<p>Calmom;Thanks.
Momrath; Thanks too.</p>
<p>You see, anyone who answers Gianni’s questions will see it differently. It doesn’t mean they are wrong or right, just means they interpreted the situation differently because of how old they may have been, their family issues, perspective, etc. even where they live or what may have been discussed at recess!(if you were young!) So, you can’t really say anyone is wrong or right, they may have some facts wrong - but the questions involve personal perspective on the issue and if you take the time to answer them anyone will see that.</p>
<p>Okay, now I’m off c.c. for a few days, maybe a week, or two.</p>
<p>Some interesting discussion and viewpoints here. I especially like the point of view and evolving perspective that momrath provides. (One quibble however, I think the “fact” that blacks died at a higher percentage than whites in the war may be an urban legend. The link that I provided above gives detailed statistics and shows that in fact they represented a lower percentage of deaths than one would expect based on their proportion of the population at the time. Another interesting fact is that there were FAR more volunteers serving in Vietnam -something like 75%- than served in WWII which was heavily skewed toward draftees)</p>
<p>Like momrath, my own views of the war have evolved over time. Initially I was for it, but after we finally pulled out and the world did not collapse as predicted, I thought it was good that we got out. However, I think this feeling was based primarily upon how things were presented to us in the media - or, more accurately, how things were NOT presented to us. After we pulled out the media effectively stopped covering the war and we went about our happy way. What was not shown was the ultimate bloodbath that occurred in SE Asia - a bloodbath that was funded by the Soviet Union and China. More people in SE Asia died in the 2 years after we left than in the 10 years before we left. So, if we evaluate the decision to get out based only on impact to the US and American lives lost, getting out was definitely the right thing to do. However, if we view the loss of a human life in the broader perspective, one in which the country of one’s origin is not considered, I’m not sure we did the right thing.</p>
<p>People have drawn parallels to the current situation in Iraq. In some ways I think they are appropriate and it is why I think views like Teddy Kennedy’s are callous and myopic.</p>
<p>i have a great task at hand and that is to determine which arguments to use to support my thesis, given the different perspectives presented on here. the best i could do is present my own interpretation and then back it up with lots of evidence. oftentimes, i’m hesitant to reach a conclusion about something when one author says one thing and the other says something else, and they’re both PhD. take the issue of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. one argues that adult rebels, whose actions had nothing to do with their views on the Vietnam War, were responsible for causing violence. others blame it on actual anti-war demonstrators but disagree on who incited the riots, the city police or the demonstrators themselves. there are so many contradictions and impact is hard to measure. i can speculate, for example, that that Dr. King’s assassination triggered an outraged reaction, causing many people in the civil rights movement to act with more violence. i can further speculate that the energy from this movement was channeled into the anti-vietnam war movement as the issue presented itself. this is another possible explanation why the 60s anti-war movement was especially strong. it was not just the heavy casualties but also that the sense of empowerment inspired others to fight for what they believed in. kennedy talked about this in one of his speeches. people actually started taking responsibility for their own actions after realizing that the government had betrayed them. also, the youth in the '60s probably got used to a higher standard of living. they probably did not have to worry as much as their parents who lived through the Great Depression did about having basic necesseties. thus, they could worry about other things. they played around with ideas, hanging out in coffeeplaces as i heard, and began to question things that were deemed socially acceptable. rock and roll became popular, drugs were commonplace, jeans was now accepted as a fashion trend. of course, not all hippies were anti-war activists but the connection is there. such a thing is hard to prove.</p>
<p>that’s why National History Day (NHD) is so great…it gives high school students a chance to get inside the minds of historians. in these coming weeks, i will be poring over every document i could find, so i can settle the differences in opinion by coming up with my own interpretation. i’m doing an exhibit, so primary sources and quotes- at least enough of them to prove my statements- would have to go directly on the board. as i finalize my bibliography later on, i will contact those whom i have counted as a source, </p>
<p>Thanks. I learned a lot today.</p>
<p>Gian</p>
<p>On college deferral and later got a middling number on first lottery. Never forgot that night as I expect most men of same age group. Just like remembering hearing Kennedy being shot. </p>
<p>Wasn’t so much against or for the war but didn’t see the reasons FOR the war. Each side wanted something different and unfortunately the US populus really didn’t understand why the Vietnamese and US were fighting. Much like today’s problem. Go and rent FOG OF WAR, Robert McNamara’s biography. </p>
<p>The phase of our day was “Never trust anyone over 30.”
