me generation.

I agree with Dawn. During the 1960's you had a civil rights movement, a student rights movement, a sex-drugs-rock and roll movement, an anti-war movement and a woman's right movement all happening at once. Today's students have largely been molded by cultural and economic forces (and fears) that simply didn't exist in the '60s. Sadly, the plight of the Iraqis seems to have been lost on today's youth. They lack empathy with the Iraqi people in the way that students in the '60s empathized with the Vietnamese (somewhat 'treasonously'.) I agree there was also an ideological factor. Many '60s anti-war people were committed socialists or communists which made them sympathetic on ideological grounds to the Vietnamese. You would need a geiger counter to find a committed communist on your typical college campus these days, not to mention a committed "Islamo-fascist". What strikes me as odd is how many students and young professionals 'support' the war (ala Mitt Romney's boys) but aren't considering going to fight in it. The bottom line is that young people today just want to find a job and keep the party going...wait until they realize they will be paying for this war until they croak....but who is going to tell them?

I agree with Dawn on the central point as well, which is that young people do not see these wars as affecting their day to day lives the way that people did with Vietnam. And I think by far the biggest the reason for that is the discontinuation of The Draft. Without that sword hanging over their heads, people are just naturally not going to be concerned as much.

And I think a certain cynicism has crept into the culture, particularly youth culture, as well. Any sort of expression of "X is direly important" or "X can change the world" is only going to get so far without being shot down.

I wouldn't be so quick to criticize "today's lazy, good-for-nothing youth" or whatever.

Having a corpocracy for a government is the the real reason for our failure to assemble in protest because our interests are being categorically ignored anyway. With an administration that seems capable of streamrolling through every objection raised by the U.N. and the international community, what chance does the common American have of changing foreign policy? Recall that not so long ago our Secretary of Defense was Donald Rumsfeld, who responded to the unprecented calls for his resignation with this statement: "Out of thousands and thousands of admirals and generals, if every time two or three people disagreed we changed the secretary of defense of the United States, it would be like a merry-go-round."

I am a college student who is pretty vocally anti-war, and I will tell you that there are two reasons that I have not gone to any protests:

1. It won't make a difference.
2. No draft.

There was a protest in DC last year that was as big as the May Day protest in 1970 and it didn't do anything. I am so disillusioned with the Bush administration that I'm not going to be naive enough to think that my protesting will have any effect whatsoever on their policy. Dick Cheney's reaction to hearing that 75% of Americans are against the war says it all, in my opinion.

If there were a draft, however, I wouldn't care about what effect I thought my protests would have on the policy -- I would still be there every time. Even imagining my friends or cousins getting sent to Iraq or Afghanistan makes me upset. But the fact is that I don't know a single person in the armed forces, and I'd rather devote my time to helping Obama get elected and -really- end the war rather than spend hundreds of dollars to get to DC and attend a protest. I could protest in my home state or my college town, but they're both incredibly liberal -- why preach to the choir?

Altogether Elsewhere

Dear Altogether,

The 60's anti-war movement wasn't just about standing around at protest rallys. It was also about shutting down universities, blocking troop trains and battling the police in Berkeley, Kent State and elsewhere. The 60's had their Obama. His names were Eugene McCarthy and then George McGovern and Bobby Kennedy...and we know what happened to them.

I disagree that a draft would make that much of a difference. Most college educated liberals would find a way to get out of it and more minorities would get caught in the web. It's a mistake to view the '60s as one extended draft riot. The draft was part of it but it had many more components. Revolution was in the air.

In the end there weren't too many liberal arts majors in Vietnam....but there were a lot of poor urban blacks and rural white southerners. There's no reason tho think it would be otherwise this time around. Given the way the economy is going it might be the only job in town.

Well, I agree that it probably did have a lot to do with the fact that it really was about more than just the war in the '60s. It seems so strange that people would shut down their universities to protest the war -- I mean, colleges are liberal places and basically the last place that I would protest.

I think if the draft wouldn't make that much of the difference, we'd have one (a real one). Even if most people I know found a way to get out of it, the number of people I knew in the war would still be greater than the number I currently know (and I went to a high school with plenty of kids from working class and minority families).

Either way, it's almost as annoying to have the Boomers criticizing us for not protesting the fact that they've screwed everything up as it is that they did it in the first place.

