N O R T H C O A S T T IM E S E A G L E , MA Y/JUNE 2004
I to human genitals and turned up the power, blew up bodies,
I randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent
I of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food
I stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Viet-
I nam," all of which he added were war crimes under Geneva
I Conventions — but these allegations were culled from direct
I statements by Vietnam vets at the Winter Soldier War Crimes
I Testimonies. Kerry’s most relevant remarks to the Senate were:
I
We are asking here in Washington for some action,
I action from the Congress o f the United States o f America which
I has the power to raise and maintain armies, and which by the
I Constitution also has the power to declare war.
I
We have come here, not to the President, because we
I believe that this body can be responsive to the will o f the people,
I and we believe that the will o f the people says that we should be
I out o f Vietnam now.
I
We are here in Washington also to say that the problem
I o f this war is not ju st a question o f war and diplomacy. It is part
I and parcel o f everything that we are trying as human beings to
I communicate to people in this country, the question o f racism
I which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions
I — the use o f weapons, the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at
I the Geneva Convention and using that as justification for a
I continuation o f this war when we are more guilty than any other
I body of violations o f the Geneva Convention in the use o f free
I fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy
I missions, the bombings, the torture o f prisoners, the killing of
I prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam.
I That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel o f every-
I thing.
I
“We were sent to Vietnam to kill communism, but we
I found instead that we were killing women and children,” Kerry
I wrote in a book about Dewey Canyon III, The New Soldier.
I “We knew the saying 'War is hell', and we also knew that wars
I take their toll in civilian casualties. In Vietnam, though, ‘the
I greatest soldiers in the world', better armed and better equipped
I than the opposition, unleashed the power of the greatest
I technology in the world against thatch huts and mud paths. In
I the process we created a nation of refugees, bomb craters,
I amputees, orphans, widows and prostitutes, and we gave new
I meaning to the words of the Roman historian Tacitus: Where
I they made a desert they called it peace."
I
The criticism Kerry has received for his Senate testi-
I mony is invalidated by the tortures of Iraqi prisoners by a new
I generation of Americans on foreign soil. As a letter writer to
I The Oregonian said recently about the “moral damage" to
I friends who had been in Vietnam (comparing then with now),
I “Aside from a few who arrived as sadists, ordinary soldiers
I trained and licensed to kill, equipped with extreme firepower
I amidst relatively helpless locals, living for months with unending
I fear and threats from a population they were there to serve,
I often had their sense of right and wrong shoved aside or just
ground down. They did unthinkable acts, finding real excuses
then. But when the dust settled, excuses couldn’t save them as
I they lived on, knowing what they did.”
Among caustic allegations made about W A W is that
it was communist inspired or at least infiltrated by communists
— it was infiltrated with quantums more undercover agents from
nearly every government agency in the country, from CIA/FBI to
local police moles. Another canard is that W A W was bankrolled
by — multiple choice: Moscow and/or Red China; Jane Fonda,
with whom the rightwing has a very unhealthy, even psychotic
fixation; various leftwing “terrorist" groups (most W A W vets
would say their personal participation in terrorism ended with
discharge from the military); and perhaps by even Ho Chi Minh
himself, whose May 10 birthday would have made him 114
years old had he not died 35 years ago in 1969, six years before
his dream of reuniting Vietnam became real.
Various conservative or rightwing publications as the
Washington Times accuse “Kerry and his men" (W A W ) of
having “work(ed) in behalf of the interests of the North Vietnam­
ese.” That accusation was by Wesley Pruden, who also wrote
“Kerry's work with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War may
turn out to be the most explosive landmine of the campaign."
Columnist Mona Charen wrote (paraphrasing B.G. Burket’s
Stolen Valor) “that many of those so-called Vietnam vets had
never been to Vietnam. Among those who had, many had never
seen combat but had technical or service jobs."
Joseph Farah writes that John Kerry “is a traitor to his
country" because of his involvement in the W A W and thinks
he is “a sleeper agent for some totalitarian foreign country."
