BY WILL GLOVINSKY

In print | Published January 22, 2009

Like many children of baby boomers, I heard stories growing up about the fear and anger that accompanied the Vietnam War. My mom showed my brothers and me her cousin’s name etched on the Maya Lin memorial, my dad would explain draft lotteries to us and my uncle would relate how he planned to become stateless and sail around the world if called upon to serve.

As the Bush era draws to a close, I have wondered how I might explain these troubled years of war and fear to a younger generation. And then I realized what a boring story it would be. At best I could tell of some anti-war marches in 2003 before the invasion of Iraq, and then more to protest the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. (That time it was personal; they had invaded our turf, and I remember an energy in those marches that my other experiences never matched.)

On the second anniversary of the start of the war, I was in tenth grade and posters everywhere urged kids to skip school to attend a march. Predictably, that protest was wildly popular, and legions of adolescents turned out in the name of missing Chemistry. We marched from Union Square to 42nd Street as teenagers slyly tipped dubious-looking water bottles to their mouths. Eventually people started making out, which you might imagine slowed things down.

And that was it. Anti-war sentiment flared once in a while, but it seemed to become a little passé. Where young adults congregated there was no talk of the war. In concert venues, high school choruses sang ironic songs about emotions; in Greenwich Village cafés, the big deal was fair trade coffee. Poetry clubs beat out feats of aesthetic innovation largely devoid of any political message. I suppose I can’t blame my generation for failing to care too much. Without the carnal fear of the draft, without higher taxes, without rationing or sacrifice of any kind, life for a middle class non-military family was more or less hunky dory until perhaps when the economy nose-dived in 2008.

But it is that disconnect—between the horror and shame of the Bush years and the relative comfort that most people enjoyed—that is so troubling. Like an animal without a nervous system, Americans could enjoy life as normal while an administration misled them into a war, while improvised explosive devices ripped through US soldiers, while hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed.

At best, we maintained a serious but removed trepidation for our country, for its principles and soldiers. But as for storytelling, I think my grandkids would shush me if I sat them down on my knee and explained how concerned I was about habeas corpus in aught-six.

Cultural critics, especially those on the right, relish each chance to point out that our generation is less radical than our parents were. They tell us that we are more interested in making money than changing the world, more invested in the pomp of bouquets than the power of flowers. Maybe that helps explain our muffled response to the Iraq war. But perhaps we are less active on behalf of our country because we have less of a stake in it; that is, our necks are safe no matter how many wars we start. A worthwhile question to ponder is how much damage to the United States—both from enemies and from ourselves—might have been averted during the Bush years if the draft were still in effect.

Bush might have started the Iraq War, but he certainly wouldn’t have been able to continue it as long as he did or wage it with the singular authority he insisted was his executive power. Imagine how vocal congressmen would be if they were receiving thousands of calls per day from young constituents who didn’t want to die in an unjustified war. I realize it is both odd and futile to hope for something as terrible and politically unpopular as a draft, but the pain of conscription might have grounded the nation in the grim realities of war and unsaddled a whole lot sooner the swaggering cowboy who led the charge.

Or, a more optimistic prognosis is that we are simply more interested in voting than marching, as evidenced by the millions of young people who registered in order to cast ballots for Obama and the multitudes who volunteered in his campaign. The fervor of the President’s young supporters holds testament to, among other things, their faith in the system. For baby boomers, however, that modicum of trust disappeared in 1968 with the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the riots at the Democratic National Convention, and the fact that anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy didn’t win the nomination.

So here’s to the Bush years—we’re glad they’re gone.

Will is a first-year. He can be reached at wglovin1@swarthmore.edu.

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