Probably true today, except for economics where age and experience really does matter. </p>
<p>For a light hearted treatise: “Mouse That Roared”</p>
<p>OK, Similiarities: US population is split pretty much like the VNW. One group stands behind the Pres without really understanding why other than the Pres can do no wrong, especially when he wins a major electoral victory. [This is similiar but today GWB electoral victory is of is not 52/48% split but only 2% points!] The opposing side sees the War as a strawman that GWB created for his own, national, or moral reasons, OR just as a lie.</p>
<p>Similiarities: Loss of Constitutional freedoms. This time around its worse.</p>
<p>The VN or Iragi (Arabic) sees US as invaders, colonialists, and even Crusaders. They see this war as a moral war. Ironic that our Pres and the people who are fighting the US believe strongly in God and that God is on their side. Better understand what Crusaders were if you’re Christian verses if you were Christian but Arabic, or muslim.</p>
<p>How about this thought? the Communists leadership in China, really were not then and are not now Communists, but political creatures who used the term and philosophy to gain power because any other economic-political system failed in the eyes of the populus. </p>
<p>Along that this line, the VNW between N and S was not so much as a war between comms and capitals but between the Vietamese and the ethnic, merchant and moneyed Chinese.</p>
<p>Change to: lived through WW11. </p>
<p>People understood and saw what WW11 was all about. In the US not initially when US was neutral with Japan-China and Germany-Europe, but US became more exposed to the concepts as war progressed. </p>
<p>History, is always summarized. Written by the winners. Censored by the losers. And never interpreted correctly unless you were a direct participant.</p>
<p>BTW. Don’t come to a conclusion. This not math. This is the nature of humans to interpret the past and change the future. Who is to say a conclusion is correct or incorrect. That’s why we have religion. Good luck on that last comment.</p>
<p>“Fighting in N. Korea was far away and didn’t enter the American consciousness as a day to day concern.”
Fighting in Vietnam was far away as well but the media kept the war front and center in the American consciousness. What CC-er (born by the mid-50’s) can’t recall the pictures of body bags every night on the evening news. No dummies - W. et al - with their prohibitions on such visuals and no surprise at their outrage over the well-publicized photo of flag-draped coffins of American soldiers killed in iraq. The impact of tv coverage of the war - then an now – is interesting. In any case, Gian - good luck with your project.</p>
<p>“BTW. Don’t come to a conclusion. This not math. This is the nature of humans to interpret the past and change the future. Who is to say a conclusion is correct or incorrect. That’s why we have religion.”</p>
<p>a conclusion and interpretation are the same thing in history. if you conclude something about a given topic after examining evidence about it, you deduce information from it. you interpret it.</p>
<p>Glad this is on the cafe. I’m gone.</p>
<p>I was in college at the time of the Kennedy assassination, which was in some respects the critical moment that led, in due course, to the escalation of American involvement in Vietnam. McNamara’s account in “The Fog of War” rings true to me in many ways, including the myths that grew up about the immediate threat to America and the “domino theory,” as well as the fact that the Johnson administration essentially faked the evidence of the N. Vietnamese attack on the U.S. Navy that provided the “casus belli” for American escalation. The dubious nature of that evidence was well documented by critics such as I.F. Stone (in “I.F. Stone’s Weekly,” to which I subscribed at the time).</p>
<p>And so I and many other college students at the time came to distrust our President and the powers-that-be in a more profound way than had been the long-time fashion of being “skeptical” about strong government. In short, we didn’t accept the lies put out by the government that justified the escalation of the war (not to mention the misperceptions of the situation there – again documented in “The Fog of War” and many other sources).</p>
<p>And so we marched, and we protested. But it was all very “peaceful” in the early years. By the time I got to grad school, at the University of Wisconsin, the scene had changed dramatically. The draft had begun to have a big impact on America, but virtually all college students maintained their “II-S” student deferments. There was just a lot of ferment on many bases at that time. Don’t forget that the Watts Riot in L.A. occurred in 1965 and marked the beginning of a series of violent urban uprisings across the country over the next few years. The assassinations of RFK and Martin Luther King in 1968 were a part of <em>this</em> process, which had nothing to do with Vietnam.</p>
