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 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

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

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.

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.

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.