Vietnam

by Nigel Cawthorne

  There were good reasons for students to take a stand against the Vietnam War. One was that the young men who actually had to go and fight the war had cause to question its purpose. This was especially true on campus, where the civil rights movement had familiarised students with the effectiveness of protest. At the time, there was a moral battle going on for the heart of America that was being fought and won by committed pacifists. Since the early 1960s, nonviolent civil rights marchers – both black and white – had been abused, beaten and even killed, protesting against segregated schools, housing, transportation, and unfair literacy and civics tests that barred many African-Americans in the southern states from voting. Despite baton-wielding state troopers, Ku Klux Klan bombers, White supremacist snipers, rock-throwing racists and the murderous assaults of police chiefs such as Birmingham, Alabama's Bull Connor who set dogs on child protesters, nonviolent tactics were seen to triumph. With the passing of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965, the civil rights protesters felt they had won the first round in the civil rights struggle. This left a large number of radical activists with a wealth of organisational ability and the feeling that they could win any battle, whatever was ranged against them. Soon the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement became closely intertwined.

  Many of the civil right leaders were committed pacifists. Martin Luther King Jr spoke out against the war, bringing to bear his enormous moral authority. The war itself was racially divisive. African-Americans did not find it as easy as middle-class white youths to evade the draft. Under the Selective Service Act of 1948, 26,800,000 young American males were eligible for military service. Of these, 8,720,000 volunteered for military service and 2,215,000 were drafted. Those who volunteered could often wangle a noncombatant job, or they could join the National Guard, spending six months on active duty training before returning to civilian life, though for the next six years, they would have to attend a two-week summer camp and meetings every other weekend. This was the path favoured by George W. Bush. Only 2.5 per cent of those eligible for the draft, 570,000 in all, became 'draft dodgers'. They avoided the call-up by failing to register or by moving abroad. Canada, Mexico, and Sweden provided havens for those avoiding conscription. The Canadian immigration authorities registered some 30,000 draft dodgers, but it is thought another 50,000 settled there illegally. Bill Clinton sat out the war in Britain, but this option became unpopular when, controversially, some US citizens were deported back to America to face military service. However, the problem of draft dodgers was tiny compared with the 15,410,000 men who were disqualified or obtained some exemption or deferment more or less legitimately. The sons of well-off whites could easily get a deferment by staying on at college, getting married, feigning homosexuality, or faking a medical condition. Some took drugs to raise their blood pressure, others punctured their arms to simulate needle tracks. Doctors – usually middle-class white men themselves – were often sympathetic.

  'I save lives by keeping people out of the army,' said one.

  President Johnson introduced a policy that drafted African-Americans preferentially. He did this, not for racist reasons, but because he felt that, by putting deprived black men in the armed services, he could provide them with improved health care and education, and promote their social advancement. Many African-Americans were not opposed to this, to start with. After centuries of discrimination, they saw fighting in the war as a chance to prove their worth to their country. Others thought that the war in Vietnam had nothing to do with them. The real enemy was back home. Al Harrison, civil rights organiser at Detroit's Wayne State University, said, 'We got no business fighting a yellow man's war to save the white man'.

  In April 1967, the heavyweight boxing champion of the world Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the armed forces on religious grounds: in 1964, he had joined the Nation of Islam, better known then as the Black Muslims. He was stripped of his title and prosecuted. He was sentenced to five years in jail and fined $10,000 for draft evasion, though the conviction was overturned by the US Supreme Court in 1971. He won his title back by beating George Foreman in 1974.

