Vietnam

Vietnam

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INDEX:

The Last Man to Die for a Mistake, John Kerry's 1971 Address to Congress, Regarding Vietnam

The Myth of Spitting

Myths and Coming To Terms WithVietnam

The Beginnings of the Vietnam War

Kennedy's Escalation

The Fall of Dien Bien Phu

John Kerry And The VVAW

The VVAW

Dewey Canyon III

Mayor Richard J. Daley Opposed Vietnam War

Torture in Vietnam

The Last Man to Die for a Mistake

This article presents the famed stirring testimony that John Kerry, then a decorated, 27 year old Navy veteran of Vietnam, made before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 23, 1971 about the Vietnam War.

"I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia.

These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit - the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation. The term Winter Soldier is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriots and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough. We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now.

We could come back to this country, we could be quiet, we could hold our silence, we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out...

In our opinion and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.

We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.

We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart.

They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American.

We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime.

We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties.

We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum. We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals. We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break.

We fought using weapons against 'oriental human beings.' We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater.

We watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the hill for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 81s and Fire Base 6s, and so many others.

Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese.

Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake.

Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, 'the first President to lose a war.'

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?...

We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country -

the question of racism which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions such as the use of weapons;
the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions;
in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam.

That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything.

An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian Nation of Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly.

He told me how as a boy on an Indian reservation he had watched television and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said, "My God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people," and he stopped.

And that is what we are trying to say, that we think this thing has to end. We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership?

We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war.

The Army says they never leave their wounded. The marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country...

We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission -

to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war,
to pacify our own hearts,
to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more.
And so when thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning."

Speech by John F. Kerry. to Congress, on April 23, 1971, about the Vietnam war.

The Myth of Spitting

by Denis Mueller

One of the lasting myths of the Vietnam War is that veterans, upon returning home, were spat upon by anti-war protesters. This is simply not true. There may have been some isolated incidents of this kind of conduct but the record shows that this type of abuse by the anti-war movement did not occur when veterans returned. This is not to say that some members of the anti-war movement were not hostile, but by and large, the anti-war movement viewed the veteran as a victim of our government's policies.

How does one disprove a myth? Well, one of the things that can be done is to look at records of the time. Do any incidents of spitting on veterans appear in either the Los Angeles Times, New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle?

No, they don't! In fact, a look at articles in magazines of that time period find no references to anti-war protesters spitting on veterans. Neither are there any pictures of these supposed incidents. Logic would dictate that if this occurred, at the level that is said, then some photographer would have taken a picture. In fact, there aren't any existing pictures offered by the FBI, the army, news services, the returning veterans themselves, all of whom had the power to record incidents of this type. Furthermore, there isn't even written proof of these
veterans reporting these alleged incidents to the proper authorities.

Ask yourself this question, why are there not police reports of spitting incidents? If veterans returned home and were greeted by angry protesters don't you think someone would have been arrested? Yet there are no records of this to be found anywhere.

So how has this become part of our national myth? John O'Conner, a marine chaplain who would go on to become Cardinal O'Conner speaks of anti-war protesters spitting on soldiers at the Pentagon protests of 1967. This too is a lie. There were hundreds of camera people there at the time. We see pictures of protesters putting flowers in the barrel of rifles, we see protesters and the police battle, but no pictures of spitting. When asked to be specific O'Conner declined. That's because it never happened and O'Conner is a liar.

When Dr. Robert Lifton began giving psychiatric evaluations of returning veterans, his work would serve to pave the way for the recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS.), Dr. Lifton reported that no veterans gave any examples of this kind of behavior. The fact of the matter is that the most abusive treatment of veterans did not come from hippie girls but from the administration and VFW halls across the nation.

Many veterans that I have spoken to remember being abused by VFW members who often ridiculed by them. They did this by telling the returning veterans that their war was not a real war or often asked them, "why they couldn't win their war?" The other group to abuse veterans was Richard Nixon's administration whose VA refused to treat them for Agent Orange poisoning. Nixon also used informants against the veterans that opposed the war and turned the FBI loose to disrupt their activities.

