Vietnam & After

GI Dissent and War Resistance in Vietnam

    Even though the Unites States lost the war in Vietnam, there is still a sense of success based on the numerous social movements that occurred during this time.  Richard R. Moser states, "From 1971 on, the veterans' movement became a leading force in the antiwar movement at home and in Vietnam." (The New Winter Soldiers, page 42)  Moser also mentions, earlier in his writing, the different "urban rebellions" that took place around this same time period.  The antiwar movement seems to be the foundation for many other groups to step up and fight for their own beliefs.  It was a time where many people exercised their right of freedom of speech.  During the antiwar movement, women, african americans, bisexuals and homosexuals, among others were fighting against the war and for equality. 

 

    The Weathermen Underground were a group of extremists who were against the war, but more so against the United States Government.  Their idea was to show the people of America what our troops were doing over in Vietnam and their slogan was "Bring the War Home."  The members of this group were considered at-home terrorists, because they were Americans terrorizing America. 

 

    

"The Civil Rights movement made great changes in society in the 1960's. The movement began peacefully, with Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael leading sit-ins and peaceful protests, joined by whites and Jews. Malcolm X preached about Black Nationalism. The Black Panthers were formed and advocated "self-defense" against oppression." (Music Changes the World)  The Black Panthers were also against the Vietnam War and worked with the Weather Underground in their Anti War Movement.

 

From a Young Woman's Point of View.

During the 1960s, many women in America were crusading against discrimination from the household to the workforce.  After Congress had passed the Equal Pay Act under the Kennedy Administration, there were several issues that many women from different feminist groups were addressing. 

From "bra-burning" rallies, to boycotting beauty pageants, there was still much concern for the men who were servicing the country, for reasons they believe were not justified.  If these women were not in feminist groups or somehow related to those stationed overseas, they could have also been high school students or college students that strongly opposed the war.  Through underground media outlets, and networks such as CBS, ABC, radio and mainstream newspapers, many individuals were made aware of the situation in Vietnam and surrounding territories.

As seen in the photo, it was apparent that one did not have to go overseas in order to face the risk of getting injured or being killed.  Lorraine Brill and her boyfriend took part in the March on the Pentagon in 1967.  What was supposed to be a protest, turned into a riot after soldiers became involved. From Brill's eyes, she witnessed her boyfriend limping after he was brutally assaulted.  Fortunately, both were able to make it out of the riot alive, but the intention behind the March was not to have injuries or any other form of abuse imposed at the end of the day.

A Letter To A Son

“You see, there are constitutional ways to change the US government and I agree that it desperately needs changing. However, if you choose to try to change it by revolution, expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve but we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you”

This is a quote from the Paul Williamson reading. And it is directed at his college age son. Wow, that’s all that came to my mind after I read his short letter to his son. You can clearly get the sense of the father’s views of the war, as well as the sons’. We can gather that the son is a “radical college student” during the time of the Vietnam War, and we can assume he has or will join some protests against the war. His father by contrast is a doctor and has a very high sense of nationalism and love for America.

The father is basically saying; if you don’t want to get shot and killed, then do not protest with other college students. Williamson almost seems like he wants his son to get shot, so he can be taught a lesson and learn. He is very blunt about his feeling towards his son and America; I think he is more for America then his son.

In this short reading we can gauge a bit, how America was during the latter years of the Vietnam War. There were older adults who seemed to have a high sense of nationalism and felt that protesting the government was the wrong thing to do during a time of war. And on the other hand you had a younger generation that was anti-war, and veterans of the Vietnam War, often joined these college students who were protesting. I believe that America was not split so much between war and no war, but rather America was split between protesting the government, radically and protesting the government in a more formal way.

Doctrine of Credibility

“According to the doctrine of credibility, the United States was engaged in a global public-relations struggle in which a reverse in any part of the world, no matter how small, could undermine the whole structure of American power.”

Taken from Patriots, this is a quote from Jonathan Schnell who was in Vietnam as a journalist and graduate student from Harvard. Schnell’s oral history will include key phrases such as “psychological basis” and “nuclear policy” which attest to the significance of what he refers to as the Doctrine of Credibility.

I would like to state my personal political observations as well as correlate the historical significance of the past versus the present under this Doctrine. Firstly, many right-wing bloggers state that three quarters of all institutions of higher education have a ‘liberal bias.’ Don’t worry Prof. Mattson, I won’t report you! Also, by ‘liberal bias’ I’m sure what they must mean is looking at the facts, whether those facts are celebratory of America, or are not.

