<p>I recall the day of draft, and sitting with b/f watching as nmbers called.So many young men chose medical sch, peace corps, or teaching. Remember my professor helping her S move to Canada, and her tears. Also recall telling my folks I was going to DC, and my mom telling me she was going with 7 busloads. She was quite active, working with MDs and lawyers, to counsel young men. Both parents served in Wwii, but vietnam was different. I learned you are never too old to express yourself. Already spoke to S about options if draft is renewed.
Memories of seeing kids hit, tear gassed, torn apart by conflicting views, exams cancelled, never fade. Worked with Vets to find peace and direction; so many scarred.</p>
<p>A bumpersticker from the period said:</p>
<p>64 Goldwater 65 Hot Water
66 Bread and Water</p>
<p>I protested the war until the day it ended. </p>
<p>Four dead in Ohio - Tianemen Square was only a difference in numbers.</p>
<p>It was a badly conceived, immoral war, and the horrors you hear about really happened - the Winter Soldier testimony (see the film “Going Upriver” for portions of this testimony - you will cry - I believe even the most hardened right-wing hawk, if they had the intellectual honesty to see the movie, would look at the haunted eyes of those young men and feel their sorrow and despair) was not an exaggeration. My SO at that time had been in MI for a three year tour, he was in Da Nang, not out in the boonies, but many of his friends were - they told stories of torture, massacre, fragging, etc. So many lives snuffed out, and then the vets came home and were treated like disgraced sinners. It is no wonder many of them still carry deep emotional scars and haunt the VA hospitals. </p>
<p>Over 58000 dead of our beloved youth, my peers, my friends, my brothers. The collective consciousness of the US will never completely recover from Viet Nam until all of us are dead. Conscription is one of the most dreaded and arbitrary powers of governments - “hey you, that’s right, you - you’re cannon fodder.” I’ve got my sign ready for the first protest if and when they try to foist the draft on us again. “Hell no, they won’t go!”</p>
<p>Cynically, I sometimes think that reinstating the draft and overturning Roe v Wade would be the quickest route to positive change in the US - maybe the twin sledgehammer blows upside the head would finally galvanize the narcotized masses to get off our collective behinds and motivate us to resist the ever-increasing fascism to which we have subjected ourselves through cowardice and passivity.</p>
<p>Another bumper sticker of the era: “Free the Indianapolis 500.” (A few people had a sense of humor about politics but it was hard during that era, just as it is now.)</p>
<p>If we reinstate the draft, can we assure that the Bush twins will be the first ones drafted?</p>
<p>“No war correspondents allowed” in Vietnam?</p>
<p>I remember seeing combat footage on the evening news regularly. There were lots of war correspondents in Vietnam.</p>
<p>Be careful in your interpretation = conclusion. Some one interpreted something about trucks 2 years ago and the conclusion is 1300+ dead, 10,000+ wounded, $300+ Billion debt that you will be paying, 15%+ decrease in US buying power, less student loans, less scholarships, …</p>
<p>You did not offend me. Think carefully in your replies-it reveals who you are.</p>
<p>Greybeard is correct, there were many, many war correspondents in Vietnam, many of them quite famous now (although perhaps not to HS students)…names like Bernard Kalb, David Halberstam, Hedrick Smith, CNN’s Peter Barnett (who, you may remember, went down in flames a few years ago for trying to hype another phony Vietnam story–30 years later). </p>
<p>Another book I would recommend to the OP, particularly before s/he goes running off on a wild goose chase such as the “Winter Soldier” hoax, is called <em>Stolen Valor</em> , by B.G. Burkett. His particular bailiwick is exposing phony Vietnam vets, and it’s rather amazing how many of these characters there are, and how famous some of them are (actors, politicians, etc.) Burkett has a chapter that recounts the debunking of the Winter Soldier fiasco, wherein he describes how many of the “vets” were exposed as lying frauds by no less than the NYT’s legendary James Reston, and Neil Sheehan of <em>A Bright Shining Lie</em>fame. Then, as now, there’s a lot of misinformation out there, and it can be difficult to sort through it, and its effect on public opinion is insidious and tenacious, as you can see from this thread. So, in your research, it’s important to know where your source is coming from, just as in politics. Good luck.</p>
<p>On war correspondents in Vietnam: I should have been more clear (I have to stop writing these things at 3AM!). War correspondents in Vietnam were granted very limited access–especially in the early years (before 1968) and were only taken places where the military wanted reporting to take place. Often their reporting was censored (because the military controlled access to phones and mail), and if they reported things that were considered “off-limits” they were sent home. They were not objective uncensored reporters, and thus not the CNN cameras we’ve become accustomed to.</p>
<p>The same was also true of war correspondents during WWII, BTW.</p>
<p>Plus ca change, plus la meme chose.</p>
<p>I can just about pick out article by article in the mainstream press where the skids were greased by the military PR folk in Iraq. For some balance somewhere between Fox News and Al Jazeera, I recommend <a href=“http://www.juancole.com%5B/url%5D”>www.juancole.com</a></p>
<p>I join the other posters who recommended “Fog of War”.</p>
<p>Much closer to Al Jazeera and the Columbia University Middle East Dept. He’s been having a blog-feud for several days with Jonah Goldberg of NRO, and he comes across as a Ward Churchill.