There was, however, one group that did indeed spit on veterans. It was the young republicans who spat on Ron Kovic and other veterans at the 1972 republican convention. The veterans were protesting and calling for an end to the war in Vietnam and were greeted by the young zealots of the GOP who cursed and spat upon them. Let's get the record straight once and for all. It was the administration who abused veterans by sending them to fight and die and then not taking care of them afterward, not the anti-war movement.

Sources: Interview with veterans for the documentary, Citizen Soldiers: The Story of the VVAW.
The Spitting Image: Jerry Lembcke

Myths Keep Us From Coming To Terms With Vietnam
by Bob Buzzanco
(This was written in April of 2000 but deserves another read today.)

As we approach the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War on April 30 and the reunification of Vietnam under socialist rule, memories of that conflict are still alive and a vital part of American political discourse.

During a recent visit to Vietnam, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen pointedly refused to apologize for the U.S. military action there, explaining, as he put it, "Both nations were scarred by this. They [the Vietnamese] have their own scars from the war. We certainly have ours."

Cohen's words echo those of President Carter, who in 1977 refused to normalize relations with Vietnam because, in his words, "the destruction was mutual."

Vietnam has also been a major part of this year's presidential politics. With the rival major candidates, George W. Bush and Al Gore, respectively, explaining his service in the National Guard or touting his time in Southeast Asia. Even more than Bush and Gore, Sen. John McCain put Vietnam into a central place during his run for the presidency. As the son and grandson of admirals and a prisoner of war in Vietnam for nearly six years, McCain's opinions on the war gained significant attention and carried great weight.

There is no basis even to suggest that the fallout from the war affected the United States and Vietnam similarly.

In particular, McCain believed that American troops in Vietnam, as a common complaint holds, fought with one hand tied behind their backs, that it was "senseless" and "illogical," in McCain's words, to not carry the ground war over the 17th parallel into North Vietnam or to not wage a totally unrestrained air war, especially with B-52
bombers.

Cohen and McCain tap into rich myths about the war, views that still resonate after 25 years but also, and unfortunately, are misguided and wrong and keep us still from coming to terms with Vietnam.

There is no basis even to suggest that the fallout from the war affected the United States and Vietnam similarly. While the United States suffered serious losses -- more than 58,000 of its military killed and billions of dollars spent -- Vietnam's losses were staggering. More than 3 million Vietnamese died during the American war, with at least that many wounded. More than 15 million Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians became refugees. American weapons -- especially the 6.5 million tons of bombs dropped on Indochina -- destroyed more than 10,000 hamlets and 25 million acres of forest in South Vietnam (the land of the U.S. ally in the war); additionally the United States dropped more than 11.2 million gallons of Agent Orange and 400,000 tons of napalm on South Vietnam, a nation roughly the size of New Mexico or Arizona.

Since the end of the war, thousands of Vietnamese continued to be killed every year from contact with unexploded bombs from the war, and their environment continues to feel the effects of dioxin and other herbicides. There is nothing "mutual" about such destruction; "their scars" run much deeper than "ours."

McCain's point is equally troubling, for it offers a "stabbed in the back" explanation in place of a reasoned examination of a war that was morally, politically and strategically wrong. Indeed, many of America's ranking military officers, the comrades of McCain's father and grandfather, had warned against a war in Vietnam from the 1950s forward.

In 1954, amid the Dien Bien Phu crisis, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff recognized that the Nationalist-Communist Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, held the military initiative and were successfully identified with "freedom from the colonial yoke and with the improvement of the general welfare" of the Vietnamese people.

By 1963, as the Kennedy administration was escalating the U.S. commitment to Vietnam, the incoming Marine Commandant, Gen. Wallace Greene, lamented to fellow officers that "we're up to our knees in the quagmire" in Vietnam and warned "you see what happened to the French," which had lost its colonial hold over Indochina in 1954, "well, maybe the same thing is going to happen to us."

Officers held similar fears regarding the way the war was fought, but not because they had "one hand tied behind their back."

