US - Why the anti-war movement is failing

John Bunzel writing in the San Franciso Chronicle thinks he knows.

One thing he fails to mention, indeed MSM always fail to mention, is that many more people today are aware that the anti-war movement is led by Communisits.

Here's what Bunzel thinks.

The question is why.

Why have so few taken to the streets to protest the increasingly unpopular and seemingly endless war in Iraq? As The Chronicle asked in a front-page story last month, why have so few "new converts" failed to speak out and "tell someone besides pollsters that the country needs to change course"?

The easiest and most obvious answer is that today, with a volunteer Army, 18-year-olds do not have to worry about being drafted.

There are, of course, many students on college campuses who oppose the war in Iraq. But for most students, the war is an abstract concept seen only on the news. As one UC Berkeley student put it, "The war hasn't hit home for them. Until their brother dies, they don't care." Why protest something that doesn't affect you?

Bunzel doesn't seem to think much of American youth's committment to their values or their courage, does he? Basically he's saying the main reason they protested the Vietnam war was because they were afraid of going to war and not against war per se.

Is that the reason so few protest today? How does that explain the world wide failure of the anti-war movement? Are there other reasons?

In a sign that Bunzel "gets it" about Iraq, he has this to say.

Another reason is that Iraq is not Vietnam.

"The Vietnamese did not carry out suicide attacks on their own people," the New York Times columnist David Brooks has pointed out, "or go around the world rioting over cartoons or fly planes into skyscrapers." The war in Iraq has an element of "existential menace" that Vietnam did not have.

And in the case of Iraq, Ho Chi Min is in jail, there's no civil war, the US casualty rate is a tiny fraction of Vietnam's and we have the internet to counter the lies of the left wing media. We also now know, that it was the left in colusion with the Communists and aided by the left wing media, that cost us Vietnam. Today's youth are not so easily fooled.

Bunzel began by telling us that the main reason for the failure of todays anti-war movement, is because "18 year-olds do not have to worry about being drafted." He ends up with a totally different conclusion from where he started.

As events unfold, it may turn out that Iraqis will tell us whether to stay or go, and when. But we should not forget that a majority of Americans were sympathetic to the goal, and always understood the value, of helping Iraqis fight for a democratizing outcome. [Except for Democrats .ed]

This is perhaps one of the strongest reasons why a big, angry anti-war movement has not taken to the streets by the hundreds of thousands.

It took him awhile, but in the end, Bunzel gets it right.

Someone needs to tell him that the newly elected government of Iraq has asked us to stay.
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