<a href=“http://powerlineblog.com/archives/008907.php#008907[/url]”>http://powerlineblog.com/archives/008907.php#008907</a></p>
<p>I opposed the Vietnam war and I never met anyone who supported it. Then again, I was born and raised in Manhattan and hardly ever left the northeast.</p>
<p>There was a great deal of support for the Vietnam war (and for Richard Nixon) in the small town in Upstate New York where I grew up.</p>
<p>I was a kid, I supported the war; I was also an enthusiastic supporter of Richard Nixon, and donated one cent to his election campaign. (In those days, you could drop cash into a big bowl in local campaign offices. I’ve often wondered if my penny became part of the million dollar Watergate slush fund.)</p>
<p>I now view the Vietnam war as a well-intentioned but sadly misguided fiasco, and Richard Nixon as a deeply disturbed, substance-abusing sociopath. You live and learn.</p>
<p>I never had any illusions about Tricky Dick. As a kid growing up in L.A. I learned from my parents not to like Nixon, ever since his first Red Baiting run for Congress. I think he was a brilliant man but with far too many goblins in his bonnet. His only truly good move politically was the opening to China. The aftermath of Watergate, and especially the way each layer of lies and deceit were peeled away by the press and ultimately by Congress, was soooo satisfying.</p>
<p>The EPA was also founded under his administration.</p>
<p>I suppose that should be put on the plus side.</p>
<p>OSHA, too, as I recall. Also managed to save Israel by initiating a massive around-the-clock airlift of military supplies during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, despite having to deal with Vietnam and the unfolding Watergate scandal simultaneously.</p>
<p>thanks for keeping this thread alive. 11 days later and it’s still on the first page! i read every single post on here, just so you know that your thoughts are very much appreciated.</p>
<p>My cousin flew medivac helicopters in Vietnam. If someone was bitten by a snake, the guys would throw the snake into the cockpit for the ride. Consequently, he has an abiding fear of snakes, but he joined the reserves and served in Panama, Grenada and Iraq I. He arrived home today after a fifteen month tour in Iraq; The Sequel; flying Blackhawks. He is now 57 and a Grandpa. He wasn’t the only Grandpa in Iraq either. His pictures had lots of ‘greybeards’. He says the US bases in Iraq look permanent.</p>
<p>My parents were both radical doves. My mother voted for McGovern. They were active in the civil rights movement. Since then, my dad was poisoned by Rush Limbaugh and is now rabid pro-Bush. My mom, to her everlasting regret, voted for Bush the first time. She thinks Rummy is a weasel.</p>
<p>A good friend volunteered for vietnam to get the GI bill. He got his March from Columbia on the bill. He led advance teams in the jungle. He said the guys with the radio would always get killed. Even so, Southern youngsters always volunteered for radio duty. He killed himself with a shotgun when he was 40.</p>
<p>My uncle was a career soldier. He started in Korea and fought in vietnam. He said they weren’t allowed a proper fight, weren’t allowed to win. He died of liver cancer, probably an after-effect of Agent orange.</p>
<p>I grew up next to a university and it was a community in turmoil. Kids were upset, they were emotional. They burned the ROTC buildings, they got stoned, they were anti-everything and they wore their frustration every day.</p>
<p>I went to high school in a liberal part of northern California, and the entire senior class (class of 1970), I believe, took a day off from school to participate in an anti-war protest in San Francisco. The “entire senior class” consisted of about 35 girls, so you have to take that into account, but that part of northern California was heavily, heavily anti-war. Also pro-environment, you know–all the predictable blue-state stuff, in the years before we knew what a blue state was.</p>