"If anything came out of Vietnam," Gen. Harold K. Johnson, the Army Chief of Staff, observed, "it was that air power couldn't do the job." Even the American commander in Vietnam, Gen. William Westmoreland, believed that a totally unrestrained air war would not have been decisive, writing after the war: "I still doubt that the North Vietnamese would have relented."

Westmoreland was attacked by the Marines, who believed his strategy of attrition, as Gen. Victor Kulak put it, was "wasteful of American lives (and) promising a protracted, strength-sapping battle with small likelihood of a successful outcome.

And on it went; throughout the entire U.S. experience in Vietnam, from the end of World War II until the 1970s, American officers were never enthusiastic about fighting in Vietnam, were always aware of the perils of war there, remained deeply divided internally over intervention and strategy and were not optimistic that they would succeed.

Far from fighting with their hands behind their back, they were able to unleash the technological might of the United States on a small country without forcing the enemy there to yield to their power, an outcome they expected long before the war ended.

Why then, amid the historical evidence to the contrary, do the Cohen and McCain myths persist?

A deep examination into the historical record on Vietnam shows that the destruction was far from "mutual," and that military leaders complained about intervening in the war itself, not that they were fighting short-handed.

Perhaps politicians and many media members feel more comfortable with these explanations than with the truth, than with the recognition that the United States intervened into a war of liberation and revolution against the Vietnamese.

While claiming to be the champion of freedom and self-determination, the United States waged a brutal and bloody war on the people of a small country, both ally and enemy alike, to warn them of the perils of self-determination, be it nationalist or socialist. Rather than allow the Vietnamese to choose their own political system, government and social organization, the United States tried to violently force its preferred system on a people who were not receptive to it.

Bob Buzzanco is an associate professor of history at the University of Houston.

The Beginnings of the Vietnam War
By Denis Mueller

On September 2, 1945, representatives from the Emperor of Japan signed the surrender papers ending World War II. On that same day Ho Chi Minh signed a declaration of independence and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was born. The proclamations said: "All men are created equal. Their Creator endows them with certain inalienable rights, among those are, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

If this sounds a lot like our own Declaration of Independence that's because it is. Ho was a student of history and of the United States. In 1919, he had tried to get President Wilson to endorse Vietnamese independence. Wilson refused to meet with him. Ho was an ally of the United States during WWII. We had given him money and weapons so he could fight the Japanese and Ho Chi Minh was certain that the United States would reward this. After all, the United States had started as a colony and Ho had fought with the Americans, so the Vietnamese leader was certain that the U.S. would endorse the Vietnamese call for independence. We didn't. Instead we supported a return of the French.

At first, Ho Chi Minh tried to negotiate with the French but, after talks collapsed, a war of independence broke out in Vietnam. The United States now gave military aid to the French, so, in effect, we armed both sides. And from 1946 to 1954, we poured millions into coffers of the French military. In 1954, the unthinkable happened. The French, after millions of dollars in US aid, were defeated at Dien Bien Phu. Many in the Eisenhower administration wanted to go to war and replace the French. But President Eisenhower, who had just negotiated a perilous peace in Korea, was in no mood to send American boys to Vietnam. But others in the administration had different ideas, including Secretary of State Charles Foster Dulles. "I do not believe that this country, the United States, would simply say, too bad we were licked and that is the end of it. We can raise hell and the Communists will find it just as expensive to resist as we are now finding it."

So we set out to raise some hell. One of the first things we did was to create a government that we could call our own and Ngo Dinh Diem was installed as the ruler of South Vietnam. Vietnam had been separated at the 17th parallel with Ho Chi Minh's forces ruling the north and the newly created Diem government in the south. Both sides had agreed to elections in 1956 but the US had no intention in keeping their end of the bargain.

But Diem had no support, no army and no popular appeal. To survive, he needed the American CIA, and the Saigon Military Mission was soon born. First, they paid off many of Diem's opponents in the south. Next, they transported a million Vietnamese and turned them loose in the south. The effects of this influx of refugees had devastating effects on the south. Many of those displaced became the early Viet Cong. Diem made two other tragic mistakes, which seemed logical at the time, but would prove to be devastating for the Vietnamese.

