Here are another couple of contemporary quotes from Americans on the Vietnam War. These are both from the book Why Are We Still in Vietnam? (1970), Sam Brown and Len Ackland, eds. Sam Brown was later to become director of the Peace Corps.
The introduction was written by New York City's Republican Mayor John Lindsay:
No one can now justify silent passivity on the question of war and peace. The stakes are too great. In the minds of millions of Americans, whether the war ends soon may well determine whether our system can work at all. Citizens, and especially public officials who are part of the system, have an obligation to make it work, to rebuild faith in the free processes of our democracy by using them to achieve peace.
From my perspective, the obligation to act is reinforced by a daily awareness of the war's consequences for my city and for other cities. So much of what should be done - for the poor and for the middle class, to reclaim the environment and to enhance the quality of American life - must be put off or forgotten because a fantastic proportion of our national resources is wasted on a bankrupt foreign adventure. Foremost among those irreplaceable lost resources are, as I write, more than forty-two thousand of our own men. We owe them the commitment of our talents and energies to a continuing campaign to end the war.
Another is from Jeffrey Record, who had served with the US Agency for International Development (AID) as a psychological-operations adviser in Vietnam. AID was often a front for CIA operations. I've quoted here before from a recent paper by him, Bounding the Global War on Terrorism, from the US Army War College Carlisle Barracks Web site. In 1970, he wrote:
Mr. Nixon believes that America is committed to defend Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson's problem was to justify a commitment that did not yet exist; the President confronts a commitment already made. The question of prior formal obligation (the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, the Eisenhower-Diem letters, etc.) is made irrelevant by an additional reason to stay in Vietnam: a "commitment" to the tens of thousands of Americans who have already lost their lives in that fruitless struggle. The "They-shall-not-have-died-in-vain" argument, with its clearly potent political implications, is alone enough, in the calculus of the [Nixon] administration, to compel continued American prosecution of the war. A new corrolary to this argument is that the protection of American lives dictated the invasion of Cambodia. But there is no evidence that pouring additional American blood into Southeast Asia is in any way either effective or redemptive of those Americans who have already died.
As long as the Bush campaign and the media insist on re-debating the Vietnam War, it's worth remembering how widespread criticism of the war had become by 1970-71, what solid reasons there were to criticize it and how generally unpopular it was.
9 comments:
As long as the BUSH ADMINISTRATION and the MEDIA continue debating Vietnam?? Are you kidding??
Vietnam wouldn't have been near the issue it has become -- at the expense of current problems -- if KERRY hadn't built his entire campaign around it. He's the one who opened that door.
Both sides have gone to entirely inappropriate lengths to make it an issue. BOTH SIDES, not one.
Patrick
Funny how those who support Bush, see this as an issue brought up by Kerry. Yet what would you like to bet, if Kerry hadn't mentioned his Vietnam service, the Bushies would have have asked "What's he trying to hide?"
BTW, have you seen this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3609312.stm
Sounds like more "plausable deniability" to me, but the article includes this quote from Bush:
"I think him [John Kerry] going to Vietnam was more heroic than my flying fighter jets. He was in harm's way and I wasn't."
With all due respect, I think it's equally funny that those who support Kerry seem to think that it's okay for Kerry to have focused virtually the entire campaign on Vietnam on the grounds that if he hadn't, Bush and the angry vets would have made an issue out of it, anyway.
I frankly don't think Bush would have been so quick to jump on Kerry's war record -- considering that he had none -- had Kerry not beat us over the head with his war medals for so long. The vets probably would have attacked no matter what, and those who did probably would have sided with Bush...that's common sense.
But Kerry is the one who brought this useless debate to center stage first and Kerry is the one who has made sure it has stayed at center stage while complaining that the GOP isn't talking about "serious issues."
Patrick
Oh, I don't think I mentioned angry vets...just the Bush campaign. I don't believe they are the same thing, although there is probably some overlap. As for "those who support Kerry...", I suppose you are talking specifically about me, since I have only seen that comment one other place, and I wrote it. If I'm wrong, please forgive my conceit.
From what I have read elsewhere, it seems that generally those angry vets are actually offended by Kerry's anti-war activism after he got home, and were looking for a way to discredit his war record first before getting to the heart of their beef with him. While I, personally, would rather focus on his actions to try to end the war, out of admiration, Senator Kerry didn't ask me which issue I thought he should concentrate on during the convention.
I wonder what piece of personal history Bush will direct our attention towards in his convention.
Chronoligically, it was Michael Moore speaking in support of Wesley Clark's campaign who first raised the issue to national attention by a public crack about Bush having been a "deserter."
But that only became an issue because the Republicans went ballistic over it. Which really did surprise me - a comparison of the Vietnam-era activities of Bush and Kerry works to Kerry's advantage.
What the Democratic convention stressed was Kerry's personal heroism as a soldier in Vietnam. Politics is politics. War heroes make use of that fact in their campaign.
