In late 1969, 49 percent of the public told Gallup the United States needed to abandon Vietnam, but a staggering 77 percent disapproved of the antiwar protests. What he termed the antiwar movement's "large, raucous and sometimes senseless fringe," with its gleeful indictments of America as terminally bloodthirsty and its values as decadently bourgeois, had driven conflicted Americans into the arms of Richard Nixon, who really was terminally bloodthirsty. ("Now, by all-out bombing attack, I am thinking about things that go far beyond. ... I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry?")

By contrast, once the Iraq invasion began in 2003, the massive protests--several of which were organized by apologists for assorted anti-American despots and human-rights abusers--largely dissipated. With nobody for the right to demonize, and no one to alienate average Americans from their suspicion that the war was a bad idea, Meyerson wrote, "the occupation is being judged on its own merits."

En conséquence, Ackerman estime que plus les mouvements anti-guerre se feront discrets, plus le retrait des troupes américaines sera reclamé par les Américains. Superficiellement, j'ai tendance à trouver l'argument plausible : la force du patriotisme américain est telle est toute prise de position qui peut, à bon droit ou pas, être qualifiée d'anti-américaine ou assimiliée à de la trahison (le voyage de Jane Fonda au Vietnam entrait sans aucun doute dans cette catégorie) a tendance renforcer le camp des faucons. En examinant un peu plus les détails, j'ai davantage de difficultés à être convaincu.

Le fait que Nixon se soit appuyé, lors de la campagne de 1968, sur le ressentissement ou la peur d'une "majorité silencieuse" à l'encontre des gauchistes est indéniable (incidemment, c'est exactement ce qui s'est aussi passé pour les élections de juin 1968 en France) :

Nixon appealed to what he claimed was the "silent majority" of socially conservative Americans who disliked the "hippie" counterculture and anti-war demonstrators.

Cela dit, il n'y avait rien e contradictoire, au vu de la campagne, entre le vote pour Nixon et la volonté majoritaire d'un retrait des troupes américaines :

Nixon also promised "peace with honor," and without claiming to be able to win the war, Nixon claimed that "new leadership will end the war and win the peace in the Pacific". When a reporter pressed Nixon for specifics, he did not reveal any details. Because of this, Nixon's opponents criticized him for not revealing his secret plan to end the Vietnam War, although Nixon had not used this famous phrase. Still, many voters supported Nixon because they believed he would end the war.