Altogether Elsewhere

No one is criticizing anyone, merely pointing out the flaw in the notion that the 60's were just about the draft, or just about the war in Vietnam. And as for Boomers screwing everything up...you'll get no argument from Mr. Lou. The evidence is in....the prosecution rests.

Altogether raises an interesting question: Why riot at a University as they are such liberal places? Well that was not always the perception...in fact they were viewed by many people in the 60's as extensions of the industrial-military complex, to borrow a hackneyed phrase. The reason they seem so liberal now is that all the 60's liberals are now on the faculties. The idea according to the revolutionary element was that blacks would riot in their ghettos, workers would shut down their factories and students would shut down their schools. Nothing of the sort happened to any large extent but thanks to the media the images from where it did happen were quite powerful. It may all seem so improbable in this day and age. I guess you had to be there.

Lure D. Lou - That is probably the funniest and most defeatist way to sum up the 60s ever: "I guess you had to be there."

That spirit of revolution still exists somewhere, just not so much in the USA. I remember when I was in France in the spring of 2006, college students began protesting the proposed "First employment contract" for youth. The contract seemed harmless enough to me and furthermore a reversal of Prime Minister de Villepin's new economic agenda seemed remote. But soon hundreds of universities all over the country were blockaded, faculty walked out in solidarity with the students, some high schools closed down, then bus drivers followed suit and eventually the resistance to the CPE touched even rail transit and the postal service. After months of vigorously insisting that France NEEDED this more Anglo-Saxon contract model, de Villepin relented and the CPE was chucked out the window.

Somehow America has lost the will to protest these moves, yielding complacently to one of two parties in the rigidly binary system that we have locked ourselves into.

I think you missed my point entirely ajongini. The point about 'you had to be there' had to do with understanding and experiencing all the factors that were at play in the '60s. To be able to see that it was about much more than Vietnam...It was not a commentary on the situation of today which is very different on every level.

As for the French....once again the French student protests of 2006 bore absolutley no resemblence to the French students protests of 1968...The 2006 protests were about a very narrow band of issues that no one in France cared about but the students themselves. 1968 almost brought the country down.

I am sure that if students in the US had anything to complaing about they would stage a mass protest as well. Until that happens...well, nothing is going to happen.

Oh in that case do excuse me, Lure D. Lou - I didn't realize that you meant it condescendingly. Please disregard any previous comments I may have made as to its funniness.

You are reading criticism where none is intended....in fact what I am precisely saying is that the situation in the 60's and the situation of today are in no way comparable, therefore today's students SHOULD NOT be expected to react in the same way. The forces of power and control over dissent are much stronger now....in the '60s they were just being formed and the '60s ended bacause the price of continuing the 'rebellion' became much too high. The fact that today's students do not have to face a draft is one element: but you do have to face a tanking economy, an endless war that you will have to pay for your whole working life, a polluted planet and a worthless 5 dollar bill that won't even buy you 5 minutes in Paris, forget about a whole day. Condescension, no way....sympathy...indeed. If you want to go out and fight against it you have my full support....honestly.

The current resistance to the Iraq war is led by a core of passionate, committed activists that are inspired by the prospect of attempting to end complacency about our foreign policy. I'm not writing this to contribute to the discussion or to win an argument about why the movement is smaller now than it was against Vietnam. I'm writing in case any anti-war person sees this. I want them to know that sometimes the only way to end injustice in this world is to stand up against it, nonviolently, any way you can think of. Even MLK lost mainstream support when he denounced the war in Vietnam. On March 15th, in Hollywood, in San Francisco, in DC and elsewhere thousands of people took time out of their busy lives to raise awareness about opposition to the war. These people are trying to spark a great conflagration of action. A sterile, lifeless, academic debate won't get the job done.

Iraq and Afghanistan have one thing in common which most ordinary Americans agree on. Our Media has convinced us that both country's are filled with people that do not like Americans and would like to hurt us. In our hearts we know this is not true but everyday we see the terrorist attacking our Soldiers time after time after time. We also know that our Soldiers are not going to run. Our Soldiers are going to turn towards those who attack them and kill them. When the Terrorist are killed it is one less person from those places that the media says hates Americans that is left to hurt us. Read Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This is covered under "Security". The people that protest this war against evil dress like fools, spit at people, attack anyone who says something different than what they believe and generally seem pretty weird. They are an easy group not to associate with. Seems pretty simple in middle america.