BOSTON - In the 1970s, when Vietnam had become a synonym for quagmire, there was a repeated exchange between the supporters and protesters of the war. The hawks would ask rhetorically, "How can we get out of Vietnam?" The doves would answer directly, "In boats."

The response was glib, satisfying and, in the end, right. We just got out, although the most remembered mode of transportation was a helicopter over Saigon, not a boat.

Fast forward now to the season when peace on Earth seems as temporary as a wreath on a mantelpiece. We're in the run-up to a war on Iraq, a war most of us believe will happen, wanted or not.

A new Los Angeles Times poll says that 72 percent of Americans don't think there's enough evidence to justify starting a war. Yet there isn't anything close to a massive protest. Every day, it seems, someone asks: Why hasn't the antiwar movement caught fire?

Why have relatively few Americans taken to the streets?

Of course, the easy answer is circular. There isn't an antiwar movement of any dimension because there isn't yet a war. It's also true that the scattered protests so far have seemed oddly out of time and place.

Earlier this month, when an old activist friend wandered over to one of the rallies pegged to International Human Rights Day, he felt like a reverse Rip Van Winkle. He'd changed, but the scene had stayed the same. Some of the slogans seemed like verbal uniforms taken out of mothballs: "Drop food, not bombs." "Hell no, we won't go. We won't fight for Texaco."

In Washington that day, some protesters ripped up Selective Service forms. In Rhode Island, 100 Brown University students and faculty held a "die-in." Web sites offered retrofitted cheers: "1, 2, 3, 4 / We don't want another war."

None of those uniforms was the right size or shape for many like my friend, who had altered his beliefs for the circumstances of an Iraqi war. And so he drifted away.

Todd Gitlin, historian of the '60s, has seen this as well. "The silent majority of antiwar sentiment hasn't found its style or form. That's a serious obstacle," he says. "We in the 1960s would have looked stupid if we were mouthing the rhetoric of the 1930s. Why is it smart to sound like 1967?"

Of course, if this is not to be your father's antiwar movement, it's not just a matter of style but of substance. Saddam Hussein is, after all, no Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh. Becoming part of a peace movement that leaves him in charge is not comforting. And while there may be no link between al-Qaida and Baghdad, we've been attacked at home, and have no trouble imagining the worst.

Indeed, the rallying cries of current protesters may often sound off-key, too simplistic and too '60s to attract a crowd. But at the same time, the more complex, thoughtful, layered reservations about war in Iraq don't make much of a rallying cry.

Reading the ads and petitions signed by actors and academics, I try to envision a protest march with posters full of their asterisks and footnotes:

"Hell no, we won't go because we want the U.N. to have a chance, or because pre-emptive war is a dangerous precedent, or because a cornered Saddam is more frightening than a contained Saddam, or because ... hey, hey, what do you say?"

Imagine on the other hand Sean Penn, unfairly and glibly dubbed "Baghdad Sean" as if he'd been a dupe of the dictator during his three-day trip. He sounded more like the muddled middle, saying, "I can read something one day and the next day I read something else and I think, 'Oh God, I didn't even think about that,' and that's humbling."

We have feelings that do not fit easily on placards and our alternatives to war do not sit smugly, snugly, "in boats." Meanwhile, the president and his inner circle, hankering for war, are all too certain.

In the past year or more, Americans have lost trust in one thing after another: dot-coms and CEOs, cardinals and the occasional senator. Confidence in the commander in chief has remained strong but, I suspect, hollow at the center. And that's where doubt grows easily.

Maybe we shouldn't be asking why protesters haven't taken to the streets. Maybe what's remarkable is that despite the lopsided nature of the debate, a private reluctance has taken root in homes and offices. A silent majority of Americans don't yet believe that war is justified. Maybe it's not the silence that's a surprise, but the majority.

Ellen Goodman is a columnist for The Boston Globe. Her column appears Mondays and Thursdays in The Sun. She can be reached via e-mail at ellengoodman@globe.com.