April 29, 2007 to May 6, 2007
Protests and the Iraq War
Protests and the Iraq War-BECKER
To me, the absence of a military draft is the most important factor behind the minimal number of violent protests against the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq. Explicit riots over the draft already occurred in New York City during the Civil War soon after the North instituted the draft in 1863. These riots were mainly by young working class men who could not afford to buy a substitute, a system in effect at that time. So it is no stretch to claim that violent riots have occurred in the United States when unpopular wars are combined with a draft.
Recall that President Nixon and many other politicians during the Vietnam War felt that the drafting of young men to serve in the armed forces was partly responsible for the violent protests against the war. As a result, Nixon in 1969 set up the 15 members Commission on an All-Volunteer armed Force (Gates Commission) to look into whether an all-volunteer armed forces should replace the draft. Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan, and General William Westmoreland, who had commanded military forces in Vietnam until mid-1968, were all members of the Commission. Apparently largely due to the persuasive powers of Friedman, the Commission, while initially evenly divided between those in favor of and those opposed to the draft, came out in 1970 with a unanimous recommendation to end the draft. The draft was abolished in 1973, and protests largely vanished, although the war did not end until 1975.
Representative Charles Rangel of New York has proposed to reinstate the draft. He has claimed that President Bush would not have invaded Iraq had a universal draft been in place. I do not believe he is right, but I do believe the pressure to withdraw earlier would have been far greater if young men were being drafted in large numbers.
The war in Iraq is being fought only with volunteers for military and civilian service, although some members of the armed forces and the reserves would not have joined if they anticipated the war when they enlisted. The reliance solely on military volunteers means that "taxes" to fight the war are spread over all taxpayers, and are not concentrated on young people. Moreover, draftees are more costly in terms of the resources lost to other activities, and they are on the average less dedicated to the military than are volunteers.
When draftees, and those who volunteer mainly to escape the draft, make up a significant fraction of military personnel, much of the burden of a war falls on them, not on the average taxpayer. Even those who volunteered during the current war have shifted some of the burden of their service to taxpayers by demanding and receiving higher pay. Since most of those involved in violent protests in general, and wars in particular, are usually young males, is it any surprise that they are protesting much less during this war when they are paying a much smaller share of the cost than young men did during Vietnam?
I agree with Posner that the many fewer deaths from the Iraq war than from the Vietnam War have weakened the impetus to protest violently, despite the war's unpopularity, although the slightly over 3000 deaths have to be augmented by the many more serious injuries to military personnel to get a full measure of the personal cost of the war in Iraq (see my discussion of the cost of the Iraq war in the post on March 19, 2006). Still, I believe violent opposition to the war would have been far greater if many of those killed or seriously wounded had been draftees,.
My emphasis on the importance of the draft in sparking unrest during the Vietnam War may seem misplaced since most young men who took part in violent protests were college students. Until 1969 students usually had their military service deferred. However, students could anticipate being drafted when their education ended. Studies have shown that the number of students in colleges and universities expanded during the Vietnam War beyond the numbers expected in peacetime because some persons continued with their education only in order to escape, or delay, being drafted. Even if college students ended up avoiding the draft, they were being indirectly taxed if they only stayed in college to avoid that. They would have been attracted to protests in recognition of the indirect costs they were paying as a result of the draft.
An additional factor that encouraged protests by college students during the Vietnam era is that the returns to college were not high and were declining then for the typical student, not only for those in college to avoid the draft. The major change in this regard during the past 30 years has been the unprecedented increase in the monetary and other benefits of a college education (see my post on April 22). Since the 1970's, real earnings of young high school graduates hardly increased, if they did at all, while real earnings of high school graduates increased slowly. The only explosion in earnings has been among college graduates, especially of younger ones. With no risks of being drafted, and with a potentially large cost from reduced job opportunities if arrested for participating in violent protests, college students could lose a lot more now than during the Vietnam era by joining such protests.
Why No Violent Protests Against the Iraq War?--Posner
The war in Iraq is intensely unpopular, disfavored by a strong majority of Americans, and fiercely opposed by the far Left. The President is also highly unpopular. The situation thus resembles the situation with respect to the Vietnam war in 1968 after the Tet Offensive. So why are there no violent protests, as there were in 1968 and indeed until the United States withdrew its troops from Vietnam?
The obvious answer is that there is no longer a draft; all the U.S. soldiers in Iraq are volunteers. But I do not consider that a sufficient answer, apart from the facts that only about a third of the persons drafted during the period of the Vietnam war served in Vietnam and, more important, that there were abundant escape hatches for persons of draft age who wanted to avoid military service altogether. Most of these involved continued education, and protesters were drawn disproportionately from the educated class. What is more, many of the protesters were either women or too old for the draft.
Still another source of doubt that the draft was solely responsible for the scale and virulence of the Vietnam protests is that, partly because all our soldiers today are volunteers, they are more popular than soldiers in the Vietnam era were, and casualties among them therefore arouse even greater sympathy. Indeed the military as a whole is one of the most respected institutions in America tpdau, which was not true in the 1960s. Another puzzle is that although Lyndon Johnson was intensely unpopular with the Left, it was only on account of the war; he was a liberal in domestic policy. George Bush is unpopular with the Left in all respects, not just the war, and so one might think him a more attractive target for protesters.