<p>Then the government decided that many of the students, particularly in grad school, were malingerers, and decided to call into question student deferments. Before they moved to a lottery, the government first tried requiring every student to take a “test.” Those whose score was above a certain percentage were allowed to continue their II-S. Those whose score fell below that percentage were subject to having their local draft board reconsider their deferment. I well recall taking that test, sitting with several thousand other young men in the field house at the University of Wisconsin. Field house lighting, taking a test on a lapboard, with your future at stake. And the test was really a bad one with heavy cultural bias that they had dredged up from the Korean era. I was stupid enough to write a letter to the Selective Service complaining about the exam, while saying that I thought I had done well on it. In fact I did get a good score, and so was allowed to stay in grad school a bit longer.</p>
<p>And then the lottery came, around 1969 or 1970 as I recall. I again got lucky. Some in my cohort did not. One good friend was called up, served a tour in Vietnam, mainly as a translator/interrogator in Saigon. Another friend who got called took off to Canada. He’s still living there, now as a Canadian citizen. I passed the magic age of 25 and so moved into a less at risk of being drafted category, finished my PhD and went into a career in college teaching/research.</p>
<p>What would I have done if I had been drafted? I wouldn’t have gone to Canada. I probably would have served, and hoped for a safe posting. My older brother, who had been in ROTC at UCLA, did get his commission after graduating from college and served a tour in Vietnam. He survived that tour but died at a fairly early age of the consequences of Agent Orange poison (again see “The Fog of War”). Dying of this defoliant some years after a tour of duty does not qualify anyone to have his name engraved on the Vietnam Memorial. This was the Wrong War, in the Wrong Place, at the Wrong Time. Not the first that America was involved in, and not the last.</p>
<p>Mackinaw,
Very moving recollection of your youth and very sorry about your brother. It seems that I am about 10yrs younger then you, so my recollection of ths era is of watching alot of it on TV, the demonstrations,and the coverage of the war. I now have a 21 yr old son graduating college this year. Truthfully I do not know what I would advise him to do if there was a draft today with the situation in Iraq, but then it wouldn’t be my decision to make. I fear that there are too many paralells between the Vietnam war and this present situation our country is in. I think that if this war is prolonged we will see riots and demonstrations back on college campuses.</p>
<p>Cama</p>
<p>itstoomuch, it was not my intent to offend you. when i post on the parents’ forum, someone always ends up getting offended. </p>
<hr>
<p>“And so I and many other college students at the time came to distrust our President and the powers-that-be in a more profound way than had been the long-time fashion of being ‘skeptical’ about strong government.” --mackinaw</p>
<p>when did students first begin to rebel against the university administration? for u of c, i think it was after a young faculty member’s tenure was called into question because of her then radical political views. students responded by having a sit-in inside the administration building. </p>
<p>were any of you part of the counter-cultural revolution?</p>
<p>BHG: you say in the early days, no one protested the Viet Nam war. Aren’t you in Philadelphia? You should know that the Quakers were protesting the war as early as 1964, when LBJ began his escalation from JFK’s “advisors.”</p>
<p>Just reading over this thread, I am back in an angry time. My father was a journalist (and had been a war correspondent during WWII) and wanted desperately to believe what the government was saying, but couldn’t; his younger brother was a colonel in the Army and they fought before he left for Vietnam–and then my uncle began sending letters to my father describing the horrors he saw (1968-70). My father worked to develop other sources for the same information, and helped to publicize some of those horrors. I wasn’t supposed to know about the letters–but he kept them in his bedside table, and I was a nosy child. Some of them gave me terrible nightmares. They weren’t signed, and I think my uncle must have had them mailed by someone else to keep them secret. They’re both dead now, and I never got a chance to discuss the letters with my father–he died when I was 23. After he died, his papers were sent to a journalism school, but the letters aren’t part of them, so I think he must have destroyed them or given them back to his brother.</p>
<p>Gianscolere, the “Free Speech Movement” started at Berkeley in 1964. It was not a protest over a tenure decision. </p>
<p>Here are a couple of links for your edification.</p>
<p><a href=“http://home.att.net/~enfield/fsmhist1.html[/url]”>http://home.att.net/~enfield/fsmhist1.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Movement[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Movement</a></p>
<p>The other day my 18 year old gave me an article he found on the voting held in Vietnam in 1967. He then went to the library and found reference to it in a book. I was amazed at the link he found between the vote then and the vote now. I found the following online:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Taken from <a href=“http://www.counterpunch.org/christison02042005.html[/url]”>http://www.counterpunch.org/christison02042005.html</a></p>
