Clothing aside, war debate matures

While no Princeton students are actually serving in Iraq (as the Times pointed out last weekend, Ivy Leaguers are following the Commander-in-Chief's example and avoiding combat duty), a good number of them have joined the political battle here on campus. This last part is encouraging; our particular ivory tower is too rarely rattled by events in the "real" world. While Princeton's activism — both for and against — does not match that of other campuses, any step in the direction of political engagement seems useful.

How to interpret these newfound passions? Our instinctual reference point for all things involving students, war and political engagement is, of course, Vietnam. It is thus tempting to measure today's student reaction against our parents' experience, when they marched in the streets, occupied buildings and made love not war. However, the comparison proves unsatisfying. In those days it was the People against the Man, the Youth against the Military-Industrial Complex, the Hippies against the Squares. For mom and dad the war in South East Asia was as much a battle of the Culture War as the Cold War, a struggle against the twin evils of international communism and conservative haircuts.

In contrast, the most remarkable feature of the current debate is the lack of cultural conflict. In the antiwar camp American flags fly alongside peace doves. Marchers are not the rebellious teenagers of the 1960s-70s, but a mix of generations, social classes, and political orientations. According to newspaper reports, signs at antiwar rallies have included slogans like "Anglo-Saxon, Heterosexual Males for Peace," "Capitalist Swing Voters for Peace" and even "Texas Republicans for Peace."

The pro-war group is similarly changed. The dispassionate balance of power rationales have been replaced by a full-throated populist rhetoric that is more familiar on the left. Today's hawks are more likely to invoke "evil" than domino theory in justifying military action. They have also latched on to "freedom," "liberation" and other words traditionally owned by progressives. Perhaps most interestingly, they have adopted the rally — a tactic almost synonymous with antiwar sentiment — as a tool of political expression.

These changes were very apparent in Palmer Square last Saturday, where over a hundred antiwar demonstrators faced off against about twenty war supporters. Each side had their chants, their banners, their slogans, and their witty rejoinders. Each side exhorted passersby to "support our troops" and each claimed to be defending the Iraqi people. For all the invective between them, the groups were more remarkable for their similarity than their difference. This is not to say that opposing and supporting the war in Iraq are in any way similar positions, just that the modes of political expression have converged to a remarkable extent — down to the very slogans.

This post-Culture War political debate seems consistent with what we know about Princeton. If we accept the David Brooks' definition of Princeton students — that we are more likely to see ourselves as future fixtures of the establishment than counter-cultural revolutionaries — it makes a good deal of sense. While Princeton students are happy to debate their political opponents, they are even happier do so within the comfortable confines of what could perhaps be described as the remnants of gentlemanly chivalry. Conflicting visions of policy and morality may be up for discussion, but the cultural question is largely closed.

Is this a good or bad thing? I, for one, have a certain nostalgia for the heady passion of the 1960s; it seems that one of the privileges of being a student should be a brief stint as a revolutionary. As anyone who has studied history or seen "Les Miserables" will know, students from Berkeley to Paris to Tiananmen have always taken to the barricades to demand a new society with youthful fervor and varying levels of success.

That is clearly not happening in the current war. Cynics would blame video game induced apathy and the other usual culprits for why "kids these days" are the way they are, and they may be right to a certain extent. On the other hand, the fact that students are more focused on political debate than cultural revolution may represent a level of maturity absent in the 1960s. After all, should not questions of war and peace be decided by political and moral debate independent of cultural undercurrents? This is not to blame Mom and Dad for fighting Kissinger with Hendrix, but rather to say that in some ways students today are lucky to debate our war free of culture-clash baggage.

So we need not be surprised or worried that the groups on either side of Nassau Street last weekend looked more alike than different. Now that we don't have to worry about who's a hippie and who's a square, who's a subversive and who's a jingoist, we might get down to the real issues at hand.

One of the posters hanging in the Frist Café, an old Tiger Magazine cover, demonstrates this point well. It depicts two students, one a Hippie, the other a Square, facing each other with distrust. The caption reads, "the times they are a' changing." Well, the times have changed, and now the two students facing each other do not disagree because one has a tie-dyed T-shirt and the other a sweater-vest, but because one thinks war is justified and the other does not. And since it is war, and not fashion, we are discussing, that seems like a pretty good change to me.

Tom Hale is a Wilson School major from South Kingston, R.I.