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Voices muted usatoday Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-10-06-protests_x.htmhttp://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-10-06-protests_x.htm
Voices against war seem muted
By John Ritter, USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO — Protests over a war with Iraq, percolating on campuses and in activist bastions like this liberal city, are muted compared with the bitter, at times violent, street confrontations of the Vietnam War era. In recent weeks, demonstrations have drawn dozens to several hundred protesters at scattered locations around the country. A rally here on Sept. 14 brought 1,000 protesters to United Nations Plaza.
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Marcher in costume symbolizing death demonstrates in New York City's Central Park against a possible U.S.-Iraq war.
By Shannon Stapleton, Reuters
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President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld are met by sign-waving hecklers at some public appearances. (Related story: Celebrities mobilize for peace)
On college campuses, anti-war organizers are conducting teach-ins reminiscent of those held before protests escalated with the Vietnam troop buildup in the mid-1960s.
Today, a coalition of groups is promoting "A National Day of Action" against war in Iraq and expects protests at 100 campuses. On Oct. 26, New York-based International ANSWER — Act Now to Stop War & End Racism — is hoping to draw tens of thousands of demonstrators to anti-war rallies and marches here and in Washington.
The parallels with anti-Vietnam War activism are at once striking and overdrawn. At the height of that conflict, demonstrations could attract hundreds of thousands. Riots disrupted the 1968 Democratic national convention in Chicago. In 1970, National Guardsmen fired on demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four.
But talk of war with Iraq so far is just that — talk. Congress is still debating a resolution that would give Bush authority to send troops. Polls show that most Americans approve of deploying U.S. soldiers to oust Saddam Hussein. Even anti-war activists acknowledge that the Sept. 11 attacks and support for the government's war on terrorism have dampened anti-war fever.
"After Sept. 11 there was a lot of grief and anger," says Alex Cheney of Boston Mobilization, one of the groups promoting today's campus protests. "But a lot of people are starting to feel that this grief and anger should not be directed toward creating more violence."
At a comparable stage, dissent against the Vietnam War was also not widespread. The first major demonstration drew 15,000 protesters to Washington in April 1965 — not long after President Johnson sent the first wave of troops to Vietnam. Those who recall the Vietnam protests say the potential for a quicker, larger marshalling of anti-war opposition is greater now than it was then.
"Often people connect the images of the late '60s with today and draw the conclusion that there's nothing going on," says Tom Hayden, a "Chicago Seven" defendant cleared of federal charges of inciting riots at the 1968 convention. "Right now there's much more anti-war protest than there was on the eve of the Vietnam War."
The '60s protests grew as U.S. casualties mounted. Because of a military draft, millions of young men were worried about being called to serve and sent to Southeast Asia. Today, only volunteers serve in the military and on college campuses, activism arguably has turned more practical.
"The students of this generation are very focused on the politics of their community," says Judith Shapiro, president of Barnard College. "What's difficult for this generation is to think in larger geopolitical terms."
As the Vietnam War wore on with more than a half-million troops committed, it became a drag on the American economy. Comparisons are being drawn with a potential Iraqi conflict. Government estimates of the cost of subduing Saddam range from $100 billion to $200 billion.
"The polls show popularity for the war is very high," says the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, a former Yale University chaplain who was convicted of aiding draft resisters during the Vietnam War. "But suppose it costs 10,000 American lives. Then the polls go way down, and if we're going to be there 10 years afterward, there's a mighty small percentage of Americans who are enthusiastic at that point."
Others caution against underestimating Bush's support. A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll in late September found 69% supported sending troops to oust Saddam if Congress approves.
Bruce Cain, a University of California-Berkeley political science professor, says that if a war starts, the president's support will rise because of a "rally around the flag" response.
A majority in the poll, 59%, opposed a war if the United States has to invade Iraq alone, without allies or United Nations support.
Anti-war activists bank on the public seeing a difference between sending troops to Afghanistan to rout the Taliban and sending them to Iraq to topple a dictator.
But the peace movement, if it can be called that yet, would be taken more seriously if it hadn't shot itself in the foot after the United States sent troops to Afghanistan, says Reginald Zelnik, a California-Berkeley history professor. "The movement pulled out its old slogans and acted as if this was going to be Vietnam all over again," Zelnik says. "And it wasn't. The credibility of the main activist groups was really eroded."
At this stage, with war with Iraq uncertain, anti-war fervor is not well-organized, and many groups are working independently. Members of Peaceful Tomorrows, a group of about 50 relatives of Sept. 11 victims, are speaking around the country and lobbying members of Congress.
"We feel that our loved ones' deaths are being used to justify a war," says Kelly Campbell, whose brother-in-law, Craig Amundson, died at the Pentagon. "We feel that war in Iraq is diverting our attention from looking for the real causes of terrorism and may indeed just inflame those causes."
Campus anti-war leaders are e-mailing and networking, says Cheney of Boston Mobilization, but the mood is different from the '60s.
"I'm 23. My parents were in Berkeley during the '60s. But it seems like the students today are very critical of everything," Cheney says. "Critical of those who want war and those who want peace."
ANSWER spokesman Tony Murphy says that unlike the '60s, today's protests aren't student-driven. "We want people to bring families and kids. That's our approach," he says.
Merrill Chapman, an aspiring author and wife of a union organizer in Charleston, S.C., has never been involved in peace activities but is trying to organize a vanload of people to go to Washington to protest on Oct. 26.
"We're in a very quiet town, very conservative," says Chapman, 35. "If you don't hang the right number of flags you're just un-American. But I kept hearing things that didn't ring true. The president says Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. OK, so do we. So do other nations.
"Why now? It doesn't make sense. My stepson doesn't need to die for that. It makes me mad."
Contributing: Mary Beth Marklein
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