Perhaps the most onerous aspersion against W A W
is the matter of possible assassination some of its members
discussed, perhaps endorsed. Pro-war politicians as well as
war profiteers were allegedly targeted, but in each instance
the notion was turned down. The fact such proposals were
discussed has more to do with the fact many of these men
were adept in killing, despite claims that W A W was made
up primarily of rear echelon veterans. To the contrary, a great
many, possibly even a majority were combat vets — how else
to explain the crippled, armless and legless vets who were at
Dewey Canyon III. Whenever a prospect of assassination might
have been discussed it was probably dismissed as impassively
as it was thought about. W A W was not a Boy Scout troop. Its
membership consisted of kHlers whose most intense purpose
was to stop the killing even if sometimes they thought about
killing as a means of ending it. Some of the former “killing
machines" thought violence a reasonable option as well as
assassination; but others said, “We don’t do that anymore."
"The American Legion was created in 1919 following
World War 1 to forestall the participation o f veterans in the
growing postwar labor rebellions, which were labeled
‘Bolshevik." Veterans were in essence manipulated against their
own best interests and became in fact the strongest force
suppressing the labor movement in the 1920s, and the Legion
has since been a virtual rubber stamp for anything Pentagon. A
lesser, almost subsidiary organization is the Veterans o f Foreign
Wars, which was formed after World War 2. At First liberal in
contrast to the Legion, the VFW became so closely identifiable
with it that during the Vietnam War its national leader denounced
W A W members demonstrating against the war in Washington,
D C., as traitors, which has over the years become synonymous
with dissent against military policy.
""Turning against a war in wartime might have a side-
effect o f aiding an enemy, but it would have helped humanity
immensely if a few more soldiers had turned against Hitler
during World War 2.
"""The word veteran presumes combat service, or
at least military service in a war; but it has become virtually
all-inclusive, denoting military service at any time, including
peacetime; or in time o f war but not participating in it, such
as 'Vietnam-era veterans "
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VVAW/WSO
Kerry plays down his opposition to the Vietnam War and
his presence within W A W . He does say that after more than a
year in the W A W his disagreements with a more radical agenda
others wanted to follow was cause to quit — he never denied he
was ambitious for a political career.
Jonathan Schell points out the principal paradox of
Kerry’s candidacy: “One might think that Kerry’s good sense and
bravery in opposing the Vietnam War three decades ago might
stand him in good stead today. (How many Americans now think
getting into Vietnam was a good idea?) But...just the opposite is
the case. It is Kerry's bravery...fighting the mistaken war, not his
bravery as a veteran opposing it, that helps him in his bid for the
Presidency.”
Though Kerry distances himself from W A W , it is the
presence of the vets who have encompassed him who have set
fire to his campaign and made him the Democratic contender
— and in their company he is not as aloof or starchy as he often
appears to be in public events and speeches.
Kerry made his political bones with W A W — his assoc­
iation with W A W gave him national prominence. His jump start,
whether he wishes to proudly acclaim it or dismiss it as youthful
idealism, was provided by his brief embrasure of a controversial
antiwar veterans movement.
Antiwar veterans movements have been virtually
unnoticed in American history. Yet that history abounds with
veterans taking arms against their military masters from the
very start. Former colonial veterans of the French & Indian
War fought against their old army and set up a republic two
centuries ago. The Army split down the middle in 1861 and
comrade fought comrade for four immensely bloody years until
the Union was restored. Of more subtle consequence was the
'Whiskey Rebellion' of 1796. Revolutionary war veterans banded
together to protest the taxing of whiskey. Their methods were
radical yet peaceful, but the new U S. Army was sent to
suppress them with force at the order of President George
Washington. Confederate veterans formed armed groups
after the Civil War to resist the plundering ‘Reconstructionist’
governments that took up occupation in the South — an entire
Southern army division defected intact to Mexico but dissipated
before it could fight because neither Juaristas nor occupation
French wanted it: the luckless ambition had been for its officers
BEN TRE SUBURB
You ask us why we're out here, carrying signs
Out in this god-forsaken asphalt shopping center
You who sent us to level the verdant jungles of
Vietnam.
A man takes a leaflet
and rips it up without reading it.
A woman faces us so bristling with hate
that her glasses shake to the end of her nose.
“You communists," she finally
manages to squeeze
out her contorted mouth
Communists like those
we were sent over to fight?
