Home > John Kerry and VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War)

John Kerry and VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War)

by Open-Publishing - Sunday 29 August 2004
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The antiwar movement’s Spring Offensive began on 19 April when more than one thousand members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW)launched a five-day "limited incursion into the country of Congress" known as Operation Dewey Canyon III, a parody of the code name of the invasion of Laos. Dressed in fatigues, the veterans—many with long hair, some disabled—held memorial services for fallen comrades, conducted guerrilla theater search-and-destroy missions, and testified against the war before Congress. On 23 April, more than 700 VVAWs threw their medals over a fence in front of the Capitol as a final gesture. The next day, the NPAC-PCPJ March on Washington attracted between 200,000 and 500,000 participants, with an additional 150,000 marchers in San Francisco. Despite press reports of a generic antiwar march, it was an impressive mass mobilization drawn from a cross-section of the American public—by far the largest ever. Some May Day people viewed the march as "nothing but hors d’oeuvres for what’s to come this week and next."

(More than one thousand protestors returning from the march shut down part of the New Jersey Turnpike for at least four hours by stopping their cars. Arrests exceeded one hundred. Although riot sponsored by May Day, the incident provided a possible preview of 3 May) - quotes by William D. Hoover and Melvin Small, "Give Peace a Chance: Exploring the Vietnam Antiwar Movement Essays from the Charles Debenedetti Memorial Conference" Syracuse University Press, 1992

"During the national VVAW demonstration in Washington from 19 April to 23 April 1971, a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution commented that their demonstration eroded troop morale, whereupon a veteran responded, "Lady, we are the troops." (ibid)

They Moved the Town
Organizing Vietnam Veterans Against the War

By William F. Crandell

The veterans of a divided nation’s wars are different from those who knew "the thanks of a grateful nation." Oliver Wendell Holmes, speaking to his generation of Union veterans of the American Civil War, commented, "Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire." His was the only generation of Americans more divided by war than the one that fought—and fought over—the Vietnam War. As in the Civil War, even the warriors took opposing sides. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW)represented the largest group of them to take public positions during the conflict.

This is an organizer-historian’s memoir and an oral history of organizing VVAW. It analyzes the organization’s efforts from 1967 through 1975, from VVAW’s birth to the end of the war. In addition to my own recollections, I have also made extensive use of personal archives, contemporary interviews (many of which were conducted in 1987 at the twentieth anniversary reunion of VVAW), and primary source materials that I helped gather as the senior scholar on the staff of the Winter Soldier Investigation, the first oral history of the Vietnam War.

Most members of VVAW were combat veterans who fought a second tour as citizen-soldiers in an effort to end an unjust war and bring their brothers and sisters home. Their activities began at the Spring Mobilization in New York City on 15 April 1967 when six veterans marched under a VVAW banner. VVAW’s emblem was a grim parody of the crusaders’ shield insignia of the U.S. Military Assistance Command-Vietnam (MACV). The official insignia had a red background, with an upright sword over a yellow wall. The sword represented "infiltration and aggression from beyond the embattled ’wall’" (i.e., resistance to Chinese aggression from beyond the Great Wall). Vietnam vets replaced the sword with a modern helmet atop a rifle stuck muzzle-down in the ground of a soldier’s grave.

An ad for VVAW in the New Republic during the 1968 Tet offensive drew a number of new members, mostly from the east coast. I was one of two new members pulled in from the entire midwest. An ex-rifle platoon leader cynical about victory, I still believed in the war until General William C. Westmoreland declared Tet a great American victory. His statement finally convinced me that our commanders lacked any understanding about the war, that we were thus doomed to lose, and that the lives lost would be wasted. Like most VVAW members, I had as my strongest motivations to keep faith with the men left in Vietnam and prevent their lives from being thrown away.

Dan Burdekin and I, both graduate students at Ohio State University (OSU), were given the grand title of "midwest coordinators." Through his contacts with the antiwar movement, we scheduled speeches at churches and universities. We also carried signs in demonstrations and at readings of the names of the war dead, bearing witness as Vietnam Veterans Against the War. We did not try, at that time, to establish a formal organization. We hoped that ending the war would not take that long.

By the spring of 1970, I was the sole midwest coordinator, and I decided to organize a chapter of VVAW at OSU. The growth of VVAW on that campus typified the formation of local chapters in that period. A sign-up table drew a few other vets who had recently returned to campus. Two weeks later, on 29 April 1970, a student strike began at the university.

