When Will Young Americans Get Angry About the War?
The last major anti-war demonstration, more than a year ago in Washington, was remarkably tame. There were the obligatory celebrity appearances — Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon — but nothing occurred that might make President Bush toss in his sleep, nothing like during the darkest days of the Vietnam War, when students poured into the streets across the country demanding, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”
American students have an obligation to be outraged about the war in Iraq — not just disapproving of it. We need to make this administration and the remaining pro-war lawmakers start to worry.
Young people need to get involved — and soon. We must organize protests. We must write letters to the editor. Most important, we must vote for a president who will acknowledge and act upon our anti-war sentiment. We have wavered too long on the fringe of electoral irrelevance, and 2008 is the year to fix this problem.
The grim benchmark of 4,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq came and went here without notable consternation. I asked another student recently whether he had heard about the new death toll. His reply: “Has it really been that many?”
‘War in abstractions’
I have begun to understand that we deal with this war in abstractions. We see Iraq as a distant problem, and it’s difficult to summon outrage because we have not been asked to sacrifice anything. Is it possible to summon deep-rooted anger for a war for which we were never asked to sacrifice anything? I continue to hope that it is.
It occurred to me last month, on my 18th birthday, that the soldiers dying in Iraq are my age. They are college-aged, anxiety-filled kids. Kids — members of my generation — are dying in Iraq.
Kurt Vonnegut was right, I finally realize. War is a children’s crusade.
