Can you stand one further Iraq-Vietnam comparison?  They’re tiring, I know, but Iraq is tiring, Vietnam was tiring – exhausting.  The comparisons keep returning to mind perhaps because I keep trying to make sense of Iraq and there’s no sense to be made, just as there was none in Vietnam.  This comparison isn’t about Iraq per se and it might not even be a comparison; it’s a contrast.

There has been no military draft in the Iraq war, we just keep sending the same soldiers back over and over again until our military is now broken.  Several pundits have identified the absence of a draft as the reason for the absence of a mainstream anti-war movement.  “If there was a draft,” the sages of conventional wisdom say “if the sons and daughters of the middle class were being shipped off to Iraq, then you’d have people marching in the streets and the war would be over in a few months.”

Maybe, maybe not.  It’s a nice thought, comforting even, especially if we’re sitting at home.  Why bother going down to the federal building and joining the vigil and holding a placard as cars drive by and no one seems to care, or get on a bus for one of those tedious trips to Washington, DC?  So much easier to stay home and click through the next online petition from MoveOn.  No point in going anywhere, nothing’s going to change unless there’s a draft and that’s not going to happen.  I guess the politicians outwitted us this time, right?

How about this for a comparison?  Richard M. Nixon and George W. Bush.  Two men who mistook the Oval Office for a throne room, who believe “If the president does it, it’s not illegal,” who appointed shameless felons to the office of attorney general.  I could go on.

I remember Watergate.  There was marching in the streets then, too.  I remember watching the evening news and seeing crowds of angry citizens outside the White House fence, waving homemade signs that said, “Jail 2 the Chief.”  Mr. Nixon was subverting the Constitution, damaging our institutions and ignoring the voices of citizens.  People were angry, perhaps I said that.

See any 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue sidewalk protests on the news lately?  Why not?  Lack of a draft?  Watergate drafted no one.

Maybe it was momentum.  Maybe those protesters, inspired by anti-draft, anti-war fervor, felt they were responsible for ending American involvement in the Vietnam war (although we weren’t yet all the way out).

Perhaps it was the civil right s movement, which preceded Vietnam, although no one was drafted either by Jim Crow segregationists or the Freedom Riders.

So what’s the difference between then and now?  What’s to compare or contrast?  The themes that ran from civil rights through the anti-war protests and into Watergate were the capacity of the public to be shocked when our nation failed to live up to ideals upon which it was founded, the belief that concerned citizens acting in concert can make a difference and the hope that most of out fellow citizens share our civic ideals and will join the call for change when they are sufficiently informed.

We can – and should – lament the sorry state of leadership – political, religious and social – in America today, but this is not about leadership, it’s about citizenship.  In three decades we have somehow devolved from citizens to taxpayers, from participants to spectators, from active creators of our fate to passive victims of forces we think are beyond our control.

The good news is that we are not beyond redemption, we can still revive our democracy.  The bad news is that very hard times are just ahead and if we fail to act now, we may lose the ability to do so.

© Mark Floegel, 2007