Colleagues planning the strike, upon hearing that a veterans’ chapter was forming, asked us to serve as strike marshals. At an organizing meeting, we all agreed to the proposal. The six-week strike, which began over campus issues the day before President Richard M. Nixon ordered troops into Cambodia, became an organizing windfall for VVAW. After the Kent State shootings—conducted by the same frightened and leaderless Ohio National Guard we faced in Columbus—the war became a central focus of the strike, and our increasing visibility moved us into leadership positions. Vets who agreed with our position came out of isolation to join us.

Because of our ability as former soldiers to accept leadership and act together, we knew how to direct activities at several critical points. If a cadre of disciplined militants sought to stampede a large, amorphous crowd of student strikers into confrontations with armed and ill-led guardsmen, the vets’ disciplined cohesion and experience tipped the scales away from violence.

Like other new VVAW chapters that were springing up across the country, the one in Columbus decided to admit supportive veterans who had served in places other than Vietnam, although membership remained about 70 percent Vietnam vets. The OSU chapter grew as each action attracted more disaffected veterans. After twelve VVAW members demonstrated with a peace flag at Lockbourne Air Force Base on 21 June, they left without incident. In contrast, twenty-seven VVAW members who had received permission to march in the Upper Arlington Fourth of July parade were threatened with arrest by local police and denied permission to participate. We settled for leafletting and a local television appearance.

Our Buckeye Army of Liberation prepared itself better for Veterans Day 1970. After the American Legion denied us permission to march in the traditional parade, the vets obtained a court order allowing VVAW to march along the parade route thirty minutes ahead of the regular marchers. Columbus police wanted to charge us for the use of police overtime, but upon the discovery that the Legion had already paid for the period, sixty VVAW members marched free, performing guerrilla theater and passing out leaflets to the crowd. By that time we had become seasoned matchers.

At the end of June 1970, the national office of VVAW announced plans to conduct its first national demonstration (Rapid American Withdrawal), "a four-day search-and-destroy operation" in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The Columbus chapter (still the only one in Ohio, although others were beginning to form in the Midwest) offered its services as an organized platoon. Art Flesch, Joel Ann Todd, and I went to New York to help plan the march, set for Labor Day weekend of 1970. We arranged support services, reconnoitered the route, and wrote two leaflets to be used along the way.

The FBI counted eighty-one Vietnam vets gathered on 4 September at George Washington’s encampment in Morristown, New Jersey, for the four-day, eighty-six-mile march to Valley Forge, many drawn by a lastminute ad in the Village Voice. 7 At Valley Forge, 150 Vietnam vets with 110 Purple Hearts were on hand to complete the assembly. Virtually all wore old jungle fatigues with decorations, and most carried toy M-16 rifles. Buckeye Recon, the only organized contingent, was asked to lead the march and act as the demonstration platoon. Along the route, while veterans of other wars denounced our long hair and our message, we staged typical Vietnam War incidents with members of the Philadelphia Guerrilla Theater and Nurses for Peace. They played civilians whom we roughed up, rounded up, and took away. The leaflets left with the townspeople read:

A Company of U.S. Infantry Just Came Through Here
If you had been Vietnamese—
We might have burned your house
We might have shot your dog
We might have shot you.

Vietnam Veterans Against the War

We marched across the Delaware River at sleepy Stockton. During each of the three nights we camped out, local veterans groups threatened violence that never materialized, although police picked up a seventeenyear-old youth who had pointed a real rifle at us.

Many of us had our first experiences with flashbacks and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during this march. During one frightening moment we realized that an ex-marine who was using his old K-Bar knife to simulate torturing a prisoner had lost control and was not simulating any more. His brother vets calmed him down before he harmed anyone. Some of the "detainees" in our staged incidents were treated more roughly than we intended, and I remember very clearly my shock at how concerted an effort I had to make to keep my finger off the trigger of my dummy submachine gun. Most of us revisited Vietnam at some point during Operation RAW.

At Valley Forge the speakers— Vietnam naval hero John Kerry, Rev. James Bevel, Mark Lane, Donald Sutherland, and Jane Fonda—were joined by a small group of disabled Vietnam vets who broke out of the local Veterans Administration hospital after having been ordered to stay away from the rally. A group of menacing bikers shut off their engines when told who we were, and the rally ended with a formal parade-field drill in which we smashed our toy rifles.