  It was indisputable that African-Americans bore an unfair burden in Vietnam. While just 8 per cent of the military were black, in 1965 African-Americans made up some 23 per cent of the enlisted soldiers killed in action. There were few black officers, though Major-General Beauregarde Brown III made head of MACV logistics. Since Vietnam, many African-Americans have been promoted to the highest ranks of the US Army. Colin Powell and others started their careers in Vietnam. But at that time, medals and stripes came easier to whites. Less than 3 per cent of the officers in the Army were black, less than 1 per cent in the Marines. The feeling that African-Americans were being unfairly sacrificed in a foreign war helped foment further racial conflict at home. It was only after the beginning of the Vietnam War that rioting spread to the black ghettos of the northern cities and those of the West Coast. In 1967, the 82nd Airborne had to be sent into Detroit's Twelfth Street ghetto to restore order, and the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 and Martin Luther King in 1968 cranked up race tension to a level where groups such as the Black Panthers were openly advocating insurrection.

  On 21 April 1965, a Buddhist monk publicly burnt himself to death in Saigon as a protest against the war. Television pictures of the ritual suicide were relayed around the world. Other Vietnamese monks and a young girl followed suit.

  Thieb Tieu Dieu, a Buddhist priest, burns himself to death in protest against Vietnamese government policies, Hue, 1965.

  This potent form of protest was brought horrifyingly home to America on 2 November when Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker and father of three, burnt himself to death outside the Pentagon. He was holding his three-year-old daughter when his clothes caught fire, but dropped her just in time. She was rescued unharmed by a passerby. A week later, on 9 November, Roger Allen LaPorte of the Catholic Workers movement burnt himself to death outside the United Nations building in New York. The impact was enormous. Ninety-three per cent of American homes had a TV and Americans could witness these self-immolations in their own front rooms. Fortunately, they were few and far between; mass protest, sit-ins and, ultimately, full-scale riots were found to be a more effective tactic.

  Anti-war activists also tried to halt troop trains. In June 1965 protesters held up the 173rd Airborne Brigade who were en route to Saigon. Later that summer the Vietnam Day Committee, formed on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley in the spring, organised further attempts to stop trains. These were unsuccessful, as only a handful of hard-core radicals were prepared to stand in front of a train full of armed troops. Most protesters would only picket local induction centres or march in demonstrations.

  On 27 November 1965, a demonstration of 30,000 of the older, quieter protesters took place in Washington, DC. It was organised by SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. Its most famous member was Dr Benjamin Spock, whose best-selling book Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care was the paediatric bible to the parents of the Vietnam War generation. His presence was a major boost to the anti-war movement's respectability in the public's eyes and attracted many other older liberals. The more radical protesters carrying banners calling for the immediate withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam were persuaded to keep a low profile. The march's leaders made speeches calling for an end to the American troop build-up and condemning both sides for not making any serious effort to find a negotiated settlement.

  As these so-called 'peaceniks', later known as 'Vietniks', marched around the White House, their moderate banners called for a 'Supervised Ceasefire' and claimed that 'War Erodes The Great Society'. President Johnson issued a statement the next day saying: 'Dissent is a sign of political vigour'. However, the vigour came, not from the liberals who protested outside the White House, but radicals across the country who had already adopted a new and dramatic form of protest.

  In mid-October 1965 David Millar, a 22-year-old Jesuit charity worker in a Bo
wery soup kitchen, held up his draft card at an anti-war rally in New York City.

  'I believe the napalming of villages is an immoral act,' he declared, holding a match to the corner of the card. 'I hope this is a significant act – so here goes'.

  He lit it and was arrested by the FBI. At the end of October, he became the first American to be arraigned under a new law that made draft-card burning a federal offence with a maximum penalty of five years in jail and a $10,000 fine. The pacifist Terry Sullivan was sent to jail for a year for destroying his draft card. Millar was certainly right in one respect – it was a significant act. Draft-card burning became a regular feature of anti-war demonstrations and the nightly news. The cameras would also capture infuriated onlookers attacking the protesters or dousing the flames with water or fire extinguishers. The leading ranks of a New York march were drenched with red paint; in Chicago and Oakland, demonstrators were pelted with eggs. In Detroit marchers chanting 'Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?' were drowned out by pro-war protesters singing 'The Star Spangled Banner'. When leading pacifist David Dellinger visited North Vietnam in 1966, he was denounced as a traitor.

