Memorial Day and Vietnam

Memorial Day and Vietnam

Eli Zaretsky: Memorial Day and Vietnam

?Welcome home,? President Obama called out to the Vietnam veterans in the audience this Memorial Day. ?Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home. Thank you. We appreciate you. Welcome home.? His point, of course, was to contrast his patriotism to the supposed attacks on the military by anti-war activists during the 1960s. In case his point was not clear, the president went on. ?You were often blamed for a war you didn?t start when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor?you were sometimes blamed for misdeeds of a few, when the honorable service of the many should have been praised.? ?It was a national shame,? he added, ?a disgrace that should have never happened. And that?s why here today we resolve that it will not happen again.?

This idea, one of the hoariest myths concerning the sixties, should not be allowed to go uncorrected. The Vietnam War, like the war in Iraq that President Bush launched, and like the war in Afghanistan that President Obama vastly expanded, was the original crime. The anti-war movement, which condemned it, should be remembered as one of the proudest moments in American history. While a few, mostly younger and immature, demonstrators undoubtedly did insult the troops, Obama?s admonition holds here as well: we should not condemn the many for the misdeeds of a few. Overall, anti-war activists confronted soldiers with flowers, appealing to their consciences and asking them to refuse to fight. This act honored the troops: it did not insult them.

Still, I applaud the positive side of the president?s message. America?s failure to honor and support the Vietnam veterans with, for example, jobs and subsidies as we supported the veterans of the Second World War, was a tragedy. But I also want to support the huge number of Americans of that era who, often at the cost of their lives, property, and sacred honor, sought to redeem the country from its tragic decision. I want to honor the veterans but I also want to honor the eight anti-war activists who burnt themselves alive?Norman Morrison, Alice Herz, Roger A. LaPorte, Hiroko Hayaski, Florence Beaumont, Erik Thoen, Ronald Brazee, and George Winne. I want to honor the people who kept mimeograph machines in their downstairs halls, who started underground newspapers, who flashed the peace sign, and who went to jail.

I also want to remember the many in the military during the Vietnam War who adopted an anti-war stance. I want to remember the 144 underground newspapers published on or near U.S. military bases, the fourteen GI anti-war organizations, the eleven off-base anti-war coffee houses, the Movement for a Democratic Military (MDM), the network of lawyers who tried to coordinate anti-war activities within the military, the black GIs that met officer?s salute with the raised fist, the community of turbulent priests and rabbis and other clergy who linked anti-war activity to the gospel, as well as the many Jews who said, ?I cared so deeply about Vietnam because I am Jewish and I cannot forget the Holocaust?If your country is doing something wrong, you?ve got to try to change it.?

So I join President Obama in looking back on that era and saying never again, but my emphasis is different. Never again should the United States pursue such adventures abroad, never again should we give in to self-proclaimed experts and fear-mongers, never again should we spill our blood and the blood of others unless we are truly threatened, and never again should we blame those who protest and exculpate those who so irresponsibly wield the levers of power.

Photo from National Archives, 21 October 1967, from anti-war demonstration in Arlington, Virginia