Operation RAW, VVAW’s first major demonstration, drew generous press coverage and new members. The sixteen members of Buckeye Recon who had led the march, including one planted by Army Intelligence, went back to OSU and Kent State prepared for more protests. We had already started organizing the Winter Soldier Investigation.

The My Lai massacre, a shock to the American conscience, did not surprise many Vietnam veterans. Of a dozen vets gathered at OSU when the story broke in 1969, I had been the only one who did not have an atrocity story of my own to tell. And when I talked to one of the other platoon leaders from my old unit during the planning of Operation RAW and learned that he had been charged with shooting civilians on a specific date that was fresh in my memory, neither of us could say for sure whether he had shot anybody that day or not. The moral certainty common to both hawks and doves often eluded the footsoldiers in Vietnam.

The Winter Soldier Investigation (WSI) grew out of a project that VVAW co-founder Jan Crumb, attorney Mark Lane, and Jane Fonda had supported: the Citizens Commission of Inquiry (CCI). CCI attempted to link American policies to individual atrocity stories vets brought home. As veterans, we knew that everyone who participates in war crimes suffers, and we needed to tell our country that these horrible acts did not represent simply aberrations or psychotic episodes, but the inevitable outcomes of directions the soldiers had been given.

CCI had contacted VVAW in the hope that we could provide witnesses to link policies and atrocities. We could. But as the process played out, we decided that the public event emerging from the gathering of this testimony would have more credibility as a VVAW project.

The name "Winter Soldier Investigation" came from Tom Paine’s first "Crisis" paper, in which he wrote: "These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot, will in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." We saw ourselves as soldiers who continued to serve past our enlistments because we were needed even more then. The identification with Paine’s pamphlet marked the beginning of VVAW’s self-awareness that we played a revolutionary role, embracing the American tradition of revolution and not those of Lenin, Mao, or Castro.

VVAW had approximately 7,000 members by the opening of the WSI on 31 January 1971. Its membership had nearly doubled in the previous month because of the response to a full-page ad contributed by Playboy. Three leaders from the national office and three members from the growing list of chapters comprised the six-member WSI steering committee. One of the first decisions we made was to hold WSI in a midwestern city, Detroit, in order to make it easier for witnesses to get there.

With the help of Catholic antiwar activists Bill Pace and Carolyn Agosta, the steering committee set up a collective in a house on the industrial east side of the city. They moved into it along with Mark Lane and Jane Fonda, who contributed both their fund-raising talents and their perspectives as national celebrities who understood the media. Although the gathering of testimony had begun the previous summer, it took another six weeks of on-site planning to put the conference together.

The support of antiwar celebrities brought in essential funding. Jane Fonda and her agent, Steve Jaffe, produced a series of benefits, including "Acting in Concert for Peace," in which Fonda, Dick Gregory, Donald Sutherland, and Barbara Dane performed, and two musical concerts, one given by Graham Nash and David Crosby and the other by legendary folk singer Phil Ochs. In addition, Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic clergy arranged for housing for witnesses because, as one of them (Dr. John B. Forsyth, then Director of Missions for the Detroit Metropolitan Council of Churches) put it, "(It) is important that the public realize that American atrocities in Vietnam are an everyday occurrence." Attorney Dean Robb and his partner Ernest Goodman raised support among area lawyers. UAW secretary-treasurer Emil Mazey and Michigan secretary of state Richard Austin also endorsed the program and sought contributions for it.

From 31 January through 2 February, 105 Vietnam vets appeared on nine panels, grouped with their past units in order to corroborate each other’s testimony. Both vets and civilian experts who had been to Vietnam spoke on additional panels about weaponry, prisoners of war, and the medical effects of the war. There were also two long panels: the one on the first night, called "What We Are Doing to Vietnam," addressed the ecological and cultural damage caused by the war; for the one on the second night, called "What We Are Doing to Ourselves," I wrote and presented the opening statement.

The testimony was chilling. Veteran after veteran described the training and orders that led to the murder of civilians. Several vets admitted that they had tortured prisoners and had seen their comrades commit rape, arson, and other savage acts, all stemming from their commanders’ policies. Dr. Bert Pfeiffer of the University of Montana presented the first public testimony at WSI on the toxic effect of Agent Orange.