First, he ordered the French to leave. This removed any kind of government in South Vietnam. Next, because he suspected they were communists, Diem ordered the Chinese out of the country. This destroyed the commerce of South Vietnam because the Chinese were the middle men in Vietnam's economy. So, when rice farmers brought their crops to market to exchange for necessary goods, no one was there to trade with them. Diem had spent most of his time out of the country and had no knowledge of the inner workings of Vietnam.

The invaders from the north soon took land from the peasants, with the support of the American CIA, and refugees from the north increasingly dominated the Vietnam government. In the name of anti-communism, the seeds of a war that would take the lives of two million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans was born. We weren't trying to save Vietnam. We were, in the words of Charles Foster Dulles, "raising some hell."

Sources: “The Pentagon Papers“, Daniel Ellsberg; “JFK, The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy“, L. Fletcher Prouty.

Kennedy's Escalation
By Denis Mueller

The escalation of the war in Vietnam followed the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. Kennedy approved a counter-insurgency plan drawn up by the Pentagon, only a few days after his term started. The plan would increase the American commitment to Vietnam. Kennedy believed that we could succeed where the French had failed. The young President and the military ignored the warnings of French President Charles de Gaulle about Vietnam. Kennedy felt that we were fighting for freedom, unlike the French, and that the Vietnamese would see this and rally to the cause.

His chief advisor in this stage of the war's development became Walter Rostow. Rostow was a professor at MIT who championed counter-insurgency as a method to defeat communism and Kennedy, a fan of Ian Fleming's James Bond, went along with the Rostow's idea. The chief problem became President Diem of South Vietnam. What did he have to offer a population that was being uprooted? Diem's family, and the refugees who had moved from the north, displaced peasants who had lived there previously and controlled an entirely corrupt government.

In 1961, vice-president Lyndon Johnson went to Vietnam and called President Diem, the Winston Churchill of Vietnam, which could be described as a unique tribute to Mr. Churchill. Johnson called for intervention. "The key to what is done by Asians in defense of Southeast Asians' freedom is the United States. Leadership rests on the knowledge and faith in the United States' power."

Next, General Maxwell Taylor and Rostow went to Vietnam. They called for an increase in American power. Rostow lobbied for an American force of 25,000 men be sent to Vietnam and Taylor insisted that the US could show the South Vietnamese how to win the war.

The American effort succeeded for a brief period, but the displacement of Vietnamese villagers did not endure the population to Diem's government. The strategic Hamlet program was based on the American treatment of the Indians. You gather them up, confine them to a reservation and control them. "We have increased our training mission and our logistic support," said Kennedy. The hamlets forced people from their homes, often leaving them with no shelter or food. This only increased their alienation. Kennedy refused to listen to criticism of these programs and dismissed John K. Galbraith, then an Ambassador to India, when he said that aid for Diem was useless.

The situation continued to worsen as protests increased. Diem's hold on the government and reality decreased. In the summer of 1963, Buddhist resentment toward the favorite treatment of the Catholic population, erupted. In May, Diem prohibited the celebration of Buddha's birthday and riots soon followed in which several people were killed. In reaction to this, a Buddhist monk set himself on fire. Soon the protests spread to include dissidents of all types. The government arrested hundreds of monks and the situation continued to deteriorate.

Amazingly, US intelligence (and I use the term 'intelligence' loosely) did not foresee the revolt. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, only two weeks before, had talked about a "steady improvement." This was not the case. Soon the CIA supported a military coup against Diem. The policy made no sense. We had insisted that this was their war, not ours, but now a military regime had been installed with our aid. Three weeks later, President Kennedy was assassinated and Lyndon Johnson took over. Johnson said that he would not be the first president to lose a war. "I am not going to be the President who saw Southeast Asia go the way that China went." This became known as the domino theory and the US was on the road to disaster.

Sources: Noam ChomskyCopyright 2003 by Pulse Direct, Inc. All rights reserved. Feel free to forward this, in its entirety, to others.

The Fall of Dien Bien Phu
By Denis Mueller

The Vietminh Communist guerrillas fought on the side of the Allies during the Second World War against the Japanese.

