"Hell no! We won't Go" is one of the memorable (or, for some disturbing) shouts uttered by many young people during the Viet Nam war- a war as unpopular as the current Iraq war. The difference was then that the cause was anti-Communism and the need to prop up a regime in South Vietnam that was as corrupt as any but was anti-Communist. John F. Kennedy was supposed to have said about that government: "They're bastards. But they're out bastards!" One needs to examine why there was so much unrest and opposition to the war among young, mostly college-level or college-educated Americans. One reason, of course, was that there was a draft. Young men were forced, by lottery to go into the armed forces to fight a war tens of thousands of miles from home, against an enemy who used military tactics not taught at West Point, and a war where returning veterans painted a terrifying picture about jungle conditions and the viciousness of the Viet Cong and all North Vietnamese and their Communist Chinese and Russian allies.
One problem that turned much public opinion against student unrest was that those who protested the war were seen as the "privileged"- those able to avoid military service while others, usually thought of as "middle America" went and many ended killed or wounded. Because of such unrest, some freedoms seemed to be curtailed: "Probably one of the most detrimental results of the 60s and 70s student activist era was the institutionalizing of campus activism....Student activism has been boxed in and so most students wouldn't even imagine some of the most effective actions to make change on their campuses" (Hill 2008 para. 10). Since Viet Nam, even with the current gulf of opinions about the War on Terror there have been no noticeable student unrest and uprisings such as occurred in the 1960s and '70s. There is no doubt in retrospect that part of this uprising was due to fear: fear of having to fight in some jungle and die,...