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This isn’t Viet Nam.
By Tom | October 1, 2007
I’ve had the great good fortune to grow up and live through the last half of the 20th century and now part of the 21st.
That means that I’ve seen, and taken part in the discussion about, both Vietnam and present day Iraq. I participated in neither, in the sense of being part of the U.S. military. When Vietnam was raging in 1970 I was in college. I could have been drafted, but wasn’t. I didn’t enlist but did nothing to avoid the draft other than apply for the student deferment to which I was entitled under the law. It was granted and by the time I was again eligible to be drafted, there was a lottery and I wasn’t called. All of this is important to say because I want it to be clear that I had no particular strong feelings about military service, one way or the other. I didn’t serve, but had circumstances been slightly different I would have served to the best of my ability without regret.
I did oppose the war in Vietnam as I oppose this war in Iraq. I see the similarities between the two conflicts. The biggest similarity is that both were/are an attempt to use the military to achieve what were essentially political ends. Didn’t work in the 60s and 70s. Isn’t working now.
The object of this post is to talk about the differences I see between Vietnam and Iraq. And the differences lie mainly in my experience of both and more particularly, of the opposition to both.
In the opposition to the war in Vietnam, it was mainly students and other young people who drove the movement, though there were outspoken adults and even some members of Congress. As students, we marched, wrote and sang songs of protest, held rallies, risked injury (and, alas, even death). We shut down universities and generally raised hell.
In the spring of 1970, when Nixon invaded Cambodia and four students were shot dead at Kent State University, I was attending classes just a hundred or so miles away at Ohio State. The National Guard soldiers who faced our protest were from the same organization, under the same governor as those who fired at Kent. Still we protested and closed the school in the process.
I see so little of that kind of action today, especially among young people, and I think I know why — at least partly.
We were starved for reliable information, then.
There were three television networks, a handfull of prominent newspapers, and little else. And these outlets reported what was going on from an establishment point of view, though with somewhat more skepticism than today. To find out more, to find out what was not being reported, I had to get out and get with people, attend rallies, march and talk and listen.
Today that’s not necessary. I can sit on a beach in North Carolina and learn more in a few minutes of reading on a computer screen that I ever knew about Vietnam, even with the personal contacts I developed that included returned veterans.
The 24-hours news cycle and cable news and such has helped change the flow of information, but this medium — the Internet and blogs, especially — have given me access to more information than any one person can hold or digest. That access also has removed one of the prime reasons for getting out and demonstrating against this war — simply to know what’s going on.
Topics: Iraq, Blogging, Politics |
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