By George McEvoy, Palm Beach Post Columnist Saturday, June 29, 2002
Dig through the attic and see if you can find your old peace-symbol necklace and your love beads. Put on your bell-bottom jeans, sandals and tie-dye shirt. Let your hair grow down below your shoulders if you're a guy -- the 1960s may well be coming back.
It all depends on President Bush.
If he really intends to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein, Mr. Bush might find himself short of soldiers. Our army is stretched pretty thin right now in this war against international terrorism, and despite all the smart bombs and guided missiles and other technological wonders of modern warfare, you still need grunts on the ground with rifles and bayonets.
In that case, the president might feel it necessary to revive the military draft in this country, and that's when the 1960s could stage their noisy revival. According to a recent poll of college students across the United States, 37 percent said they would be likely to evade such a draft.
The survey was done by Lutz Research Cos., a respected polling and political consulting firm headed by Frank Lutz. A cross section of 634 students -- both men and women -- were contacted by telephone between May 2 and May 12, and they were enrolled in all fields of study. Their responses were quite similar, regardless of gender or whether they were majoring in the humanities or business administration.
Mr. Lutz said draft resistance might well erupt into campus demonstrations, as in the 1960s. "I can only imagine the disruption on college campuses if the president suddenly called for a draft," he said. "Based on this data (the poll results), the disruption on the campuses would be remarkable.''
The Lutz poll, however, shows one huge difference between today's potential draft resisters and those of the Vietnam era.
The peaceniks, as they were called, who staged campus demonstrations and street rallies in the 1960s opposed not only the draft, they were against the war itself, claiming that it was a civil war and we had no business getting involved.
The Lutz poll indicates that 66 percent of today's college students believe the U.S. "has the right to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein is still attempting to build weapons of mass destruction." And an amazing 79 percent believe the U.S. "has the right to overthrow Hussein."
But most remarkable of all is the finding that 58 percent of those who said they would evade the draft would support an invasion of Iraq.
In other words, they favor the fighting as long as they don't have to do it. They would be all gung-ho for the war if they could watch it at home on television.
The Lutz poll brought out some other interesting facts about today's college students. For one thing, they do not view America as representing superior values, as compared with other nations. Fully 71 percent disagreed with the statement that U.S. values are superior.
The same poll showed Mr. Bush receiving very high marks for his handling of the presidency, a whopping 70 percent, while at the same time, 57 percent said they believed the policies of the U.S. are "at least somewhat responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks."
A clear majority of the students, 60 percent, believe that "developing a better understanding of other cultures and nations that dislike us" would be a better approach to preventing terrorism than investing in strong military and defense capabilities.
As for the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, the general college population leaned toward the Israelis, but not by much -- 35 percent pro-Israeli, 22 percent pro-Palestinian.
Students in Northeastern colleges, however, showed opposite results -- 38 percent for the Palestinians, 23 percent for the Israelis.
During the height of the anti-Vietnam War protests, I was working for the San Francisco Examiner, and one of my best pals, George Murphy, was the ace reporter for the rival San Francisco Chronicle. We covered a lot of protest rallies together, as well as the 5-month-long "Presidio mutiny trials."
George used to look at the peaceniks with distaste and say, "I'm against the war, but I'm also against a lot of the people who are against the war."
Looking back now, I think I prefer the protesters of the 1960s to the ones questioned in this latest poll. At least those long-ago hippies were consistent.