Go home, you shout.
But we have none.
You sent us abroad
And now the world is our home.
Now wherever you send us
We meet our brothers,
Not our enemy
Why are we here
in front of the supermarket, the auditorium,
the theater, your favorite restaurant?
We re here because it's the only way to reach you —
Before the next war.
-MICHAEL BERKOWITZ
from Demilitarized Zone Veterans After Vietnam', published
by East River Anthology/First Casualty Press (W AW ), 1976
to lead a combined Confederate/Mexican army back across the
border to fight Yankees again
In 1932 the Bonus Army’, made up of World War 1
veterans, marched on Washington, D C. to demand promised
war benefits as a desperate attempt to survive the Great
Depression. They built a shanty-city outside the Capitol and
were forcibly dispersed by the Army; a few were killed, many
beaten.
In World War 2 an Army division in Europe went on
strike until some of its demands against intolerable conditions
were met. The ringleaders were arrested.
Following the war, almost the entire Pacific command
nearly mutinied when it was learned several army divisions
as well as naval forces were to be sent to China to combat the
communist forces of Mao Tse Tung. The mutiny was quickly
averted by keeping the promise made at the start of the war that
troops would be sent home when it was over.
Also after World War 2 thousands of servicemen angrily
protested a year-long continuation of the draft and were only
appeased when they were told that new draftees would replace
them and they would get home sooner as a result.
There have undoubtedly been countless such revolts
against the military system, however limited in scope and action,
whether or not successful. With the exception of renegade
officers leading military coups and setting up dictatorships,
the actions of soldiers turning against their nations’ military
in the name of peace and anti-militarism have largely gone
unknown — in that context it would seem that the only combat
veteran in Western history known to attempt the philosophical
collapse of militarism was Socrates.
If there has ever existed a well-researched and
documented history of rebellion within military institutions
objecting to militarism and the ethic of war, it has been well
hidden from curious eyes What information is known has been
confined to obscure texts and memoranda. However important
the specifics may be in piecing together the pattern, the greatest
importance is the fact that revolt within the military machine is
an enduring tradition in itself Just as radical opposition has
always existed at the core of every civil/political system, so it
has inside every military arm of those systems.
Within this tradition of revolt can be understood both the
roots and vacuum of the rebellion against the Vietnam War by a
number of its veterans. The roots lie in the constant insurrection
throughout military history; the vacuum exists in the suppression
of that history. Vietnam veterans who opposed the war had to
start from scratch with little workable knowledge of precedent
in what they attempted Yet because they were left to their own
imaginations, the members of W A W instigated the most signi­
ficant revolt against war by war veterans in American history
The United States could use a newer group of disaf­
fected soldiers and veterans to act as a conscience to the raw
and sordid perpetuation of warfare *"" Perhaps it is an explan­
ation for the vicious attacks upon the W A W — the dread that
today’s war veterans will form a similar opposition and have
more force and support from lessons learned as a result of the
precedent W A W set. At the same time, W A W should probably
change its name to reflect its newer crops of veterans, perhaps
American War Veterans Against War to encompass future wars
as well as the most recent.
“We believe that service to our country and communi­
ties did not end when we were discharged," a statement in the
W A W newspaper The Veteran declared “We remain commit­
ted to the struggle for peace and for social and economic justice
for all people We will continue to oppose senseless military
adventures and to teach the real lessons of the Vietnam War
We will do all we can to prevent another generation from being
put through a similar tragedy, and we will continue to demand
dignity and respect for veterans of all eras "
In a review about a recent book on W A W , The Turning
A History o f Vietnam Veterans Against the War. by Andrew E
Hunt, Holy Cross professor Jerry Lembeck (author of The Spit­
ting Image: Myth, Memory & The Legacy of Vietnam) wrote for
Humanity & Society, “The most remarkable feature of the W A W
story (is) it hasn’t ended The only 60s-generation antiwar organ­
ization that lived to see the new century, W A W is still a force
for peace. Its obituary has yet to be written ”
Michael McCusker was a USMC Combat Correspondent
in Vietnam. 1966-67 He was a member of Vietnam Veterans
Against the War 1968-72, for much of that time as its Oregon
Coordinator.
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