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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Young People Are Opposed to the War—Right?

posted by on April 18 at 11:44 AM

You can read this at the top of the PI’s website right now:

TRAFFIC ALERT: Expect traffic congestion around downtown Seattle this afternoon as an estimated 3,000 students hold a march and rally against the war in Iraq. The rally starts at 1 p.m. at Westlake Park, then protesters will march south to the Federal Building and Seattle City Hall downtown before heading to Seattle Public Schools headquarters in Sodo. See map of the route.

And you can read this at the New York Times website right now:

The younger generation is opposed to the war in Iraq, right? Wrong. Actually, they’re divided on the war, far more so than their grandparents, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll in March. Seems younger people are more supportive of the war and the president than any other age group.

Forty-eight percent of Americans 18 to 29 years old said the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, while 45 percent said the United States should have stayed out. That is in sharp contrast to the opinions of those 65 and older, who have lived through many other wars. Twenty eight percent of that age group said the United States did the right thing, while 67 percent said the United States should have stayed out.

RSS icon Comments

1

If there had been a draft this war would have never happened.

Posted by monkey | April 18, 2007 12:00 PM
2

Start up a draft and watch those poll numbers change real fast.

Posted by Andrew | April 18, 2007 12:03 PM
3

Lies and damned lies.

Posted by Chris | April 18, 2007 12:05 PM
4

I'm always skeptical when people say that the younger kids are more progressive. My partner is a high school teacher, at a school that should be one of the most progressive in the regions. But the things that his students say or object to blow our minds, and we have only been out of high school for about 12 years or so. There is an amazing amount of right wing fundamentalism with some of these kids, and the rest of them are apathetic to any sort of resistance to it.

Posted by again | April 18, 2007 12:07 PM
5

and the "kids" are the majority of those who sign up to fight, if they so chose then let them go, it's their blood...youth is wasted on the young as they say.

Posted by they're dead | April 18, 2007 12:15 PM
6

That 48% should march right down to their local military recruiter’s office and sign up. They can put their bodies on the line for their Presnit.

Posted by jeff | April 18, 2007 12:16 PM
7

i enjoyed that nyt article the first time i read it today, too.

Posted by it wasn't andrew sullivan... | April 18, 2007 12:19 PM
8

@4: I agree completely. I think it's more that kids tend to be conservative in a general sense - they don't usually like change, particularly at an age when their lives seem so unstable to them already. Moreover, most teenagers are in a position where they probably haven't had their views challenged or broadened by anyone but other teenagers and the occasional good teacher/professor yet.

Posted by Darcy | April 18, 2007 12:38 PM
9

18-29? Kind of a wandering age limit, isn't it?

I agree with #3

Posted by Kat | April 18, 2007 12:39 PM
10

I wonder how many of that 48% think Iraq attacked us on Sept 11?

Posted by DOUG. | April 18, 2007 12:49 PM
11

8, tell me what's so "conservative" about this war eh? strikes as one of the more radical things our gov't has done in my lifetime. anything particularly "conservative" about leaving behind your friends and family to go to a strange land and quite possibly die fighting people who were never a direct threat to your country? anything particularly "conservative" about flushing billions of dollars down the toilet to do so, while incurring the ever-increasing resentment of the muslim world? i'm not really getting on you, so much as this general misperception.

Posted by ellarosa | April 18, 2007 12:56 PM
12

as someone in said age group, i just can't believe the ny times poll. i don't know anyone who supports the war. but then again, i don't know anyone who voted for bush, and clearly the majority of america did. so who knows.

Posted by arduous | April 18, 2007 12:56 PM
13

As a person in that age range that has been repeatedly been yelled at by service members my own age saying that not supporting the war is not supporting them, I have gotten to the point where my opinion is "as long as I don't have to go, I don't care".

Cynical? Probably.

Posted by fromohio | April 18, 2007 12:57 PM
14

It's news that young people are dumb?

Posted by keshmeshi | April 18, 2007 1:04 PM
15

I agree, time to bring back the draft.

Good thing my son is a dual citizen.

Posted by Will in Seattle | April 18, 2007 1:07 PM
16

Yeah, but what do you expect from a right-wing mouth piece like the NYT/CBS.

Posted by You_Gotta_Be_Kidding_Me | April 18, 2007 1:09 PM
17

I'm smack in the middle of this age group and for the record, many of my friends did, and probably still do support the war. But my friends are legally retarded, and I live in Florida.

