The American War in Vietnam. John Marciano
a Noble Cause.”
According to Obama and the Vietnam Commemoration Commission, the war was honorable. Therefore, it follows that those who fought it deserve citizens’ respect and support. This raises some profound questions: Can a war be honorable if, as will be argued here, it was a violation of international law, a criminal act of aggression? If so, can the warrior be separated from the war, and act with honor in a criminal cause?
Since more than sixteen hundred servicemen are still Missing in Action (MIA), the Vietnamese should provide us with “the fullest possible accounting for those who have not returned,” Obama said. Thus, he extended the POW/MIA myth that has been sustained in the United States for decades.
This was “one of the most painful chapters in our history,” Obama continued, a reminder that the focus of the Commemoration will be on what the war did to Americans, not to the Vietnamese, who suffered staggering human and ecological losses.
Those who served in the war were not well treated when they returned home, an attack on Americans who opposed the conflict: this reopens the widely believed myth that antiwar activists spit on and generally mistreated returning veterans. Although “deep divisions” arose over the conflict, Americans are a family who can support or oppose a war while standing united in supporting those who fought. The president’s claim, however, rewrites the actual history of that period. “Patriot” was not the word of choice for U.S. officials to describe those who dissented from their policies—including antiwar activists in the military—as they maligned, harassed, and imprisoned citizens who exercised their constitutional rights to protest the war.
It is important that the record of this war be set straight, particularly for young people. Americans are asked to believe that government officials who supported the American war as a Noble Cause—and lied about it for decades—are now going to set them “straight” about what happened and why. Finally, saying that as a nation we “hate war” and “only fight to protect to ourselves because it’s necessary” is a gross distortion easily refuted by the facts of U.S. history.
Another Story
After each war the United States fights, the dominant and official story is presented to succeeding generations, particularly young people. This story stresses the importance and justice of U.S. involvement, and defends the nobility of wartime conduct. Long after the guns are silent, therefore, there is a struggle over memory. Why did the United States go to war? What were the costs—ecological, human, and material? Throughout U.S. history, the answers to these questions have been shaped by dominant and powerful war makers based in Washington, and passed on by the corporate media, public ceremonies, political officials, and school history textbooks. These answers have been challenged, however, by the not-so-powerful who counter the dominant view: critical public intellectuals and citizens, independent filmmakers, poets and writers, and teachers.
The essential message of the dominant view remains the same: U.S. wars are just and honorable, fought for a Noble Cause, the essence of which is the belief that the United States is “a unique force for good in the world, superior not only in its military and economic power, but in the quality of its government and institutions, the character and morality of its people, and its way of life.”1 The American War challenges this dominant view.
The Real History and Its Lessons
Journalist and antiwar activist Jack Smith argues that the Commemoration seeks to accomplish two fundamental and long-lasting goals: “The first is to legitimize and intensify a renewed warrior spirit within America as the Pentagon emerges from two counter-productive, ruinously expensive and stalemated unjust wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and prepares for further military adventures in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.” The second goal is to essentially shape and change citizens’ “memory of historic public opposition” to the American war with the Pentagon’s “censored account of the conflict.…”2
The actual lessons of the American war in Vietnam contradict the view put forth by the Commemoration and Obama. Writing at the end of the conflict in 1975, Noam Chomsky, arguably the foremost critic of American foreign policy, addresses these:
American imperialism has suffered a stunning defeat in Indochina. But the same forces are engaged in another war against a much less resilient enemy, the American people. Here, the prospects for success are much greater. The battleground is ideological, not military. At stake are the lessons to be drawn from the American war in Indochina; the outcome will determine the course and character of new imperial ventures.3
What Chomsky asserts is key to any critique of the Commemoration. If the American war in Vietnam “is understood, as it properly must be, as a major crime against peace,” then the Noble Cause thesis must be rejected. Those who support the Commemoration’s view of the imperial war against the Vietnamese, therefore, will attempt to “guarantee that ‘no wrong lessons’ are learned from the … war and the resistance to it.” U.S. leaders will find it necessary to “reestablish the basic principle that the use of force by the United States is legitimate, if only it can succeed.”4
What lessons, therefore, does the Commemoration wish to teach about this epic event in history? Whose truth will be highlighted for generations to come? Who will speak for the millions who were killed and maimed? What will the lessons of the American war in Vietnam teach about present and future U.S. wars?
Tom Hayden, longtime political and antiwar activist, challenges the Reagan “Noble Cause” view of the American war, the Commemoration, and Obama’s claims:
The effort seems focused primarily on the sacrifices made by American troops in a battle for American ideals. There is nothing revealed about Vietnamese nationalism, sacrifice, casualties or ultimate success—not to mention the ongoing deprivation, Agent Orange poisonings, cluster bombs left behind as signs of inhumanity. Nor is there mention of the peace movement, the historic rallies, the unity across racial lines, the GI revolts inside the armed forces, the unconstitutional domestic spying and indictments, the McGovern campaign, or the Pentagon Papers. Clearly the National Security State is attempting to win on the field of American memory what was lost on the battlefield. Since the struggle for memory shapes our future choices, it is important that peace activists engage in this debate wherever possible.5
How citizens, especially young ones, analyze the American war in Vietnam will determine whether they accept or resist the organized propaganda campaign to gain support for it. In March 2013, for example, the Gallup organization polled Americans about their views on the conflict: “Looking back, do you think the U.S. made a mistake sending troops to fight in Vietnam?” Fifty-seven percent said yes, 34 percent said no, and 9 percent had no opinion—the lowest opposition to the war since it ended in 1975. The age differences are striking: only 43 percent of those eighteen to twenty-nine said it was a mistake, compared to 70 percent of those sixty-five or older.6
Education: Basic Training for War
Even amid the height of protest during the American war, far too many educators, public officials, and media pundits passed on an uncritical patriotism and militarism, leaving citizens and youth without the critical skills needed for informed dissent and empowered citizenship in a democracy. At the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, the journalist Andrew Kopkind laid out this dissenting challenge: “America has been in a state of war—cold, hot and lukewarm—for as long as most citizens now living can remember.” This militaristic state “is so ingrained in American institutions … in short, so totalitarian—that the government is practically unthinkable without it.” This war mentality influences every social institution and emphasizes “secrecy not candor, propaganda not information.”7 Kopkind shatters the story of American benevolence put forth by Obama and the Vietnam Commemoration.
Lessons that Should Be Learned
Before discussing some of the major lessons of the American war that should be learned, it is important to pause and think about the staggering human and environmental toll left behind in Vietnam:
Total war dead: The estimates include a figure of 882 thousand reported in a demographic study