Where Did the Antiwar Movement Go?

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:



Where Did the Antiwar Movement Go?
War, Sunny Side Up, and the Summer of Slaughter (Vietnam and Today)

By Tom Engelhardt


Let me tell you a story about a moment in my life I’m not likely to forget even if, with the passage of years, so much around it has grown fuzzy. It involves a broken-down TV, movies from my childhood, and a war that only seemed to come closer as time passed.

My best guess: it was the summer of 1969. I had dropped out of graduate school where I had been studying to become a China scholar and was then working as a “movement” printer -- that is, in a print shop that produced radical literature, strike posters, and other materials for activists. It was, of course, “the Sixties,” though I didn’t know it then. Still, I had somehow been swept into a new world remarkably unrelated to my expected life trajectory -- and a large part of the reason for that was the Vietnam War.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t particularly early to protest it. I think I signed my first antiwar petition in 1965 while still in college, but as late as 1968 -- people forget the confusion of that era -- while I had become firmly antiwar, I still wanted to serve my country abroad. Being a diplomat had been a dream of mine, the kind of citizenly duty I had been taught to admire, and the urge to act in such a fashion, to be of service, was deeply embedded in me. (That I was already doing so in protesting the grim war my government was prosecuting in Southeast Asia didn’t cross my mind.) I actually applied to the State Department, but it turned out to have no dreams of Tom Engelhardt. On the other hand, the U.S. Information Agency, a propaganda outfit, couldn’t have been more interested.

Only one problem: they weren’t about to guarantee that they wouldn’t send a guy who had studied Chinese, knew something of Asia, and could read French to Saigon. However, by the time they had vetted me -- it took government-issue months and months to do so -- I had grown far angrier about the war, so when they offered me a job, I didn’t think twice about saying no.

.....(snip).....

For the spectacle of slaughter itself continued, even if few in this country were tuning in. Don’t consider it a fluke that the war culture hero of the period -- on the bestseller lists and in Hollywood -- was an American sniper whose claim to fame was that he had created his own singular body count: 160 “confirmed” dead Iraqis. Skip the unknown number of casualties of every sort (ranging from Iraq Body Count’s 219,000 up to a million dead) that resulted from the invasion of Iraq and the chaos of the occupation that followed or the tens of thousands of civilian dead in Afghanistan (some at the hands of the Taliban and their roadside bombs, some thanks to U.S. efforts). Consider instead the slaughter that can be connected to this country’s much-vaunted “precision” air weaponry, which -- so the claim has gone -- can strike without causing what’s politely termed significant “collateral damage.” ................(more)

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176034/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_what_it_means_when_you_kill_people_on_the_other_side_of_the_planet_and_no_one_notices/

[DonViejo]

1. The draft was ended and there went the anti-war movement.

[AuntPatsy]

2. Good summary....

[DaGoogler21]

3. From the article and relating to today.

Last edited Wed Aug 12, 2015, 01:28 PM - Edit history (1)

The Spectacle of Slaughter Updated

In 2015, the spectacle of slaughter is still with us. These days, however, few Americans have that sense that it might be happening right down the street. War is no longer a part of our collective lives. It’s been professionalized and outsourced. And here’s the wonder of it all: since 9/11, this country has engaged in a military-first foreign policy across much of the Greater Middle East and northern Africa, launching an unending string of failed wars, conflicts, raids, kidnappings, acts of torture, and drone assassination programs, and yet Americans have remained remarkably unengaged with any of it.





Just curious......why doesn't DU have an anti-war forum?

[dougolat]

4. The leash on media is a factor, too. ..nt

[Maedhros]

5. In retrospect, the recent anti-war movement seems to have been more anti-Bush

than anti-War. Once Obama became the instigator of the illegal wars, all criticism stopped.

[Dems to Win]

6. I marched and marched in the lead up to the Iraq War, a dozen times

There were huge anti-war protests. There were big protests in the run up to the vote for the IWR.

We couldn't even convince Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and John Kerry to vote NO on war, among others.

Pretty much convinced me that protest marches are worthless. I'm still anti-war, but I am aware that there is not much of an anti-war movement. It seems too hopeless for anyone to bother, I guess.

[dougolat]

7. In the 60's protests were reported, often with shock and dismay

but the pre-Iraq invasion protests (some of which were HUGE, and world-wide) ? ..mere whispers, no photo array, no interviews, no discussion, no follow-up.
The leash, at work.

[zipplewrath]

9. Never was a movement

In all actuality, there never was a "peace" movement. There was an anti-Vietnam war movement. The closest we've probably ever come was the isolationist movement of the 1930's and that was really more of a "not europe again" movement.

An anti-war/peace movement would offer something other than war, not just oppose war. It would have the think tanks and college degrees and academies and the underlying philosophical underpinnings that the warriors have.

[Lodestar]

10. A lot of people came out to protest the Iraq war but got little coverage.

And if the Occupy movement is any indication... it seems the focus shifted to
perhaps the real culprits..... the small elite 1% who are pulling all the strings.