Their commander at the time was a young general named Vo Nguyen Giap. Giap had been a history major in Hanoi and was a keen admirer of Napoleon. He studied Napoleon's campaigns and learned much from the famous commander. The French would soon see that for them, he had learned far too much.

President Roosevelt never wanted to return the French to power in Indochina but his successor, Harry Truman, had no such misgivings. He supported the French return and the guerrillas soon turned their attention to fighting the French.

Giap had no love for the French since his young wife had died in a French prison, torture has a way of coming back at you, and he relished the opportunity to kick out the French.

The struggle continued on for many years until a new French commander, General Henri Navarre, decided to try to lure the Viet Minh into what he saw as a trap. He would lure them into a fatal battle, or so he thought, and crush the rebellion.

So he turned an unfortified area into a military compound with a garrison of 14,000 troops. It had among other things two mobile brothels to ease the French boredom.

The French thought they were going to lure Giap into their trap but Giap had plans of his own. He moved 50,000 of his men into the area along with artillery, which was provided by the Chinese and captured American guns. Giap's guns pounded the French airfields and held the French garrison in a trap from which there was no escape. The French were getting desperate as the noose began to tighten.

Giap's men dug a network of tunnels and trenches that protected them from attacks from the air. They stormed point after point and began a fearsome artillery bombardment until they were finally overrun by the Viet Minh. The fort was overrun by Giap's troops and the French were forced to surrender. They had lost all but 3,000 troops and the war
was over.

The French surrendered to the rebels and Vietnam's struggle against, first the Japanese, and then the French was over.

The treaty call for elections in 1954 but the south, under the advice of the Americans, refused to abide by its decision. It would prove to be a fatal move by the Americans who would sink deeper and deeper into the quagmire of Vietnam. Finally, Giap would defeat the Americans as well and Vietnam would become united. It was a terrible decision by the United States to support the French. In hindsight we never understood that this was a war of independence for the Vietnamese. We should have listened to Roosevelt.

Sources: Too many to mention but see Emile de Antonio's film, “In the Year of the Pig” Copyright 2004 by PENN LLC. All rights reserved. Go ahead and forward this, in its entirety, to others.

John Kerry and the VVAW
By Denis Mueller

In the next eight months you will hear plenty about John Kerry and his tour in Vietnam. You will also hear about his involvement in the anti-war movement. Here is that story. John Kerry, as you know, was a war hero. He was an excellent commander and apparently well liked by the men who served under him. He began to have reservations about that gruesome war and when he came home he began to act.

At the time other veterans were having similar thoughts about the war, they organized a group called the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which held a meeting at a rather shabby Howard Johnson's in Detroit. People came from around the country and talked to each other about what they had witnessed and, in some cases, about the atrocities they had committed or had seen. It was, in many ways, the first rap sessions conducted by veterans.

The VVAW began to call themselves "Winter Soldiers". They were named after the Winter Soldiers of Valley Forge. It must be remembered that these men were patriots, certainly Kerry was, who felt betrayed by their country. Many had joined the service but had come back home disillusioned by what they had seen. They questioned why they were there and were adamant about their feelings. These were men who had killed people and who had seen others killed.

The country itself was divided and tired of war. And the meeting in Detroit, while bringing the vets together, was largely ignored by the press. So they decided to go into the belly of the beast and come to Washington. Their operation was to be called Dewey Canyon III. During that week John Kerry appeared before Congress and gave a speech that touched the hearts of many. It expressed the feelings of many of the men and propelled Kerry into the spotlight.

The vets discussed what to do among themselves and they decided that they would march to the Supreme Court and throw their medals, which they had won for their valor, away. Kerry was against this idea. He felt that they should collect the medals and place them in a body bag and then deliver them. But many of the vets felt they needed to do something more dramatic so they decided they would go up and one by one give their medals back.

It was one of the most dramatic protests in American history and people lined the streets of Washington to cheer them. Kerry did not throw his medals away, many of them could not do it, but he did throw the medals of some people who had asked him to do so. Kerry was never a radical but he respected those who were and always respected VVAW's democracy. Later Kerry left the group because he felt it had become too radical.

