Miles Hall

Purpose and Process

The way that we decide who we send to war is what decides the legacy of our nation’s conflicts. Since Vietnam, the United States has maintained an all-volunteer army, which represents a monumental shift away from the inevitably problematic Selective Service System. This shift correlates with a lack of protest and opposition to our government’s wars. After all, why should the American citizen care if they are at no risk? We have entered a period where we are complacent to sit idly by and remain willfully ignorant of our nation’s wars while other citizens fight in them.

Back in the 1970s, then-president Richard Nixon saw the abolishment of the draft as a tool to be used against Anti-War protestors. Our all-volunteer army of today is not without its own faults, and anti-war protests have certainly not gone away. I can’t help but ask—how has anti-war protesting evolved over time, now that the draft has been abolished? To answer my question, I have assembled a View-Master slide to help us peer into protests from both the Vietnam War and the Global War on Terror. A View-Master slide supports seven images, so each one will have to hold great significance.

It is important to understand why America entered these wars to understand protests. During the beginning of the Vietnam War, public sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of the war. The United States government cultivated a distrust in the communist government of North Vietnam, culminating in the Tonkin Gulf incident which provoked the beginning of the conflict. I will be using an image of then-president Lyndon B. Johnson’s address to the United States in my viewfinder to capture the reasoning that Americans had for why we entered the war.

While the United States’ reasoning for engaging Vietnam was shaky at best, her reasoning for engaging Al-Qaeda could not have been sounder. Immediately following the September 11th terrorist attacks, the United States saw a massive surge in patriotism and trust in her government. It is clear from then-president George W. Bush’s address to the nation following the attacks that he viewed the United States as a “beacon of hope” and her enemies as “the axis of evil”. Strong words, and a strong image that will be included in the View-Master.

Immediately after these events troops were rushed to their respective war zones. In order to communicate the timeline of these wars, the View-Master will include slides showing the transport of soldiers. Here, we see United States troops being airlifted into an Afghanistan combat zone in early 2010. Likewise, here we can see some of the first American troops setting foot in Vietnam after touching down in a transport aircraft.

The public response to both wars was similar at first—unanimous support for US involvement. However, as the wars went on, that support declined, rapidly tanking public support for prominent politicians. Years into the Vietnam War, there was overwhelming public sentiment that the war needed to end, largely spurred on by fears among young Americans that they might be drafted. This image of students protesting is especially powerful because of the fact that it was these exact young men who would be facing the draft.

Conversely, in modern times there has been far less opposition to the war in Afghanistan. In 2012, voters identified “terrorism” as the 9th most important issue for American citizens, indicating a clear lack of popular interest in the Global War on Terror. Furthermore, modern articles referencing the history of American anti-war protests often stop around the 1990s, owing to the clear lack of common investment in our nation’s conflicts. Perhaps politicians would feel more pressure to meaningfully address concerns about their foreign policy if Americans would pressure them about it. My View-Master will demonstrate this by contrasting two images: one of Lyndon B. Johnson being pressured about the Vietnam War at home and one of Barack Obama relaxing with his family during an offensive in Afghanistan.

Not all of the sources that I have elected to use for this project are literary. When speaking with Vietnam veterans, they have made it clear to me that they feel the lack of a draft is responsible for this recent disinterest in America’s conflicts. The draft, the veterans claimed, was what invigorated America’s youth to protest and remain informed about the Vietnam war. A critical difference between yesterday’s Vietnam and today’s War on Terror is that lack of a draft: American citizens can easily dissociate from a war on foreign shores they will never be called to fight in.

Furthermore, these veterans shared that they believed the draft put sensible people in the military. Mike shared that he was grateful that the draft put “fools like me” into the military, because he believed that his nonviolent attitude positively impacted the culture of his fellow soldiers. He also shared that he believes modern military culture has become focused on the idea of “warriors” and on overwhelming force, which hurts America’s ability to resolve conflicts in the long term.

The draft has historically been looked back on as a disgrace to our nation. But I bid you, please think of what we have given up by building a military devoid of common citizens. Please think of the effects of placing our people in a bubble, dissociated from our nation’s conflicts. And most importantly, remember that it is your privilege, your right, and your obligation to participate in America’s democracy. It is your responsibility to care about America’s conflicts, even if you are lucky enough to never have to imagine serving on the front lines.