I took a 20^th century history course at Suffolk Community last spring and at that time I thought I had figured out my political stance. I read Marx, I read about student revolutionaries like Mark Rudd and Tom Hayden, and I read original works by Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Vaclav Havel. In other words, I’m in the political spectrum of the ‘dirty leftist academic Marxist no-good non-conformist pinko sympathizer…’ etcetera.

My ‘liberal bias’ was a result of being exposed to uncontested facts like regime change. Diem is just one example. There’s Iran, Nicaragua, Guatemala…. okay the Soviets had their bit of nastiness too, occupying Hungary and Czechoslovakia… and the transfer to industrialized communism under Mao was brutal. Look, I’m not taking sides. Ultimately I might ask even more liberal (uh-oh!) sociological/philosophical questions about factors of human nature like greed and aggression or if power is inherently corrupt.

So, what am I getting at? Has taking a course on Vietnam caused me to shift even further to the left? No. On the contrary, this is my first more in-depth course, not a survey course like the 20^th century course I took. A deeper investigation leads me to conclude that I’m not going to vilify government officials like McNamara or any of the presidents. No one is perfect, and with the exception of true warmongers like Curtis Lemay, I doubt they were anti-humanistic. I decided to believe in their well-intentions no matter how misguided we can see them to be in hindsight. Just as we look at history in a sort of macro-context, these historical figures acted within their micro-context.

Although reneging on the commitment in Vietnam was legitimately seen as a threat to national security, I think today’s situation with Iraq is different. The world is becoming more globalized, people are seeing less of a ‘Foreign Other’ and more of themselves in others. I believe that some extent of national security will still be tied to credibility, but credibility will mean diplomatic-relations and not continual engagement in war.

As a stinking-liberal, I have one more thing to say: the American Empire must absolve itself of its crimes against humanity by not celebrating a fairytale version of its history. Next, I’m going to lean slightly toward a pragmatic-rightwing stance and say: if that is even a possibility, and to maintain social cohesion in a society dependant on exploiting others and their resources for a standard of living, then it will surely be a long-evolving process.

MLK's Moral Vision

"If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam."

Dr. King is not only a civil rights hero and peace advocate, he had a moral vision for what he considered a sick society.  In his speech titled "Declaration of Independance from the war in Vietnam" he noted that there are a lot of sad ironies.  One example is the blacks who fought for American while fighting for rights in America.  Another irony was the premise of the war itself, defending the so-called democracy for the Vietnamese.  In Dr. King's view, to "save the soul of America" it must come to see these things; give up Western arrogance for a moral vision which is healthy for all.

U.S. Military Dissent in Vietnam

"In August 1969 Alpha Company, 3rd Battalion, 196th Light Infantry refused an order to attack.  In a response that can only underscore the political sensitivity of the refusal, the forty-nine men were not reprimanded." - Richard R. Moser

It was not long before the anti-war movement in America bled through the sea and into the soil of Vietnam.  Facilitated by the draft, previously dormant or even non-existent anti-war sentiment was ignited within soldiers serving Vietnam.  Combat refusal, letters to congress, petitions, abandonment, and "fragging" were just a few of the ways that protest manifested itself within the rank and file infantries in Vietnam.  Undoubtedly, especially after Tet, these widespread "mini-rebellions" within the military in Vietnam were not politically convenient to those who were still trying to sell the war at home.  Certain instances of military protest could have easily been construed by the American people as mutiny or even treason.  It was not a story that Nixon would have been pleased to see on 60 minutes.

"By 1971, soldier complaints to Congress totaled 250,000 a year and became one of the most popular forms of protest." - Richard R. Moser

Graduates, Get Your Government Issue Congradulations!

A war is being waged; bodies are needed for the job, but whose?

"Most of them were younger than us, since they had just left high school, and it had clearly never occurred to them that there might be away around the draft.  ...We knew now who would be killed." 

James Fallows describes how he saved himself.  He was a college graduate, he knew he didn't want to go to Vietnam and he knew how to get out of it.  The kids right out of high school did not know how to get out of it.  Therefore they were the ones being put into harms way, and basically used in place of people like Fallows.

What Fallows asks himself and others like him is, in retrospect, if they were so against the war why did they not challenge the system entirely rather than just saving themselves.  By not doing so they sent a "class" of young people out to die. 

