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Not having a draft may also help defuse some of the class-based resentments that made the Vietnam protests so unpopular with many Americans, especially blue-collar families whose sons were serving overseas. "Working-class people were as divided by the war as anyone else," Mr. Appy said, "but they were deeply offended by upper-middle-class protesters who had all of the advantages."

Antiwar protests have also become an accepted part of American history and culture, said Seymour Melman, emeritus professor of industrial engineering at Columbia University and a speaker at an antiwar protest on Wall Street in 1970.

"Present populations are drawing upon a common heritage of ideas that has been around for some time," he said.

And the antiwar movement today appears more diverse than it was during the early protests of the Vietnam War, when it often seemed hostile to "anyone over 30."

Joy Seldin, 55, of Montclair, N.J., said that when she and her friends were protesting the Vietnam War, "our parents all thought that we were traitors." Now, she said, she and her daughter oppose the war — and so does her 76-year-old mother in Florida.

Mrs. Seldin has not been to any of the recent protests (except in spirit), but William Nunziata has. And they are different from those he attended during the Vietnam era, said Mr. Nunziata, 51, a transit worker who works in Queens.

"Because this protest is not just hippies — I am a hippie by the way," he said. "The construction workers were with us on the line."

Many people, in New York and elsewhere, find themselves in ambiguous positions, opposing the war, supporting the troops, hating Saddam Hussein, wishing the United Nations had backed the United States, worrying about terrorism, fretting about the amount of money the war will cost and what it will do to the economy.

Jeff Wilkins, a businessman from Los Gatos, Calif., who was visiting ground zero, ran through many of these thoughts, and more, when asked what he thought of the war. As for the protesters, he said: "People have opinions and they need to express them, especially extreme opinions, and there's nothing more extreme than life and death. But I'm ashamed our soldiers don't have support."

When he listens to both sides, he said, "it's difficult to agree with everything, and it's difficult to disagree with everything."

But even those who know most definitely where they stand can often be understanding, at least in public, about those who disagree.

Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb of the Orthodox Union, who attended a Tuesday evening prayer service on the Upper West Side in support of the troops, firmly backs the American effort in Iraq.

Still, he said of the demonstrators, "that's what we are fighting for, the right to dissent." While he thinks they are misguided about how peace can be achieved, he said, "I don't think they are misguided in terms of being off the wall."

At the other end of the political spectrum is Maya Sen, an organizer with the antiwar group Not in Our Name, one of the groups involved in yesterday's protest. But she, too, kept her rhetoric cool in discussing the war's supporters. "I think they are misinformed, not getting the whole picture, not being provided with the complete truth," she said.

But, she added, "there are a lot of people with very good intentions on both sides."