Another possible explanation for the difference in public reaction is that U.S. casualties in Iraq are far lower than they were in Vietnam. Almost 15,000 U.S. troops were killed in action in Vietnam in 1968, whereas the annual death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq is currently only about 1,000 a year. However, there is much greater sensitivity to casualties now than there was in the earlier era. The very low U.S. death rates in the invasion of Afghanistan and in the two invasions of Iraq make the slightly more than 3,000 U.S. deaths in Iraq since the completion of the 2003 invasion seem shockingly high by comparison.
I believe that five factors are as or more important than the end of the draft or the lower casualties in explaining the absence of violent protests against the Iraq war. The first is that the opponents of the war in Iraq have the support of one of the two political parties. Lyndon Johnson was of course a Democrat, and the Republican Party did not oppose the war (the Democrats were divided). The Left knows that violent protests against the war would weaken Democratic Party opposition and the likelihood of a Democratic President's being elected in 2008. Moreover, they have less need to protest because they are aligned with a powerful political force. Stated differently, protests would have a modest incremental effect on ending our military involvement in Iraq, and perhaps even a negative effect.
Second, the opportunity costs of time are higher today than they were in the 1960s and early 1970s for potential protesters. This is partly because of higher wages, especially for educated people, and the fact that a higher percentage of women are employed. The greater competitiveness of the economy discourages people from taking risks with their careers by protesting. It discourages college students as well as the employed, because someone who gets the reputation in college of being a violent protester, or is suspended or simply gets very low grades because of the distraction of engaging in protest activities, will see his opportunities for a good job diminish.
Third, the great expansion of the electronic media, including the advent of blogs, gives people outlets to blow off steam that are much cheaper, in cost of time, than street demonstrations or acts of violence. The electronic media enable a message to be communicated to far more people than street demonstrations do, and at lower cost, so one expects substitution in favor of the media.
Fourth is a learning factor. The violent protests against the Vietnam war probably did not shorten the war, but instead helped Nixon become President.
All together, these four factors suggest that the costs of violent protests have risen, and the benefits fallen, since the 1960s; hence the lower level of protest today, despite the parallels between the protracted, seemingly stalemated, Iraq and Vietnam wars.
But there is a fifth factors, cultural rather than economic or easily expressed in economic terms: For many of the Vietnam war protesters, the war was a symbol of what they believed to be deeper and broader problems with the United States and the entire Western world. They thought the "system" rotten and entertained Utopian hopes of overthrowing it and substituting a socialist or anarchist paradise. This belief gave the war more resonance as a target. Partly because of the collapse of communism, partly because of greater prosperity, few Americans are hostile to the American system. Most blame the Iraq war on the incompetence of the Bush Administration rather than on some more pervasive social or political pathology. This tempers their anger and their willingness to take career risks by engaging in protests against the war.
Protests against the War in Iraq--Posner's Reply to Comments
There were many very interesting comments. Let me begin my response with a correction. I should not have described the Vietnam War protests as "violent." There was some violence, but my subject was not protests that were violent, but rather protests that took the form of street demonstrations,picketing, and marches (sit-ins, disruptive though rarely violent, would be intermediate between violent and completely peaceful protests), for my analysis shows why we have not seen many such protests against the Iraq War. I thank Lawrence Caroline for catching my mistake.
One comment raises the interesting question of the motivation to engage in a protest, given that the costs are borne by the individual protester, yet the benefits are diffuse. But that is true of much expressive activity, as when a person applauds at a concert, though realizing that the musicians can't hear his applause. Hence the more costly the expressive activity, the more effectively it communicates the depth of the protester's feeling. That is why street demonstrations are more likely to influence public opinion than comments on a blog; it is so cheap (in time, etc.) to post such a comment that the decision to do so conveys no information about the intensity of the belief that motivated the protest.
Another comment points out quite plausibly that one reason for the lower temperature of the current protests is that there is no sympathy for the enemy. In the Vietnam era a small but highly vocal number of Americans were sympathetic to communism, and a greater number mistakenly believed that Ho Chi Minh was not a real communist but rather was an agrarian reforrmer. Some Americans oppose the Iraq War because they consider preventive wars immoral, but most oppose it because they think it unwinnable--a waste of lives and money. Also, one plank in the opposition platform is that the Administration went to war not realizing how difficult it would be to end it. Well, it is very difficult to end it, so even opponents hesitate to press for an immediate withdrawal, as they would have done with respect to the Vietnam War.
I think too that there is some sense among opponents that President Bush will not withdraw from Iraq no matter what and that his successor will withdraw posthaste, so that the die is cast and protests will have no efficacy. But I do not agree with the commenter who suggested that opponents are pulling their punches because they want the U.S. to remain in Iraq in order to increase the punishment of Bush and the military!
I was very interested in the comments that suggest that the Soviet Union fomented many of the Vietnam War protests both here and abroad. That is a factor fortunately missing from the present situation.