The Iraq War: Views from Three Minnesota College Campuses

Most readers of Minnesota Monitor don’t hang out much with the 1960s generation. Yes, they still listen to their music, but as for their ideas and ideals, well, they’re about as foreign as a far-off war in Iraq.

Or maybe not.

More and more, the Iraq war is touching us here at home. Many of us know soldiers who’ve been there, who have fought or driven a truck or serviced a latrine. Some of us know families who have been permanently scarred by an injury or death.

For the ’60s generation, this is déjà vu all over again. They are honored and amazed that their music is still being played, but they’re horrified that members of their own generation have taken this country into another stupid, wasteful war built on lies. Now many are asking, “Where is the spirit of protest that we had when we were in college?”

more insideWhile the massive protests haven’t materialized as they did in the ’60s and ’70s, an increasing awareness of the conflict is being reflected in Minnesota college and university newspapers.

For example, in the Feb. 15 issue of the Minnesota State University, Mankato, Reporter, Brian D. Johnson interviews a student who has not seen her father, a sergeant in the Minnesota National Guard, in 18 months. She’ll graduate in May, but he won’t be around to celebrate with her. “It’s ridiculous,” Johnson quotes Sara Kuebler (photo at right) as saying. “My dad says it’s pointless for the troops to be over there now because they don’t really do anything helpful anymore.”

“My dad is always on my mind,” she says. “When I watch TV and hear that someone died, I wonder if I’m going to get that call. It’s stressful, and now I have to worry even longer.” She says the troops “shouldn’t be risking their lives every day for a stupid war. They should at least be given answers about what’s going on.”

The lead editorial in the same issue asks, “What would it take for an end? What is the threshold or the final headcount that leads to a withdrawal? Is it 4,000? 5,000? How will we know success and will we ever be so inclined to declare it?” Another story covers the thoughts of MSU students either preparing to be shipped out to Iraq or currently serving there.

Just up the road at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Kelli Lassig of the Gustavian Weekly wonders, “What is the appropriate response to war and bloodshed, brought to a country without the permission or even consideration of its people? Should we ask them to stand with us, to simply stay out of our way or better yet, should we ask them to thank us for what we’ve done?” In the editorial she takes issue with President Bush’s statement in an interview with 60 Minutes in January that “the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude.”

Meanwhile, the Minnesota Daily castigates the mainstream media for lapping up the Bush administration’s allegations of Iranian meddling in Iraq. “On 24-hour cable news in particular, the ongoing conflict with Iran is treated in almost the same way as the death of Anna Nicole Smith,” according to an unsigned editorial in the University of Minnesota’s student newspaper. Beginning Friday, Feb. 16, the Oscar-nominated documentary “Iraq in Fragments” will be showing at the U’s Bell Auditorium on the Twin Cities campus. Let’s hope it will attract a crowd.

There are many reasons why America’s university students remain largely indifferent to the Iraq war and why protests have been rare. The primary difference between now and 1967 is that today there is no draft. The numbers that go off to fight are smaller, too. President Bush’s “surge” of 21,500 additional troops brings the U.S. total in Iraq up to a little more than 150,000. Compare this to more than half a million U.S. soldiers in Vietnam at the height of that war in 1969.

Another factor is that those who are called to fight in Iraq are older. They are not green draftees in the traditional student age range of 18 to 21 years old. Many are reservists and members of the national guard, often family men and women in their 20s and 30s. Finally, the body bags returning from Iraq are still less than one-tenth the number of those that came back from Vietnam, which took over 58,000 American lives.

Too many of today’s college students still lack connection to the war in Iraq, but at least discussion of the conflict is ensuing on many campuses. Fortunately, that includes dialogue on the pages of some student-run newspapers at Minnesota’s colleges and universities.