So there you have it. The men of VVAW changed the course of history. Their demonstration was praised in the press and people across the country were deeply moved by their protest. The vets played an important role in stopping the war. It was a needless stupid war that cost the lives of over 2 million Vietnamese and over 55,000 Americans. John Kerry was a patriot, and still is, and the VVAW was an anti-war group of mostly combat soldiers who had seen enough and wanted to do something about it. That is what democracy looks like. God bless them!

Sources: Citizen Soldier: The Story of the VVAW, a video documentary by Denis Mueller

Copyright 2004 by PENN LLC. All rights reserved. Go ahead and forward this, in its entirety, to others.

The VVAW
By Denis Mueller

Much has been written about the Vietnam Veteran. He has been characterized as dangerous, isolated, guilt-ridden and an- gered over the treatment that he received upon coming home. But he is rarely seen as part of the anti-war movement. This fact has been sadly missing from the history of the Vietnam War. Veterans who fought the war in Vietnam came home to protest that same war and their involvement proved to be an important component to the anti-war movement. By 1967 G.I. coffeehouses began to appear around bases across the country but the movement didn't really take hold until the formation of a group called the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

The VVAW was made up of mostly combat veterans. They numbered over 50,000 members at one time. Their first national action took place in Detroit, Michigan where the VVAW conducted war crimes hearings. Veterans came up and testified to the crimes they had committed or had witnessed. Their contention was that the Mi Lai Massacre was standard operating procedure. This was, in essence, the Vietnam War. The national press, being what they are, dismissed them but they couldn't ignore their next action "Dewey Canyon III."

While the press was slow to report the activities of anti-war veterans the Nixon administration clearly understood their potential power. The up-coming demonstrations in Washington by the VVAW could be disastrous for the administration. The VVAW was determined that their voice be heard. They marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to cheers of the people of Washington. Nixon had wanted to attack them but some in his administration objected saying "this would be a mistake" and that the last thing Nixon needed was for Vietnam Veterans to be attacked by the Washington police.

So the Veterans came to the steps of the Supreme Court to stand in line, say something at the podium if they wished, and then throw their medals away. The same medals that they had recently gained for their valor during the Vietnam War. One by one they spoke: " I pray that time will forgive me and my brothers for what we did." Paul F. Wither went to the stand and spoke clearly, " Spec 4, army, retired. I'm taking in nine Purple Hearts, Distinguished Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star and a lot of other shit. This is for my brothers," Withers threw the medal away and limped off. One newsman grabbed one of the medals but was quickly told by a veteran. "Listen, you newsmen, we are not giving you the medals. We're turning them over to the country."

One by one they went to speak. By the end of the day they had caught the attention of a nation. Soon after this action their membership applications skyrocketed. The veterans brought with them a moral authority that could not be matched by the administration. Nixon sent the FBI, who should get a lifetime achievement award for doing damage to the country, after the VVAW but their ranks swelled. Finally historians did what Nixon could not do, they chose to write them out of history. But their story is not forgotten and there are several books and films out now which tell their story. Those of us who saw them on that spring day will never forget.

I watched them throw their medals away while I was in college. One friend of mine remarked, " this is the coolest thing I thing I have ever seen." It was maybe the most dramatic anti-war demonstration that ever occurred. The VVAW are still active. You can look them up on their website. They continue to work for peace and veteran rights even today. In the end Nixon turned out to be a bum but the VVAW were heroes. They were men and he was shallow, paranoid creep. Remember the VVAW on Memorial Day and give thanks for them.

Sources: The New Winter Soldiers, Richard Moser

Dewey Canyon III
by Denis Mueller

"We were ultra democratic," said former army private Bill Branson. "We called each other brother and we meant it. We wanted to get the beast by the throat and we did." A week of activity was peaking and the veterans, who came to Washington, were determined to get the attention of the country. They had tried in Detroit, and although their meeting where they spoke of the atrocities they had seen and committed brought them together, somehow they knew it would not be enough.

In many ways it was the first meeting for veterans, which would deal with the effects of post-traumatic stress. After the war it would be the, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, who would lead the bureaucratic fight for the recognition of post-traumatic stress as a disability. They would also lead the fight to expose Agent Orange. Finally, through the brave efforts of a women named Maude DiVicker in Chicago, the government was forced to take notice.

