George McGovern, An Improbable Icon Of Anti-War Movement : It's All Politics. Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern talks about the bombs being used in Vietnam at a $250-a-person fundraising dinner in Los Angeles on Sept. 27, 1972.
AP hide caption itoggle caption AP Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern talks about the bombs being used in Vietnam at a $250-a-person fundraising dinner in Los Angeles on Sept. 27, 1972. If George McGovern often seemed miscast as a presidential candidate, he was at least as improbable as an icon of the anti-war movement. The Vietnam War gave birth to an opposition movement unlike any America had seen in its previous wars. McGovern himself was none of these things. He was, at the time of his presidential nomination, a 50-year-old two-term senator from South Dakota, a family man and the son of a small-town Methodist minister. That made him part of American history, a milestone in an era of social and political change that included the transformation of the Democratic Party itself. Loss To Nixon. The antiwar movement today versus the 1960s. Will it gain traction?
(15-Feb-03) The generation change that's occurred in America in the last few years guarantees that the anti-war movement will not gain traction in America. There may be an "anti-Bush" movement, and Bush may be defeated in 2004, but not an antiwar movement: There'll be no public demand to withdraw from the War on Terror the way there once was a demand to withdraw from the Vietnam War. That doesn't mean that there won't be antiwar demonstrations, even large antiwar demonstrations.
Whatever Happened To The Anti-War Movement? A crowd of demonstrators gather at the Washington Monument for a rally to protest the Vietnam War on Nov. 15, 1969.
AP hide caption itoggle caption AP The United States is knee-deep in at least three international military conflicts at the moment — in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. American lives are being lost. Innocent civilians are being killed. At least since the stormy 1960s, whenever America has gotten involved in deadly combat on foreign soil, large crowds of peace-promoting citizens have gathered in Washington and other cities to demonstrate against war. It happened in 2007, when tens of thousands congregated on the National Mall and heard actors Sean Penn, Jane Fonda and Danny Glover speak out against President George W.
Now, despite the U.S. military's concurrent and costly entanglements, the National Mall is quiet and the streets of Washington are pretty much protester-free. Vietnam War Protests - Vietnam War. The launch of the Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese communist troops in January 1968, and its success against U.S. and South Vietnamese troops, sent waves of shock and discontent across the home front and sparked the most intense period of anti-war protests to date.
By early February 1968, a Gallup poll showed only 35 percent of the population approved of Johnson’s handling of the war and a full 50 percent disapproved (the rest had no opinion). Joining the anti-war demonstrations by this time were members of the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War, many of whom were in wheelchairs and on crutches. The sight of these men on television throwing away the medals they had won during the war did much to win people over to the anti-war cause. After many New Hampshire primary voters rallied behind the anti-war Democrat Eugene McCarthy, Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. The Antiwar Movement. Following Richard Nixon's announcement that U.S. troops would be sent into Cambodia, protests began on college campuses throughout the nation.
At Kent State University in Ohio, four demonstrators were killed by shots fired by the Ohio National Guard. Of all the lessons learned from Vietnam, one rings louder than all the rest — it is impossible to win a long, protracted war without popular support. When the war in Vietnam began, many Americans believed that defending South Vietnam from communist aggression was in the national interest. Communism was threatening free governments across the globe. Any sign of non-intervention from the United States might encourage revolutions elsewhere. As the war dragged on, more and more Americans grew weary of mounting casualties and escalating costs. Peace movement leaders opposed the war on moral and economic grounds. Comment: Prospects for an anti-war/solidarity movement in Ukraine and Russia. Anti-war protest in Chernivtsi, western Ukraine, July 23, 2014.
Signs read, "Bring our children back! " and "Stop the bloodshed! " Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal has published various left viewpoints on the political situation in Ukraine. Israel's Anti-War Activists Feel Increasingly Threatened. For Jewish Israelis, and even more so for Palestinians inside Israel, opposing war is a dangerous act.
With 86 percent of Israelis opposed to a ceasefire, the overwhelming public attitude leaves anti-war activists in a precarious position. One woman shouting in a pro-war counter-demonstration inadvertently described the tolerance for dissent during times of conflict: "You can protest after the war, but not during it! " Michael Sappir, 26, a Jewish Israeli member of Da'am, an Arab-Jewish socialist party, told VICE News: "Even though it's normally scary to publicly voice radical leftist positions in Israeli society, now there is a sense that everyone is united against you. "