The anti-Vietnam War protests and the protests against the war in Gaza: Compare and (mostly) contrast.
This New York Times article sees shades of the anti-Vietnam War movement in campus protests against the war in Gaza. However, the Times cautions that “it is too early to know whether the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will define this generation, as opposition to the Vietnam War did for many young people more than a half century ago.”
Really? I think we can already conclude that this outcome is extremely unlikely.
Why? Because the two wars are so vastly different.
Sure, there are a few similarities. Both are wars. Both involve a strong military power with a big advantage in fire power against a less imposing force.
In both cases, the war was a result of aggression by the less imposing party (Hamas’ mass terrorist attack on Southern Israel and the effort by the Vietcong and North Vietnam to topple the internationally recognized government of South Vietnam). In both cases, the radical left took the side of the less imposing (but aggressor) party in large part because the more powerful side was “Western” and (in the left’s telling) “white,” while the aggressors were “of color” and fighting “the West.”
But the differences between the two wars far outweigh the similarities. And they do so in ways that make it highly unlikely that opposition to Israel will “define” a generation of leftists, or even play much of a role for the left once the war ends.
One obvious difference — acknowledged by the Times — is “the terrorist attack by Hamas that set this war in motion, for which there is nothing comparable in Vietnam.” As one Vietnam-era radical (who went on to become Connecticut’s Secretary of State) told the times, Israel is fighting for its existence after a terrorist attack that killed 1,200 citizens. In Vietnam, the U.S. was not.
But the most important difference between the wars for purposes of assessing impact on American politics is this: No American soldiers are leaving home to fight in Gaza, much less dying there. Nor is anyone being drafted because of the war. The draft no longer exists.
It was, of course, the large number of deaths of Americans, along with fear of being drafted, that powered the anti-Vietnam War movement.
The other, related factor driving that movement was the fact that the war dragged on for a decade after America became deeply involved in the fighting. Americans never thought we were winning the war, and eventually came to believe we were losing it. Indeed, to many it didn’t even seem like the U.S. was fighting to win.
The war in Gaza will likely be over in 2024 — probably in the first half of the year, if not sooner. And it almost certainly will end in an Israeli victory. Israel is fighting to win.
Given the lack of direct American involvement and what’s almost sure to be the relatively short duration of the major conflict in Gaza, it’s very difficult to see how the Israel-Hamas war can yield anything remotely approaching the impact on America’s psyche and politics of the Vietnam War.
We already see how the differences between the two wars are producing differences in the two sets of protests. In 1969, approximately half a million protesters marched in Washington against the war in Vietnam. Two years later, another march on Washington attracted about the same number of protesters, according to this source.
Protests in New York City against the war in Gaza are reportedly drawing “hundreds” of people or, in one case, around 1,500. This despite the fact that, as the Times points out, it’s much easier to organize a mass protest these days, given the existence of cellphones and social media.
The major anti-Vietnam War protests were like hurricanes. So far, the anti-Israel protests, though disruptive, feel more like spitting into the wind.
In fact, by far the biggest rally of relevance to the Israel-Hamas conflict was a pro-Israel march in Washington. The estimated crowd for that event was 200,000-290,000.
I haven’t seen reports on the racial and ethnic composition of the pro-Palestinian protesters. However, the Times says the protesters are mostly people “of color.” For what it’s worth, most of the folks I see in images of these protests look like they’re from the Middle East.
By contrast, the marches against the Vietnam War that I attended, though populated mostly by whites, “looked like” the college student population of America at that time.
The Times quotes a professor who predicts that support for Palestinians among the young “is going to last.” “I think it’s one of those generational shifts,” he adds.
He’s right about this, I’m pretty sure, which is why I’ve said that Israel cannot count on U.S. support for very much longer. This would have been the case even without the war in Gaza, but that war has very probably accelerated the “generational shift.”
However, the notion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will “define a generation of Americans as opposition to the Vietnam War did more than a half century ago” seems fanciful.
Maybe that notion is just wishful thinking. The left hates Israel and would like to believe that this hatred can be the rallying cause behind an invigorated leftist movement. And with the BLM movement sputtering and Americans tiring of identity politics, the left may sense the need for such a cause.
I generally abstain from making predictions for the new year. Yet, I’m willing to predict that by the middle of 2024, the Palestinians will return to the back pages of the American left’s playbook.
The libtard zombies will shift back to their climate change agenda within 2 months.