  Despite the opposition of a great many ordinary people, the protests continued. In New York and Chicago, students seized university administration buildings in protest. At New York University, 130 students and members of the faculty walked out when Defense Secretary Robert McNamara turned up to collect an honourary degree. Although attitudes towards the war often split along generation line, teachers soon began to support their students, whose leaders were calling for an end to the draft. In June 1966, The New York Times ran an anti-war ad signed by 6,400 academics, and on 13 November, 138 prominent Americans signed a document urging 'men of stature in the intellectual, religious, and public service communities' to withdraw their support for America's policy in Vietnam, although five days later the American National Conference of Catholic Bishops confirmed its support of US actions in Southeast Asia.

  By 1967 American society was becoming increasingly divided. The anti-war movement now embraced a broad coalition of radical groups. The anti-war intellectuals, notably Dr Spock, the novelist Norman Mailer, and MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky, had been addressing 'teach-ins' at colleges organised by Students for a Democratic Society. This caused problems among pro-war parents. One mother asked for her son's college scholarship to be revoked after he was shown Vietcong propaganda movies at school. But in 1967, these leading anti-war activists began to appear on television. Even on Johnny Carson's Tonight show, guests openly expressed anti-war sentiments, though Carson kept his views to himself.

  Television played a key role in the war. Vietnam was the first televised war. As well as giving the protesters voice, it showed vivid scenes of the fighting every evening on the nightly news. Unlike wars before and since, in Vietnam the military had no chance to restrict TV crews' access to the war zone or censor their coverage. American viewers could witness every mistake and reverse. They could see grunts zippoing hootches, or Americans bombing and shelling Vietnamese homes in Saigon after the Tet Offensive. The American custom of shipping their dead home in body bags also damaged domestic morale. The British, by contrast, like to bury their dead on the battlefield – it is considered an honour so 'that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England'. In America, consignments of coffins arriving at airports and endless hometown funerals made their losses very public.

  In January 1967, the US Court of Appeal ruled unanimously that local draft boards could not punish anti-war protesters by reclassifying them 1-A. On 31 January 2,000 clergymen marched on Washington, DC, demanding an end to the bombing of North Vietnam. In February, there was a three-day 'Fast for Peace' by Christians and Jews and, in March, Martin Luther King told 5,000 demonstrators in Chicago that the war in Vietnam was a 'blasphemy against all that America stands for'.

  Dr Benjamin Spock and Dr Martin Luther King lead a 3000-strong anti-war demonstration in Chicago, 25 March 1967.

  On the weekend of 15–16 April 1967, 125,000 anti-war demonstrators gathered in New York, with another 5,000 in San Francisco as part of the 'Spring Mobilisation to End the War in Vietnam'. At a demonstration in Central Park, protesters in bizarre costumes carried placards that said: 'Draft beer, not boys' and 'I don't give a damn for Uncle Sam'. One African-American held a sign that pointed out: 'No Vietcong ever called me Nigger'. Dr King delivered a statement to the United Nations, accusing the US of violating its charter. However, protesters outside the UN building still had to be protected from pro-war demonstrators by mounted policemen. These protests were condemned by the House Un-American Activities Committee, who claimed that they were inspired by Communists. Their report was, in turn, condemned by Reverend James L. Bevel, a prominent anti-war cleric and King's adviser. Senator Robert Kennedy spoke out defending 'the right to criticise and dissent' and said that those donating blood to North Vietnam were maintaining 'the oldest tradition of this country'.

  The anti-war protests were already having an effect. Nixon, who was criticising the Johnson administration for taking a soft line on Vietnam, claimed on a visit to Saigon that 'this apparent division at home' was 'prolonging the war'. Westmoreland said that anti-war activity in the US 'gives him [the enemy] hope that he can win politically that which he cannot accomplish militarily'. He went on to say that his troops in Vietnam were 'dismayed, and so am I, by recent unpatriotic acts at home'. And on a visit home in April 1967, he addressed Congress in an attempt to stiffen the resolve of the American people.