The mainstream media had ignored them in Detroit and some to this day claimed they were not veterans but this is a lie. The VVAW were predominately combat veterans and patriots in the tradition of Thomas Paine. In fact they called themselves "Winter Soldiers". This was a name they adopted from the hardships that the men of Valley Forge had to endure. They were also predominantly working class men who, along with minorities, bore the brunt of the fighting in Vietnam.

They now decided they had to go to Washington and they went to the podium to speak, dressed in their service fatigues in what would be the most dramatic protest in American history, today would be their day. One by one they approached the podium:

"My name is Peter Branigan. I got a purple heart and I hope I get another fighting these motherfuckers." He then turned and threw the medal, which he had received for his valor, onto the steps of the Supreme Court building. Another man limping, bracing himself with his cane, which he used for a crutch as he walked, approached the microphone. "Paul F. Withers spec four, retired. I've taken in nine Purple Hearts, Distinguished Service Cross, Bronze Star, Silver Star and a lot of other shit. This is for my brothers." One by one, it lasted for over three hours, they threw away these prizes of war, and by the end of the day, with the American public looking on, the anti-war movement had won.

The next day the papers across the country praised their efforts and questioned the Vietnam war. Public opinion changed that day and the men who had seen so much bloodshed, seen so many atrocities, watched their friends die, now were greeted as heroes, with people hugging them at the airport and cheering them as they walked down the streets of Washington. It was called, Operation Dewey Canyon Three, an incursion into enemy territory.

At one point the Vietnam Veterans Against had over 50,000 members. They had chapters all across the country. By contrast a group of veterans called, Veterans for a Just Peace, had under 100 members despite the financial support of the Nixon administration. Nixon went after them and unleashed his illegal henchmen, some of whom would latter become the men of Watergate, who later performed the illegal break-in at the Democratic headquarters. The vets were a powerful ingredient in the anti-war movement because of their service. You couldn't say they were cowards because they had fought there and you could not dismiss what they had seen.

Some people do not understand that the Vietnam War was an invasion of a country. It was a civil war in which we intervened, and in the end, over 2,000,000 Vietnamese lay dead. We were the ones who broke the agreement of the Geneva convention, which called for elections, and installed our puppet instead because we knew Ho Chi Minh would win. Senator Morton of Kentucky, a Republican, said that Ho Chi Minh was the George Washington of Vietnam.

It is the job of moral people to, when they see injustice, which contradicts what they had previously thought, to change their position. That is what thinking people do.

Sources: In the Year of the Pig, by Emile de Antonio Citizen Soldier; The Story of the VVAW, by Denis Mueller

Richard J. Daley Opposed Vietnam War, Historians Say

BY FRAN SPIELMAN, CITY HALL REPORTER

Richard J. Daley never lived down the ugly image of police officers clashing with anti-war demonstrators on the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. But he had more in common with protesters than anyone could have imagined.

Moved by the death in Vietnam of the Harvard-educated son of a Bridgeport neighbor and close friend, Daley had privately turned against the war more than a year before the infamous Chicago convention.

“He said, `What a waste. For what?’ ” recalled former Federal Communications Commission chairman and longtime Daley friend Newton Minnow.

“The irony of 1968 is that Daley was perceived as hard-line, but he agreed with the protesters. History ought to know that he was against the war long before some of the protestors.”

Acclaimed presidential historian and native Chicagoan Michael Bechloss added, “As early as 1966, Daley told President Lyndon Johnson in private that, politically, Vietnam was turning into a disaster. He told Johnson what his beloved father Mike Daley always told him. He said, `Mr. President, when you’ve got a losing hand, you fold your cards.’ ”

Richard J. Daley’s behind-the-scenes — and unheeded — advice to Johnson to get out of Vietnam was just one of the many political and human insights to emerge from today’s symposium at the University of Illinois at Chicago 50 years to the day after the late mayor’s first inauguration.

There was Daley’s decision to ignore his mother’s advice and run for sheriff in 1946, the only election he ever lost, and his unfulfilled dream of tearing down Soldier Field and replacing it with a Near West Side sports stadium adjacent to the UIC campus he called his crowning achievement.

