For all the evidence in the polls that a majority of Americans now oppose the war in Iraq, they have not spilled out into the streets in huge numbers as they did in the late 1960s during the Vietnam War.
There are some obvious explanations. They include the absence of a military draft, many fewer American deaths (nearly 3,700 compared with 55,000 in Vietnam), and no civil rights and cultural revolutions ofthe sort that also churned the public temper in that earlier time.
Another reason, however, may be that the current anti-war sentiment has lacked a truly major voice provided in the late 1960s by such men as Sens. Eugene J. McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, both presidential candidates, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. These men and others gave faces and stature to the protest against that earlier, failed military adventure.
Although all of the current crop of Democratic presidential aspirants for 2008 are now outspokenly against the Iraq war, four of the eight voted for the 2002 congressional resolution that authorized President Bush to use force against Saddam Hussein.
Of the other four, only one ? Rep. Dennis Kucinich ? was in Congress at the time, and although he voted against the resolution and has been among the most vocal critics of the war ever since, he has so far been regarded generally as a political curio. His physical stature and boyish manner, as well as his open self-promotion, work against him, as well as his categorical demand for immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops, which does not yet have broad public support.
Then there is Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq and has made a personal crusade of opposing the war and particularly the man who launched it, by famously conducting sit-ins outside President Bush?s Texas ranch.
She has also been a relentless presence at many other anti-war protests, her stridency drawing as much protest against herself as she dishes out. Lately, she has announced she will challenge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her House seat in San Francisco, a fool?s errand considering Pelosi?s personal popularity there and the staunch liberalism of the district.
Sheehan?s challenge apparently is based on dissatisfaction with Pelosi within the anti-war movement for failure so far to end the war in Iraq. The speaker has pushed legislation seekingto impose timetables and conditions for U.S. withdrawal that were vetoed by Bush. Others not as militant as Sheehan see Pelosi as a well-placed ally, and in any event, Sheehan?s challenge can be seen as personal ambition, not the best posture for the leader of a crusade.
Perhaps no critic of the war has sufficient national stature to fan the still-smoldering combustion of a public outpouring into the streets akin to the one that witnessed war-weary President Lyndon B. Johnson?s decision in late March of 1968 not to seek re-election.
That decision failed to bring the Vietnam War to an end, but Johnson?s White House successor, Richard M. Nixon, eventually did begin a wind-down of American forces with his policy of “Vietnamization” ? turning over more of the war to the South Vietnamese.
In the last years of LBJ?s presidency and into Nixon?s, the fires of the civil rights and Black Power movements, along with the cultural revolution of generational change, combined to give political muscle to street protest around the country.
Nothing approaching that phenomenon has accompanied the protest against the Iraq war at home, nor any clearly identifiable political leader to build it into a comparable force to the one that emerged in the late 1960s. Of the Democratic presidential contenders running strongly in the polls, Sen. Barack Obama may be best positioned to assume that role, in light of his voiced opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2002, as he ran for his Senate seat.
Obama has been conspicuously reiterating that early opposition in direct challenge to Sen. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner in the polls who voted for the use-of-force resolution and has steadfastly declined to apologize for that vote. His early anti-war vote could be his best talking point in the months to come.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
