Iraq War - What's different this time?

[FrostyBoy]

Just yesterday I watched United States Vs John Lennon, quite interesting.

And just a moment ago I watched this:



So why this time, are peace rallies, music, etc not being pushed hard like it did back in the 60's 70's?

Seems Scientology is getting more attention than things that really matter. Seems musicians don't know what to sing and it seems the American people vent their anger online, which is probably as impactful as baking a cake.

[Main_Brain]

Draft Army vs Enlisted Army

[Wezil]

Main Brain named the most important difference.

As to protests - Get serious. The only thing that really riled Poly posters up over the last year was the lack of TV programs. Do you really think this is a protesting generation?

Musicians - Money killed the music business long, long ago. The corporate hold on the artists and their money will keep them in line.

[FrostyBoy]

Do you really think the 60's 70's teens and young adults were a protesting generation too?

People finding excuses to avoid standing up for what's right.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
Do you really think the 60's 70's teens and young adults were a protesting generation too?

Absolutely and without a doubt.

[Riesstiu IV]

People still protest but I doubt it's anything in comparison with the kind of activism seen in during the later parts of the Vietnam War. I think part of the reason is the actual people this war affects is very small. We no longer have a large draft army and soldiers are being called multiple times to make up for it.

[DanS]

The lethality of Iraq is -- so far -- an order of magnitude below Vietnam. Further, some follow the administration and put Iraq and Afghanistan together (like in the video). Afghanistan is seen as a just war by almost all.

[chequita guevara]

Yes and no, DanS. For Americans, many of those who would have died a generation ago are living today due to quicker medical response (mostly brain injuries), but those folks are severely disabled. Also, Americans don't have a true picture of the death toll on Americans, as at least 1,000 mercs have died, and once an injured soldier leaves Iraq, a death is not counted as part of the Iraq war dead. There is no total number of soldiers who have died from wounds sustained in Iraq. Furthermore, the overall number of casualties is consistent with numbers sustained in Vietnam. The difference is the ratio of dead to wounded.

There are a number of reasons why this generation isn't protesting. Main_Brain hit the big one. No draft, so kids aren't feeling immediately threatened. There are a number of other reasons, however. The next two in importance, I would argue are: the role of the Democrats and the role of the media.

The antiwar movement has nose dived since 2004, when the Democrats took effective control of the movement away from the communist groups that had organized it from 2001 through 2003. Even liberal Salon.com began running articles about the "neo-Stalinists" in ANSWER who had "taken control of the movement" even though it was the communists who had organized the antiwar movement from the beginning (as always happens).

In late 2003, Democratic Party allies organized United for Peace and Justice, which promptly captured the movement, and led it like lemmings over the cliff of the Kerry campaign. It wasn't until 2006 that the movement began to recover, and again UFPJ led the movement over the cliff of supporting the Democrats. This time, though, the Democrats won, and promptly betrayed the antiwar movement by continuing to fund the war. Most of the antiwar movement, at this point, is sick of UFPJ, and there is a national conference in Cleveland this June to build a new antiwar coalition. I plan on going at this point.

The media has also greatly down played the devastation the occupation has wrought. The script the media must stick to is that we are trying to do good things in Iraq and we've bungled occasionally, and some very bad things have happened that were caused by a few bad apples and SUPPORT THE TROOPS! The very respectable British Medical Journal, Lancet was ridiculed in the American media (and even here on Poly) for its statistical analysis of Iraq concluding that as many as 1.3 million Iraqis have died because of the disruption the invasion and occupation has unleashed. The recent Winter Soldier hearings outside Washington D.C. last weekend went without notice in the mainstream media. I'm actually going to be speaking about this tomorrow night, along side Mike Prysner (who is also running for Congress, not in my district ).

There are also sociological reasons for the fact that this generation does get as involved. One, the economy is a lot less secure today that it was in the 1960s and early 70s. Jobs were easy to get, school was a hell of a lot less expensive, and people weren't mired down with debt when starting college. People are much more afraid to risk their jobs today than they were forty years ago. It is much, much harder to be an activist today than it was even twenty years ago.

Also, the internet, ironically, has made it both easier and hard to organize. Because there is so much data to sift through and process, we have less time to organize. Forty years of suburbanization and spreading out the American people have also made it harder, as there are few public gathering places anymore. Most "public spaces" are now actually private property, so where can we go to organize or hold demonstrations?

[DanS]

Che: Do you support the war in Afghanistan?

Judging from the protesters here in DC this past week, the anti-war protest movement still consists in large part on your communist/anarchist fringe types.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DanS
Che: Do you support the war in Afghanistan?

Yes and no.

Judging from the protesters here in DC this past week, the war movement still consists in large part on your communist/anarchist fringe types.

The antiwar movement has pretty well collapsed, based on what I wrote above. The Cleveland conference is an attempt to revive it. I don't expect it to really take off again until next year, after the election. Elections have a way of sucking politics out of the country.

[DanS]

Trust me. The anti-war protest movement never was. There were more anti-war posters in downtown DC when ANSWER was running the show, I'll give them that.

[Geronimo]

Honestly I think whatever reason there's fewer protests it's a good thing. Protests accomplish little to nothing in this country. In fact I strongly doubt the protests themselves did anything to substantially shorten vietnam. Nixon would have begun the Vietnam pullout in an entirely different manner if mollifying the protesters was his motivation.

The country is a democracy. If people want the US out of Iraq they should actively support candidates who promise to get us out. Gathering in parks to burn US flags is not a great way to win people over to your cause.

On a per individual basis and overall, the old fashioned avenues of writing letters to congressmen and signing petitions is surely far more effective at modifying policy than protests have been.

Protests are for putting a fear of revolution in the minds of leadership that can't be removed at the ballot box. If protest is used in places where the leadership can be removed at the ballot box I think it makes no difference or tends to slightly weaken the strength of the opposition at the ballot box through distaste with the unphotogenic vitriol associated with the protesters.

Music and the less angry sorts of peace rallies could be very effective but sadly I agree that the music industry has become vastly more commercialized and peace rallies usually turn into anarchist/communist looking angry protests for whatever reason.

[edit] I changed my mind about one kind of protest. I think the Vietnam draft protests may in fact have been the only desperate action available to the draftees because once they were in jail or shipped off to the rice paddies in vietnam it was a bit late for action on their behalf. In those cases I think the protests may have been more a form of civil disobedience in defense of their own personal liberty. If they're going to be jailed (or worse) anyway, they might just as well make it as inconvenient as possible.

[Dr Strangelove]

You might also consider that young people are a smaller portion of the population today compared with 1968. Furthermore a smaller proportion of young people go to college now.

I think it's also true that the civil rights movement prepared the way for the anti-war movement of the late 1960s. Thanks to the civil rights movement college aged people were already psychologically prepared to demonstrate and there was a leadership already in place.

I wouldn't say that the protests of the 1960s accomplished nothing. The protests were a major factor contributing to LBJ's decision to not run for the presidency in 1968. In 1968 when Nixon promised "peace with honor" he was using anti-war sentiment while simultaneously appealing to moderates. For many people this phrase took on an almost magical meaning, they thought that the US could somehow disengage from Vietnam without losing face.

[Aeson]

We have video games and teh interwebs now.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Furthermore a smaller proportion of young people go to college now.

more young people go to college now. Although that doesn't necessarily have much consequence to the rest of your post.