NYT deputy editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal just doesn’t understand why more college kids aren’t getting out and protesting the war, like they did in the good old 1960s. The backdrop for these reflections is a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young concert he recently attended.
If people like Rosenthal weren’t so nostalgic for their anti-war glory days, maybe they would wake up and see that Iraq ain’t Vietnam, the primary difference being that the Vietnamese did not want to follow us back to the United States and kill as many of us as possible.
UPDATE: Yes, I realize, as many of you have written in to point out, that the reason more college students aren’t protesting the war is that there isn’t a draft. Rosenthal acknowledges this in his piece. My point is that a lot (thankfully not all) of these old anti-Vietnam-war types are so nostalgic for their beloved ’60s, they see everything through the prism of their era. It prevents them from seeing the vital differences between this war and that one — the biggest one, as I said, being that the war in Iraq is part of an existential war against radical Islamic terrorists who want us dead.