Now, admittedly I'm in a very blue state but still it was gratifying to see the number of smiles and positive reactions we got from marchers, including some elected officials, someone in the Disabled American Veterans contingent, and several uniformed National Guardsmen. Even a couple of the on-duty cops snuck in a thumbs up.
One among our number remarked that he was frustrated that there aren't more and bigger demonstrations demanding an end to the war. He recalled the anti-Vietnam protests and suggested the difference now is that there is no draft. "If we had a draft, then you'd see people pouring into the streets."
It's a common sentiment; I've certainly come across it before and I suspect many of you have, too. It's born of a sense of genuine frustration: Why are people not rising up in unified anger at the deaths, the lies, the brutalities? We look back at the massive outpouring of dissent during Vietnam and wonder what's gone wrong in the interim that we have become such passive sheep - no, not sheep really, more like disinterested onlookers - in the face of horror.
The comparison is more than depressing, it's deeply discouraging - or rather, it would be if it were an accurate one. While we certainly need to push harder and do more to oppose the murderous insanity we have inflicted on Iraq, we also need to be fair to ourselves if we are to avoid the sentiments of my companion today, who confessed he felt like just giving up.
The Vietnam protests we remember, the big dramatic marches, took place only after years of organizing and years of war. The first US "advisors" arrived in Vietnam in the latter 1950s and, while not formally called "combat troops," US soldiers became actively involved in firefights starting in early 1962.
Even so, the first national demonstration against the war did not take place until April, 1965, more than three years later. About 15,000-20,000 people came to DC to call for a US withdrawal, a turnout that surprised even the organizers. So the first point is that, unlike Vietnam, we were turning out people in significant numbers even before the war began.
A month before that first national rally, in March, 1965, Lyndon Johnson had approved sending of the first openly-designated combat troops to Vietnam to supplement the 23,000 "advisors" already there. And two months before, in February, he had approved starting an on-going campaign of bombing attacks on North Vietnam.
Opinion polls taken in the U.S. shortly after the bombing indicate a 70 percent approval rating for the President and an 80 percent approval of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.That's a level of support that I don't think Bush ever had for attacking Iraq.
The first really major demonstration against the Vietnam war was in October, 1967 at the Pentagon: Some 50,000 were there. This is more than two years after combat troops were introduced, more than five years since combat operations actually started. And it was at a time when there were over 400,000 US troops in Vietnam (the total hit 485,000 by the end of the year).
The really massive demonstrations we remember, the ones from 1968, the Moratorium demonstrations in October and November, 1969, the explosion of protest on college campuses in the wake of the invasion of Cambodia in the spring of 1970, the drama of Mayday in 1971, these occurred after years of war that dwarf US casualties in Iraq: In 1968, at the height of the war, with over 500,000 US troops in Vietnam, US deaths were running at nearly 320 a week; total US casualties, dead and wounded, approached 2000 a week. Total deaths in Vietnam, US and Vietnamese, military and civilian, were estimated at 300 a day.
Don't forget: There was a draft throughout this time. Even so, it took six years of combat operations, more than three years of full-blown war, to generate those massive protests. Yes, the fact of the draft drove some of that opposition, but it remains true that the existence of the draft did not prevent the massive troop buildup.
Nor, it would seem, did it hasten opposition to the war, since we seem to be capable of generating a lot of opposition without it. Hundreds of thousands on the streets before the war (yes, millions around the world; I'm just looking at the US now); hundreds of thousands on the first anniversary of the invasion; upwards of a half-million at the Republican National Convention last fall; and while no one seems to have a count of the number that turned out on the second anniversary in March, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) had a list of 765 places covering all 50 states where actions took place, a figure considerably more than double that of the year before.
This is not to say we've done enough or that we can or should rest on our laurels. If anything, it's to say the opposite: To buck up, to carry on, to do more and do it harder: To be encouraged in our efforts by realizing how far we have come, how much we have accomplished.
One last point of comparison: According to a Harris poll taken the first week of May, the public's view of Shrub's "handling of Iraq" is a negative one by 61% to 37%, almost exactly the reverse of what it was two years ago. What's more,
[b]y 54 to 26 percent, American adults are not confident that U.S. policies in Iraq will be successful. ...It was not until sometime in 1967, after five years of combat-related deaths and more than two years after the start of full-scale combat before any poll indicated a plurality of Americans questioned the war in Vietnam.
The number of adults who say that taking military action against Iraq was the right thing to do has declined to 39 percent.... In addition the number who thinks that this was the wrong thing to do has increased to its highest level - 48 percent....
When the shift happened, though, it definitely happened: In 1966, LBJ was the dominant force in Democratic party politics. In 1968 he pulled out of the race for the nomination for president. Things can and do change. And now we can truthfully, clearly, forcefully, say what has become undeniable: On this, on the war in Iraq, we - the protestors, the opponents, the difficult sorts who don't understand the political realities of triangulation - are the voice of the American people.
And slowly, painfully, with too much blood shed and too many lives lost and too much hatred generated, but still, slowly - we are winning.
Footnote: One more Vietnam connection: I mentioned to my co-protestor that even in our oh-so-blue state, there was work to do, noting that the $82 billion "supplemental" appropriation for war in Afghanistan and Iraq had passed with the support of both our senators. He suggested that maybe they were of the "now that we're there, how do we get out?" way of thinking.
"Just like we answered during Vietnam," I said. "On boats."
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