The Vietnam War was, in every sense of the word, a disaster.

Death and heartache piled up on a horribly grand scale, with most of the casualties being young men not even old enough to legally buy a beer. The American incursion into the foreign, unforgiving lands of southeast Asia forged an entirely new outlook on ground warfare and changed the way that it would be planned, executed and ended.

Over 58,000 Americans died from 1959 to 1975, when the last U.S. soldiers evacuated Saigon and the capital city finally fell. Our country was deeply, profoundly affected by the war on an everyday basis, as thousands of young men were forced into fighting in a country that was mysterious and whose military force we'd vastly underestimated.

The purpose of invading Vietnam was never very clear, but its legacy as a frustrating, failed bloodbath remains.

How did Americans react to the stalemates and outright failures of the Vietnam War? With extreme anger and disgust for the unnecessary bloodshed and gruesome human sacrifice that resulted from fears over communism a world away. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets all over America in protest of the senseless, continued violence in Vietnam, unwilling to just sit quietly while their sons and husbands were mowed down and blown up. The protests grew in strength at the height of the war’s worst times, and continued through the day that the U.S. withdrew its forces from the soon-to-be socialist nation. Anti-war protests played a highly instrumental role in the development of public opposition, and sent an outspoken, infectious message to national leaders that it was not an acceptable venture to continue.

So if protests were so effective in ending war then, where is the resistance today?

The 1960s and the 2000s are obviously too different in too many ways to list in a single sitting, but one major component is missing from the protesting of current Iraq War that was a prominent part of Vietnam: conscription. The absence of “the draft,” which the American military relied upon to staff its ranks with young, supposedly-capable patriots, is the biggest difference between war in the 60s and war today. The forced enlistment of men, some too young even to vote, brought the bloody conflict home more than any Walter Cronkite wartime broadcast ever could. We were horrified by the thought of sending sons, brothers, husbands and fathers to the dangerous Vietnamese jungles just because of their particular birthday.

It may seem a preposterous gain, but the draft did establish a more “class-blind” military force than was previously in place with purely a volunteer force. No more was it just the poorest kids who were at war fighting the rich man’s battles - it was any capable young man who happened to have his number picked. This was the turning point for many who had previously supported the war, as they didn’t want to lose their beloved little boy any more than any of the volunteer military families did.

Want to see Vietnam-era protests with tears and screams and pickets signs and catchy anti-war chants in our city streets?

Bring back the draft. Bring the reality of war home to the people of a country that jumps into violent conflict with cavalier recklessness.

Maybe then we’ll realize how deeply war affects us all.