From Vietnam to Gaza: when peaceful opposition to US foreign policy becomes an accusation

The Trump Administration’s crackdown on student communities, focusing on foreign students and higher education institutions is a serious blow to dissent in a country with a long history of conflicting polices and declared principles of free speech and open debates on major foreign policy issues. The United States has always claimed to cherish, defend and uphold free speech, independence and freedom of expression but, in reality, many of its policies are the complete opposite.

Clearly, President Trump does not want anyone, including his own officials, to express any view on issues that conflict with his own, be it on trade, crackdown on migrants, higher education institutions and silencing foreign students who called for ending the war in Gaza—a stated Trump presidential campaign objective. While the US support for Israel has always been a cornerstone of its foreign policy, the only difference, this time, is the excessive support Trump is giving to Israel even when it breaks US laws on the supply of arms to war zones, for example.

This translates into a host of ready-made accusations against, for example, student activists and universities in the country for supporting the end to the war in Gaza and calling a stop to the billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money being channelled to Israel every year, despite its practices of genocide, apartheid and denial of Palestinian rights. They also disagree, at least the activists and peaceful protestors, with the fact that what is going in Palestine fundamentally and scandalously contradicts every noble principle the US claims to represent, by being complacent with Israel as it turns Gaza into 21 century concentration camp.

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Mr. Trump’s primary focus is his claim to combat anti-Semitism, something the Israeli ethnic cleansing policy of Gaza had long since turned it into an empty slogan.

Here is the most senior Jewish member of Congress, Jerry Nadler, for example describing Trump as a “would-be dictator” who is using the fight against anti-Semitism in a cynical way to impose his will on schools. The New York Democrat representative went on to say that “Trump obviously doesn’t give a damn about anti-Semitism, this is just an expression of his authoritarianism.”

At the same time, President Trump is openly contradicting his own declared goal of ending all wars (the Ukraine case), but not the genocide in Gaza. This comes within shifting global dynamics and decades of public scrutiny, yet he continues to pursue a foreign policy that often prioritises geopolitical and economic interests (the case with Trump trade tariffs) over human rights, resulting in prolonged conflicts, civilian casualties and global divisions.

However, this has been the underlying US foreign policy, as we have seen it before: in order to pursue such policies, dissent within the US has to be bullied, its leaders muzzled and universities coerced into submission; pushing both schools and activists into legal fights for what many believe and cherish as guaranteed principles, documented in the US Constitution, like free speech.

Withholding federal grants and threatening universities, the bedrock of dissent in any vibrant society, including prestigious school like Columbia University, Cornel, Northwestern and Harvard, while detaining students is reminiscent of old practices deployed against the anti-war movement that erupted against the Vietnam War in 1960s and 1970s. The US went to war in Vietnam for various reasons, most of which had to do with ideological reasons, such as countering communism, expanding US influence and larger geopolitical objects. The American entanglement in the Vietnam War was not about an imminent threat to US national security, as much as about US hegemony. Such foreign policy resulted in a big backlash back home, particularly when drafting started (1964-1973) leading to the conscription of over two million people.

Basically what happened was militarism was camouflaged in moral and ethical principles. This is exactly what is being repeated now against dissenting opinions—essentially, against opposition in any form when it comes to criticising Israel in any way, form or sense. Such criticism is being equated with anti-Semitism, meaning what anyone says against Israeli policies could easily be interpreted as being anti-Semitism by the authorities, completely transforming the debate from criticising a given policy position into being Jewish hate— a disposition that is difficult to morally justify, despite including it in  noble principles of fighting hate.

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During the anti-Vietnam War, protesting students like Tom Hayden from the University of Michigan, was arrested for being an anti-war protestor. While his arrest was justified by accusing him of organising illegal protests and crossing of state lines to incite rioting, it was mainly about his opposition to the war, i.e., opposing the government’s foreign policy. He was not alone, though, as in a single day, back in 1971, some, 12,000 protestors were arrested in Washington DC.

The same pattern is being repeated against those who protest against the Gaza genocidal war which the US is helping. Mahmoud Khalil, Badar Khan Sur, Rumeysa Ozturk, and Alireza Doroudi are only examples of some of the estimated 3,100 protestors arrested, including students and faculties in over 60 institutions. In general, some one million Americans took part in over 2,600 events related to the war in Gaza, with the overwhelming majority calling for an end to the war.

However, unlike the Vietnam War era, this time around, the authorities justified their oppression by accusing students and faculty alike of spreading anti-Jewish sentiments, opposing US foreign policy and breaking visa conditions, as in the case of foreign students. In reality, it is all about being anti- Israeli oppression and about challenging US foreign policy and the spending of billions of taxpayers’ money on another foreign army, enabling it to kill more civilians. There is hardly any tangible US national interest in helping Israel kill over 51,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, while wiping out over 70 per cent of buildings in the enclave.

The current atmosphere of fear and bullying created by the Trump Administration appears to force Columbia University, for example, to accept the administrations’ conditions for continued funding but others, like Harvard, are rejecting the government’s undue drive to control how educational institutions manage themselves – operate, teach or admit students. More importantly, such tactics are unlikely to scare the millions of Americans opposing the Gaza genocide.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.