  'Backed at home by resolve, confidence, patience, we will prevail in Vietnam over the Communist aggressor,' he said. Johnson agreed that 'protest will not produce surrender'. But on 27 September 1967, an advertisement appeared in the press, signed by 300 influential Americans, asking for funds to support an organisation helping young men dodge the draft. Johnson could not help but acknowledge that the war was becoming unpopular. Speaking in Washington on 7 October 1967, he said that he was not going to court cheap popularity 'by renouncing the struggle in Vietnam or escalating it to the red line of danger'.

  Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, 'America doesn't have to apologise for her part in the war. She can be proud of it'. But the youth of America were far from proud of what was being done in their name. On 21 October 1967, some 50,000 demonstrators marched on the Pentagon. It was the biggest anti-war demonstration to date. In a televised showdown, they faced 10,000 US Army troops and National Guardsmen drawn up to defend the building. The soldiers had rifles though no ammunition, but were authorised to break up the demonstration by force. At first the confrontation was peaceful. Demonstrators came up to the soldiers and poked flowers down the barrels of their guns, while another group attempted to mystically levitate the building. But as night drew on it was broken up with considerable brutality.

  The March on the Pentagon was the idea of the National Mobilisation Committee to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE), formed in 1966 to coordinate anti-war demonstrations. In the spring of 1967, they decided to hold a protest in Washington, DC, aiming to attract one million protesters. But MOBE director James Bevel fell ill and their chairman David Dellinger was abroad, so former Berkeley Vietnam Day Committee organiser Jerry Rubin was called in. However, he had changed since his VDC days and MOBE members were shocked to find he was now into hallucinogenic drugs and Native American religion. He also asserted the five-sided pentagon was a symbol of evil that had to be 'exorcised'. Nevertheless, on 26 August 1967, MOBE agreed to hold a protest at the Pentagon.

  Two days later, at a press conference in New York, Rubin announced that protesters would shut down the Pentagon by blocking its entrances and halls on 21–22 October. This was perfectly feasible as, in those, days there were no security checks and anyone could walk into the Pentagon. Then Rubin's sidekick, former civil-rights activist Abbie Hoffman, told the nation that they were going to 'raise the Pentagon 300 feet in the air'. Dellinger urged protesters to attack other federal buildings.<
br />
  'There will be no government building unattacked,' he said.

  Many of MOBE's more conservative supporters were put off by these outspoken tactics, but Dellinger said that it marked the anti-war movement's transition 'from protest to resistance'.

  The administration was frightened that the demonstration might turn violent and threatened to ban it unless MOBE leaders renounced their threat of civil disobedience. This would prove counterproductive, as the threat of a ban was regarded as political repression and many disparate groups rallied to MOBE's cause. The administration was forced to let the demonstration go ahead, but confined the route to narrow side roads and the Pentagon's parking lot, over a thousand feet from the building.

  On 20 October protesters began pouring into Washington. Washington reacted as if it were facing a full-scale revolution. Access to all government buildings was restricted. The speaker ordered the House of Representatives locked and Congress passed a bill to protect the Capitol from armed intruders. Wire barriers were erected down Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House, with tours being limited to VIPs. The president's wife, Lady Bird Johnson wrote in her diary that it was like being in a state of siege.

  Six thousand soldiers were at hand. Shortly after dark on 20 October, troops in full kit, carrying rifles, C-rations and teargas, moved into the Pentagon. Jeeps and trucks of the First Army sat bumper to bumper in four underground tunnels, the lead vehicles draped with beige cloths to conceal their identity. Across the country another 20,000 troops were put on alert in case there was an uprising in the ghettos. Two thousand National Servicemen were mobilised to support Washington's 2,000 policemen, 800 of whom were protecting the Capitol. More 'special policemen' were hidden in the Executive Office Building. Blankets were concealed along the route of the march to snuff out anyone who might try and set themselves on fire. However, arrests were to be kept to a minimum, in order to avoid attracting more national and international attention to the protest.