Vietnam & After

The War in America

    "To support draft resistance was, of course, itself against the law. Nevertheless, in New York, Boston, San Francisco, the number of demonstrations at induction centers increased geometrically." (Young,200)

     I thought this quote was rather interesting because many people wanted to be able to refuse the draft. If I was around at the time thid is something I would participate in. I do not believe in a draft, I believe that someone should want to serve in our country it shouldn't be a forced issue. There were random protest all throughout the country about the draft situation. One in particular that I read aboutwas the Whitehall Street Induction Center protest where people would be wearing signs talking about the draft refusal. This would ususally cause a riot because then police would come in and begin beating and dragging mean and women who were protesting. Then they were transported to boot camp. I found this to be quite interesting all because people were trying to get a point acroos.

      

easier than the SATs

If you need a C to pass, then why not give it to yourself?  In the Accelerated Pacification Program, implemented after Tet, the government wanted to grade support in the Hamlets.  But as Robert Boettcher notes:

    "Well this was a fraud.  It was a paper exercise in the first place and everyone knew that the higher-ups at the regional and Saigon levels wanted positive reports."

Similarly, if you are handed a good grade without putting in the hard work, then it is all only a short-term ego-stroke.  What happens when you get a job based on those grades but don't have the knowledge expected of you?  You will not be affective at your tasks and not produce valuable outcomes.  

In Vietnam, numbers were continually fudged and they were really only cheating their own policy.  I don't think there was malicious intent, afterall, everyone likes good grades.  And there were some 'A students' like John Vann who understood the failures of the approaches taken. 

Vietnam... The Next World War?

Throughout the human race, everyone wants to be viewed as powerful and dominant figures. Who wouldn't? Imagine the possibility of being in total control of a situation. It makes oneself feel a sense of accomplishment. But on the other hand, it could become someone's downfall. Everyone depending on you could have a negative impact.

"Aggression by terror against peaceful villages of South Vietnam has now been joined by open aggression on the high seas against the United States of America."

These words came from the mouth of President Lyndon Johnson, who later spoke about the North Vietnamese attacking two American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Fast forward ahead a few days.... Johnson asks Congress to pass a bill which will basically give him absolute power. Although this was not a statement declaring war, it was certainly the next closest thing to it.

Is it possible that President Johnson became power hungry when he asks Congress for that request? Or was he just enraged over the events that occured on the Gulf of Vietnam? Johnson's main goal was for peace in the country of Vietnam, but America could not afford to lose a President and gain a dictator.

Code Name: Chaos

Source: Mark Mazzetti & Tim Weiner, "Files on Illegal Spying Show C.I.A. Skeletons From Cold War," New York Times, 06/27/07

In June the New York Times reported on the recent release of "long secret" CIA documents relating to illegal agency activities in the U.S.:

"Known inside the agency as the “family jewels,” the 702 pages of documents released Tuesday catalog domestic wiretapping operations, failed assassination plots, mind-control experiments and spying on journalists from the early years of the C.I.A."

Here is the section of the article which discusses LBJ's use of the CIA to spy on the anti-war movement in the U.S..   This was technically illegal because the CIA was not allowed to operate in the United States:

"Historians have generally concluded that far from being a rogue agency, the C.I.A. was following orders from the White House or top officials. In 1967, for instance, President Lyndon B. Johnson became convinced that the American antiwar movement was controlled and financed by Communist governments, and he ordered the C.I.A. to produce evidence.

His director of central intelligence, Richard Helms, reminded him that the C.I.A. was barred from spying on Americans.

In his posthumous memoir, Mr. Helms said Johnson told him: “I’m quite aware of that. What I want for you is to pursue this matter, and to do what is necessary to track down the foreign Communists who are behind this intolerable interference in our domestic affairs.”

Though it was a violation of the C.I.A.’s charter, Mr. Helms obeyed the president’s orders.

The C.I.A. undertook a domestic surveillance operation code-named Chaos that went on for almost seven years under Presidents Johnson and Nixon. Mr. Helms created a Special Operations Group to conduct the spying. A squad of C.I.A. officers grew their hair long, learned the jargon of the New Left, and went off to infiltrate peace groups in the United States and Europe.

The agency compiled a computer index of 300,000 names of American people and organizations, and extensive files on 7,200 citizens. It began working in secret with police departments all over the United States."

The Johnson administration's use of the CIA for domestic spying during the Vietnam war was unprecedented and it reveals the turmoil and anxiety within the administration as the anti-war movement increased in size.

The family jewels also tell a tale of CIA activities abroad.  NSC-68 (1950) proposed a program which included military assistance programs for free world nations threatened by communist insurgency or subversion.  Here in the "family jewels" we see evidence of the role of the CIA in carrying out this program. Two of the documents released report on a CIA program "to create and exploit foreign police forces, internal-security services and counterterrorism squads overseas."

"The documents explain that the C.I.A. and other American agencies trained and equipped foreigners to serve their countries — and, in secret, the United States. Once the Americans had set up a foreign service, it could help carry out American foreign policy by suppressing communists and leftists, and gather intelligence on behalf of the C.I.A.

The documents evidently were included in the “family jewels” because one part of the program in April 1973 included training of the foreigners by the bomb squad of the Dade County Police in Florida.

Mr. Angleton, who was dismissed from the C.I.A. the following year, after disclosures that he had overseen the opening of first-class mail in the United States since the early 1950s, was the C.I.A.’s man in charge of the overseas training program.

The program, according to recently declassified government documents, trained hundreds of thousands of foreign military and police officers in 25 countries by the early 1960s.

It put the C.I.A. on “dangerous ground,” Robert Amory Jr., chief of the C.I.A.’s intelligence analysis directorate under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, said in an oral history interview for the Kennedy presidential library. “You can get into Gestapo-type tactics.”"