One of these friends(My best!) voted for Bush in 2004, and one of his reasons was that he heard that Kerry was going to reinstate the draft.

I no longer am able to stand talking to any of them about politics.

Posted by Chris | April 18, 2007 1:27 PM
18

@11: Misperception about... what, exactly? I don't recall saying anything about the war itself; I agreed with a previous commenter's general statement that the age group mentioned in Dan's original post tends to be much more conservative than popular opinion would have one believe.

That said, there's nothing particularly "progressive," either, about falling back on warfare - the oldest trick in the book, historically speaking - as a response to a perceived threat from outside the group/nation.

Posted by Darcy | April 18, 2007 1:41 PM
19

Agree with #9. Bit of a range there.

I find myself appalled at a number of 18-year-olds and I'm in the middling area -- turning 22 this summer. People seem to forget that the younger you go, the bigger the social gaps tend to get between the years.

Posted by Gloria | April 18, 2007 1:44 PM
20

Oh, shit.

Well, this war has always been incomprehensible; I'm actually more shocked whenever I hear anything about it that makes any kind of sense.

Posted by Noink | April 18, 2007 1:50 PM
21

darcy, i was attacking the wacky "conservative" term. they don't deserve to be called anything so respectable. call them right wing fundies, right wing radicals, repugs or wingnuts please, i beg of you. it's just really getting on my tits as the brits say, the misuse of this term, and i don't think i'm nitpicking: it lends a credibility to these idiots, even if only subconsciously.

Posted by ellarosa | April 18, 2007 1:51 PM
22

I was a teen when Reagan was in charge, and by the time I was 17 I knew how fucked the Feds were, Iran Contra was all it took for me to take notice! But I chose to READ, not accept at face what I was told. It's tragic that we're @ a place in time when, tho' SO much more info is available, the numbers reflect ignorance and indifference.

I recently had a discussion with a 23 yr old Iraq War vet, and what was most interesting wasn't that he didn't understand why the war was the wrong thing to start, but he was SO sure about what he had done and why it mattered. It could NEVER be "a wrong" to him...he really really really really HAD to believe why he was THERE, otherwise his sacrifice was for nothing. I've had discussions with Vietnam vets like that as well...they can't say what happened was wrong or that is should not have happened as they can't blame themselves 'cause, just like in Iraq, they were just "doing their duty." If they blame themselves then they committed their own crimes.

Posted by nipper | April 18, 2007 2:08 PM
23

Well, Ellarosa, I see your point (and trust me, "wingnuts" is a lot nicer than some of the terms I've used for these people), but I tend to err on the side of not being attacked by crazed locals, as I've been marooned in the South for about 10 years now. [insert tension-breaking winky-face]

Posted by Darcy | April 18, 2007 3:34 PM
24

i think they were polling in the college republicans meetings.

young people were against this more than the rest of the american public before it started, and the amount of activism happening on campus (despite the unproven 'where are the youth!' stereotype) shows that young people are pissed about the war.

if someone else mentions the draft they should be smacked. did having a draft stop Vietnam? where in the world has having a draft ever lessened the incentive to go to war rather than increased it? show me a draft system that is just across class and gender lines and creates a venue for people to be more civically engaged and responsible in the form of deciding when armed forces are used and that would make sense.

don't blame young people for the war, especially since parts of that 18-29 range weren't old enough to vote in 2000 or 2004. if we want to point fingers at who is responsible for the war it isn't at the young people.

how many pro-war rallies/events do you hear about on a regular basis? is there an 'Iraq vets for the war' organization? with the majority of vets being in the age range of the poll (and the majority of those who have died in Iraq have been of college age 18-24).

if all you do is tell people how they aren't doing anything, that they can't change anything, and you should trust the government no matter how obviously batshit crazy they are, how do you expect there to be change? how did it work out for those antiwar protestors after Vietnam?

Posted by fraggle | April 18, 2007 6:49 PM
25

Hey Dan, looks like young people dig this war that you howled for again and again in the Stranger. God job boy. I know you and your staff really want a draft, and you think a draft would solve all our problms in Iraq, but you guys and gals should connect a few more dots, like if all the young people had to join the military, just think of how many more homophobes there would be in this country that solve their problems with guns.

Posted by Jesus | April 19, 2007 12:23 AM

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