The Bushes are also the Bushes. Of course, Kerry was making his own kind of political "pre-emptive strike" anticipating the Bush campaign would do exactly what they are doing with the Swift Boat Liars campaign. This is only the beginning of the Republican sleaze-slinging. It was going to come, and Kerry had to fight back against it.
And Cherie is right: it's Kerry's antiwar activities that burn the Republicans. Most of them prefer Bush's record of rhetorically supporting the war while he personally opposed it by avoiding it, and then even avoided most of his National Guard service.
The real point that Kerry has been making in his counter-attack is that Bush is personally a coward, hiding behind the sleaze slung by underlings while he himself pretends to be above it all. My own sense is that Kerry has made the point stick.
Where it will come back to bite Bush is in the one-on-one debates. Bush has been speaking in front on crowds screened to be only Republican faithful. Kerry has been speaking at genuine public events and confronting critics face-to-face. When Kerry tosses the Bush campaign's charges in Bush's face at a debate, the seeds he's planted about Bush's personal weaknesses will start to blossom when people see Bush's responses. - Bruce
First, let me assure Cherie and others that I had no one specific in mind in my earlier comment. I have heard several supporters of Kerry insist that there's nothing wrong with Kerry spending so much time on the Vietnam issue because of the "preemptive strike" strategy.
Perhaps I am the only one who sees the irony in praising Kerry for his "preemptive strike" when the major issue at hand is Bush's "preemptive strike" against Iraq for the alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Bruce, as for a comparison of Vietnam-era activities of Bush and Kerry working to Kerry's advantage, a recent poll seems to show exactly the opposite. According to the Los Angeles Times, Bush is suddenly leading 46% to 39% on the question of who has the honesty and integrity to serve as president...an unexpected outcome considering the intelligence info which prompted the war in Iraq. A month earlier -- and before things got nasty with the Swift Boat Veterans, the two candidates were in a dead tie. It was after this poll that Kerry really began lashing out against Bush on the issue of denouncing the ads.
I'm not sure I see how Kerry stands to benefit greatly from a comparison of war records this late into the campaign. Everyone is well aware of who was where at the time. At this point, the continual obsession with this pointless topic would suggest to me that we have candidates who can't seem to focus on the future.
Patrick
Incidentally, Bruce...I see that we are again suggesting that Bush didn't earn the Honorable Discharge he received. Are we questioning the validity of the "official record?"
If he received the Honorable Discharge than he must have deserved it, right? If not, how can it be unreasonable to question the "official record" of a decorated war veteran?
You stated that the Navy's records support Kerry's version of the story, so Kerry must have done what was necessary to earn the medals. How is it that the same standards cannot be acceptable for Bush?
Patrick
Patrick, I don't think anyone is suggesting that "official records" should be disregarded. In Bush's case, it's the *lack* of officials records that are the real question with the Air Guard service. Why did he stop flying? The questions around that are the most serious ones. There's no real question about the fact that he missed his flight physical in 1972, which meant that he lost the ability to fly planes for the Guard, which is what he had trained to do. It certainly looks like an irresponsible thing to have done. And, yes, it does raise questions about whether the Guard treated this particular member of the Bush clan in an entirely proper fashion.
In Kerry's case, the incidents disputed by the Swift Boat Liars aren't a matter of Kerry's type of discharge. These are incidents attested by contemporary documentation as well as by multiple eyewitnesses today. The Swift Boat Liars have not raised any credible challenges to those events.
<< Perhaps I am the only one who sees the irony in praising Kerry for his "preemptive strike" when the major issue at hand is Bush's "preemptive strike" against Iraq for the alleged weapons of mass destruction. >>
Actually, I intended that as an ironic comment. So I'm glad *somebody* noticed. :)
I assume Where the Kerry campaign hopes to come out ahead in the Vietnam-era comparison is in the setup of Bush for other challenges to his credibility, like on WMDs, and his administration's massive use of unscrupulous political tactics, like the exposure of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Like Clinton did successfully in 1972, Kerry is trying to turn Bush's campaign style into a liability. - Bruce
I'm going to share some personal knowlege here about my husband and the guards. Take it however you want. John tells me he doesn't care if I talk about this. He says it's his record, and I don't think he's planning on running for office...
John was a member of the Air National Guard. He joined in Massachussetts, and transfered to Kansas after a year (after having finished his training in San Antonio and Biloxi). After about another year, he stopped going, mainly in protest of what our govt was doing in Nicaraugua (he thinks this was about 1985). He worked with some groups to try to get his status changed to concientious objector (which never actually happened), the guards transferred him to something called Individual Ready Reserve, and he just never went back. In 1989, at the end of his enlistment, he got an honorable discharge in the mail.
Now, I don't think he handled this properly, but this is proof, to me, that an honorable discharge from the National Guard doesn't necessarily mean someone fulfilled his obligations. I'm sure that if anyone ever wanted to look at John's guard records, it would be pretty obvious, since all the paperwork should be there. He didn't have important parents.
And just one more thing, a preemptive strike in a political campaign where it could be called a war of words is a whole different thing than a preemptive strike in a real war where people have died. I think that comparison discounts the sacrifices our soldiers make when serving to protect us!
Post a Comment