And there was then-presidential candidate John F. Kennedy’s private pitch to Daley to run for governor in 1960, arguing that the two Democrats would “make a great ticket.” Daley politely declined, then took Kennedy to school.

“The mayor shook his head and said to Kennedy, `You’ve got to understand Illinois. If there are going to be two Catholics running statewide in Illinois this year, one of them is going to win and it’s not going to be you,’ ” Bechloss said.

Bechloss said there was “no question” that Kennedy credited Daley with the Illinois victory that handed him the presidency by a narrow margin. Some even said the election had been stolen by the vote fraud that made Chicago famous.

When Kennedy was assassinated, Daley cried for the first time since the death of his own father, Bechloss said. Before Robert F. Kennedy was shot nearly five years later after claiming victory in the California primary, the last phone call he made was to Daley. Chicago’s mayor had pledged to publicly endorse RFK, a move that would have sewn up the Democratic nomination because, as the younger Kennedy often put it, “Daley’s the ballgame.”

“Just think how different history might have been if RFK had taken a different route out of that ballroom that evening or had Johnson taken Daley’s advice” on Vietnam, Bechloss said.

“No mayor of the 20th Century had a more important role in advising presidents than Daley. He was not only a kingmaker, but a brilliant political mind.”

Patricia Daley Martino, the oldest of the late mayor’s seven children, offered a rare glimpse into the family life that Richard J. Daley guarded so dearly. She said her father was the “happiest man I ever knew” and would often wake up singing, “Good Morning Mr. Zip-Zip-Zip with your hair cut as short as mine.”

“We had the happiest of childhoods. He made us feel so loved. He was supportive. He was accessible and he was fun. He lit up our house,” Daley Martino said, recalling that the Daley kids would change seats while attending Sox games to be near their father.

But the rosy glow created by a steady stream of Daley tributes over the last week was not enough to erase the ugliness of 1968 when, as the demonstrators chanted, “The whole world was watching.”

University of Illinois at Chicago historian Robert Remini acknowledged that the demonstrations “could have been handled a different way” and that Daley “could have, perhaps, been much more open with the public.”

But Remini said, “He did his very best to contain what was rapidly getting out of control.”

Daley Martino made the point her father did during a post-convention interview with then-CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite: No one lost their lives in the Chicago demonstrations and 51 police officers were seriously injured.

“The object was to destroy Chicago. My father’s job was to protect Chicago and all of its citizens. And that’s what he did,” she said.

Vietnam Veterans Say Torture Policy Not an Aberration -

Dates Back To Vietnam War
By DaveCurry & Barry Romo

As the scandal of abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners continues to intensify, the national organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) calls on policy makers to hold the real decision makers responsible for these crimes rather than scapegoating the individual GI's.

VVAW has documented the torture and abuse of prisoners dating back to the Vietnam War and has seen how the military is constructed to confuse and instruct individual soldiers to conduct these horrendous actions.

While many have expressed surprise at these recent revelations of torture, VVAW members have witnessed the American military's systematic pattern of prisoner mistreatment since the Vietnam War. Of the 109 Vietnam Veterans who testified at the Winter Soldier Investigations in January 1971, more than a third (39) testified to observing and having first-hand knowledge of the mistreatment of prisoners of war.

Incidents described in detail included beating of prisoners, throwing prisoners from helicopters, requiring POW's to kneel beside piles of dead comrades sometimes for hours, attaching electric wires to body parts, interrogation with attack dogs, interrogation with snakes, water torture, and burning skin with heated pieces of medal. Even back then some graphic evidence was available in photos and slides of specific incidents.

The accused enlisted personnel at Abu Ghraib say that their actions were directed by Military Intelligence (MI) agents. While GI's were able to identify the MI agents in selected photographs of abuses in Abu Ghraib, the accused enlisted personnel may not be able to identify agents efficiently enough to build their legal cases. GI's were often unable to report whether the MI agents guiding them were military personnel or private contractors. VVAW members know that the vagueness in the identity of the MI agents is intentional.

VVAW