Eight months ago, thousands of students at UCLA and around the
country staged dramatic rallies, protesting an American-led war in
Iraq before a single shot had been fired.
Fast-forward to today.
According to the Department of Defense, 397 U.S. troops have
died in Iraq since the war began on March 20. As the United States
continues to occupy Iraq, the death toll continues to climb.
One question remains: What happened to the anti-war students who
were so visible before the war had even started?
The answers are as diverse as the people who give them, with
many student leaders arguing that the movement is dormant but not
dead.
Other students aren’t so sure.
“People are looking ahead toward other problems,”
said fifth-year history student Edwin Castro, who said the focus
lately has been more on Korea and Bush’s foreign policy in
general.
“I just don’t think people are aware of (the
war),” said Narineh Barzegar, a fourth-year applied
mathematics student, who said the media doesn’t help her keep
up to date with what is going on overseas.
Whatever their reasons, most agree that student activism against
the war has decreased significantly in the aftermath of a crushing
military campaign.
About a year ago, action was the rule, not the exception.
Substantial opposition to Operation Iraqi Freedom rose months
before the war began, with hundreds of thousands from Washington,
D.C., to San Francisco marching in protest to American intervention
in Iraq.
The UCLA campus saw its share of anti-war sentiment, about two
weeks before the war began. On March 5, more than a thousand
students walked out of class and rallied in Bruin Plaza to protest
the war.
Since then, however, there have been few protests to speak of.
But student leaders say that just because activists have fallen out
of the spotlight doesn’t mean they have forgotten about the
war.
Yousef Tajsar, a member of the Peace and Justice Coalition, said
that although the efforts of student leaders aren’t as
visible as last year, he and others have continued to discuss ways
to deal with the more complex effects of the war.
“If you protest every week, there’s no point. I feel
we need to do some thinking and reflecting to deal with these
issues,” Tajsar said. He mentioned poor labor conditions and
a struggling economy as some of these effects.
Sophia Kozak, academic affairs commissioner for the
Undergraduate Students Association Council, agreed that the
movement has been less visible in recent months, but she sees a
different long-term future for activists.
“I think in order to sustain itself, (the protesting)
needs to develop into a movement against globalization and
imperialism,” Kozak said, adding there are clear connections
to operations in Iraq and global imperialism that the movement
needs to recognize.
This transition of ideas takes time and will require a lot of
education from student leaders, but by no means has student
interest died out, Kozak said.
Professors also acknowledge the quieting of the anti-war
movement and say the reasons for this suppression make
today’s movement very different from that of the Vietnam
era.
Sociology professor Cesar Ayala said one important difference is
the timing. People protested the war in Iraq months before it even
started, but there were years of soldiers dying before protests
against Vietnam even started.
Ayala said the problem with the anti-war movement now is that
soldiers are not dying in great numbers, so mobilizing against
establishing a stable government in Iraq becomes a difficult
affair.
“Just as the U.S. administration was not prepared for the
political and economic aftermath of the war, neither was the
anti-war movement,” Ayala said. “I think it sort of
caught everybody off guard.”
Ayala said the challenge for activists becomes how to justify
bringing troops home or convincing the American public that pulling
out of Iraq is in the United States’ best interests.
History professor Gabriel Piterberg, a vocal opponent of the war
who attended the March 5 walk-out, said the biggest reason the
Vietnam movement was more sustained was the apparent threat of
drafting “middle-class white boys,” a cause that united
a large part of the United States.
And while he admits activism seems to have stalled as of late,
Piterberg said it could take one event to provide a breath of new
life.
“It’s only a matter of time before there will be a
major massacre,” Piterberg said.
Piterberg also said students were united while protesting the
start of the war, a definite point of time during the conflict. But
now, without a coherent struggle against a “conveniently
dramatic” event, mobilizing opposition becomes difficult.
One student’s explanation is far more simple.
“It’s out there, but the fact of the matter is
people don’t care,” said fourth-year economics student
Anand Sambhwani.