<p>The writer was Bill Christison was director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis. He has written extensively in recent years on the problems of U.S. foreign policy. They can be reached at: <a href="mailto:christison@counterpunch.org">christison@counterpunch.org</a></p>
<p>All this said, I am so sad about what is happening right now if we are reliving the past. I’m not sure. It’s never the same. Being a young adult during that very painful time, I hope that is not the case. What is that famous quote:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Come on can’t we figure this one out. I’m too tired.</p>
<p>From the same article that was referenced:</p>
<p>“There were also indications that the heavy turnout had much to do with government coercion and fears of retaliation against those not showing up at the polls. Since election officials stamped each voter’s identification card, it was widely suspected that lacking this ‘symbol of loyalty’ to the government would lead to trouble later, perhaps even charges of being VC.”</p>
<p>This, as much as anything, differentiates the two elections. In Iraq people braved death threats to go vote. In Vietnam, the apparent threat was to those who didn’t vote. The only apparent commonality is that the US was pleased with the election turnout in both cases. Is that enough to pressume similar outcomes? I doubt it. The ever present chorus of those against the Iraqi war as being similar to Vietnam is significantly off base. </p>
<p>The one thing that we can pretty much learn from Vietnam, however, is that if we do abandon the job while it is half finished, many innocent people will lose their lives as a result. One can legitimately claim that we should not have gone into Iraq (although I do not share that view); however, an immediate withdrawal will certainly be one of the most collosal foreign affairs and humanitarian blunders of all time.</p>
<p>I was a college student who graduated in 1970. I went to school in Vermont and although we were fairly removed from civilization there were anti war protests and demonstrations there; we also sent busloads to Washington, DC. Our final exams in
May 1970 were cancelled because of the Kent State killings. Up until that point – except for the Chicago protests – demonstrations had been mostly peaceful. I was studying abroad in Israel during the Chicago violence and recall my shock at reading in Newsweek what had happened. The night Nixon resigned my husband and I – we had recently moved to DC – rushed down to the White House to witness history. Of course we didn’t see much except TV cameras.</p>
<p>Count me along with Fundingfather for the most part, opinion-wise. The OP should consult John E. Mueller’s book <em>War, Presidents and Public Opinion</em> (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1973) to read American Institute of Public Opinion/Gallup polls on what people thought, broken down by age group. It’s quite interesting, broken down into 3 age groups…under 30, ages 30-49, and over 49. In August of 1965, 76% of the first group supported the war, 14% opposed, and 10% had no opinion. For the middle age group, the ratio was 64-22-14, and for the older group it was 51-29-20.</p>
<p>There was steady drop-off of support across all age groups from then on, through May of 1971 (the end of the book’s study period, at which time the breakdown was 34-59-7, 30-61-9, 23-63-14), but in every year except 1969, the under 30 group was more supportive of, and less opposed to, the war than the two older groups. It’s also worth noting that there was a precipitous drop-off in support across all age groups once the media turned vehemently against the war ca. 67-68, once the media began misreporting the Tet Offensive, one of the reasons I have always despised the “Great” Walter Cronkite. There are parallels here to the situation in Iraq, but perhaps not those that the Ted Kennedy acolytes here at CC recognize. You should also consult Peter Braestrup’s <em>Big Story</em> (1977), the subtitle of which is “How the American Press and Television Reported the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington,” which is a must read for anyone who thinks they want to profess an ability to connect Iraq and Vietnam. Using those sources, among others, I did well on a final paper I wrote for a Vietnam course back in the late 70s despite disagreeing with my professor. You should also read E.J. Dionne’s <em>Why Americans Hate Politics</em>, which is one of the best sociopolitical histories of the Vietnam era out there. I completely disagree with his concluding chapter, as I do with almost all of his WaPo columns, but he absolutely nails the merging of the anti-war movement and the “New Left” that has put the modern Democratic party so far out of touch with most Americans.</p>
<p>“once the media began misreporting the Tet Offensive, one of the reasons I have always despised the “Great” Walter Cronkite”</p>
<p>I have to take issue with this. Cronkite was only reporting what he was told. Remember: no reporters embedded with troops. No war correspondents allowed. I know that Cronkite (who was also a war correspondent during WW2, reporting from London 1939-42 (and beyond)) was frustrated with that situation. While I know Cronkite was often seen as part of the over-30 structure, he was one of those who did try to rectify the situation once stories starting leaking and soldiers started coming home.</p>