Fallows "class" was advantaged by "taking the thinking-man's route to escape."  It was a class that enabled such a means at the expense of those less fortunate.  Fallows thinks it would have helped bring justice to the less fortunate class if his class had been persecuted.  It could have changed perspectives dramatically.

 

Guilt By Association: Obama & the Weather Underground

The Sara Palin, the McCain campaign and various conservative groups have been attacking Barack Obama for his association with William Ayers one of the leaders of the Weather Underground an extreme anti-war group that was responsible for a number of bombings during the Vietnam war. 

The New York Times has published a lengthy front page article on Obama's connection to Ayers during the 1990s when both were active in Chicago politics and lived in the same neighborhood.  Ayers is currently a professor at the University of Illinois.

The New York Times quotes Sarah Palin quoting that very NYT article about the Obama-Ayers connection:

“Well, I was reading my copy of today’s New York Times and I was interested to read about Barack’s friends from Chicago,” Ms. Palin said at the fund-raiser in Englewood, Colo. “Turns out one of Barack’s earliest supporters is a man who, according to The New York Times, and they are hardly ever wrong, was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol. Wow. These are the same guys who think patriotism is paying higher taxes.”

Here's another Palin attack on Obama from the same fund raiser:

“Our opponent though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

The Vietnam war is still a very emotional issue for many Americans of a certain generation.  National political campaigns will try to use those emotions if they believe it will help their candidate get elected.  The best example of this were the attacks on John Kerry as an anti-war radical by the Swift-Boat campaign during the last election. 

For an example of the way in which conservative groups are seeking to smear Obama with the same 'guilt by association' tactics used by anti-communists during the era of McCarthyism watch this video from the American Issue Project:

Spiro Agnew: He has a point, but...

"Sure, it's bad to be remembered as an evil and corrupt politician. But what's really bad is to be remembered as a mediocre evil and corrupt politician."

In his address in 1969 in Des Moines, Iowa, Spiro Agnew  complains that American public opinion is being manipulated by "a small band of network commentators and self appointed analysts". He rightly points out that their qualifications to their positions may be considered dubious, given that they purport to speak for the common man when they themselves are anything but. He also states, with some justification, that jumping on everything the president says without giving the public time to digest his remarks is unfair. While I agree that the network employees have an agenda, the same applies to politicians, and even the public itself. Mr. Agnew demonstrates his lack of faith in the intelligence of the average citizen when he claims they are so easily swayed. He also offers no viable alternative. His whining about the good old days of the public media kowtowing to the government is embarrassing in this somewhat more enlightened age.

"Now what do we know about these men who wield such power?" He asks us ominously. The same could be said about you, Mr. Agnew, considering the ignominious way your own political career ended.

Draft Card Mayhem

Draft cards were a very sensitive issue in the mid-to-late 1960's, and any attempt at destroying or discarding your draft card was a big no-no, according to the U.S. Government.  Yet anti-war citizens, young and old, were showing their displeasure by doing just that.  In August 1965, the Congress passed a law specifically prohibiting  the destruction of draft cards.  One young anti-war activist, David Miller, saw this a perfect opportunity to physically display his feelings on the war and the draft.  Wanting to help a community and protest the war, he moved south from his strict Catholic family in Syracuse, to join the Catholic Worker, a group that helped the hungry and poor, and was also involved in the anti-war movement, in New York City.  On October 15th, 1965, Miller was to be one of the speakers at the first International Day of Protest Against the War in Vietnam.  Feeling that he was going to be jailed, regardless, for his plan of resisting the draft, Miller felt that a physical expression would outweigh his lackluster public speaking:

"When I got up, I said that I was opposed to the war in Vietnam and to conscription, and I remember saying, 'I'm letting this action speak for itself,' and then I tried to burn the draft car with some matches that I had...I knew it was a decisive act, but it was among other decisive acts.  I didn't attach any special magnitude to it, although it did have its own magnitude, well beyond anything that I felt at the time.  It sort of took on a life of its own."

While the matches didn't succeed at setting the draft card ablaze, someone handed Miller a lighter, and the rest was history.  As he recalls, an FBI agent was present, and quickly picked up the remains of the charred draft card.  That burnt card would later be used as evidence in his trial.  The case dragged on from 1965 until 1968, ultimately being decided in the Supreme Court.  Miller argued that his actions were symbolic free speech, that it was a question of constitutional law, and that Congress had enacted the law deliberately to suppress dissent.  But it was to no avail, as the Supreme Court ruled against Miller, and in 1968 he was sent to prison for two years.