WSI also broke the story—then classified—of the 3rd Marine Division’s major border crossing into Laos, called Operation Dewey Canyon. Although the Pentagon immediately denied the story, its credibility was undermined by the timing of the testimony, which occurred the same day that marines publicly launched Operation Dewey Canyon II in support of South Vietnamese troops invading Laos.

The Winter Soldier Investigation provided a turning point, but not the one we expected. We naively believed that the testimony of 105 American combat veterans on the criminal nature of the Vietnam War would simply end it—that an America already shocked by war crimes would demand an end to the slaughter of innocents and the waste of our brothers.

We had not expected the media to ignore the story. The local stringer for the New York Times forwarded little testimony, telling us that "this stuff happens in all wars." Although the story’s potential electrified the CBS News crew attending WSI, they showed none of what they taped on network news. The less-than-mainstream Pacifica Radio had the best coverage. Although Senator Mark Hatfield did place a transcript of the testimony in the Congressional Record, we still had miles to go to reach the public.

Nevertheless, WSI was very important for its effect on VVAW’s growth into a nationwide mass organization. The search for testimony had led organizers like Mike Oliver, Jeremy Rifkin, and me to crisscross the country looking for anti-Vietnam War vets, contacting scattered members who had replied to the Playboy ad or other announcements. Oliver made it a point to organize chapters and appoint state coordinators wherever he went.

By the end of WSI, VVAW had become a national organization run by a steering committee composed of twenty-six regional coordinators. What had happened to the old midwestern region was typical. I had driven with Jeremy Rifkin (who was not a veteran) in September 1970 from Columbus to Minneapolis, organizing new chapters as he collected testimony for WSI. By February there were enough strong chapters and talented coordinators to allow me to cut my territory down to Ohio and Indiana, which I shared with Jim Pechin of Terre Haute.

Our next operation, in April of 1971, involved a massive VVAW protest in Washington, named Dewey Canyon III, in ironic reference to the Pentagon deception we had exposed. Borrowing from the Nixon administration’s description of the Laotian invasion, we announced that Operation Dewey Canyon III would be "a limited incursion into the country of Congress." The call went out to VVAW chapters, to the growing GI movement, and to antiwar and counterculture newspapers.

Dewey Canyon III grew out of Senator George McGovern’s invitation to us at the end of the Winter Soldier Investigation to send a veteran to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. We selected John Kerry, a Silver Star winner and former navy swift-boat captain, one of our most articulate spokespersons. The demonstrations of Dewey Canyon III would support Kerry’s testimony, give our members a chance to lobby their own representatives, and reveal to the nation Vietnam veterans’ opposition to the war.

An important part of the planning revolved around our work with the District of Columbia police. The Pentagon had established a program that allowed troops serving in Vietnam to muster out early if they became law enforcement officers. The D.C. police had a heavy contingent of Vietnam vets in their ranks. Mike Oliver, Mike Phelan, and Jack Mallory spent several days leafletting the police with a piece Oliver had written, spelling out our opposition to the war, our pride in service, and our disinclination to engage in "pig-baiting." As the main contingent arrived, and members could demonstrate to inquisitive veterans on the police force that we were who we claimed to be—in many cases police and VVAW vets who had fought together and been reunited—we won the support of the local police. It would soon prove important.

We began arriving on Sunday, 18 April, camping that night in West Potomac Park. Only nine hundred had registered. At the evening meeting of the national coordinators, we became concerned that we might not have enough participants to accomplish our several missions. The next morning, now 1,100 strong, we began marching to Arlington, where we were denied entry to the national cemetery—as if we would have desecrated it. With several Gold Star Mothers, we laid wreaths at the barred gates.

Then we marched back into the capital by foot, on crutches, and in wheelchairs, following a banner with our name and emblem on it, past the Lincoln Memorial, past the headquarters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, where a woman said, "Son, I don’t think what you are doing is good for the troops," and a vet replied, "Lady, we are the troops." We marched in the sunlight, chanting "Bring ’em home—bring our brothers home." We marched past a brooding White House to the part of the Mall nearest the Capitol, and there we camped. That day the Washington District Court of Appeals lifted an injunction that the Justice Department had requested to keep us from camping on the Mall.

Some vets began lobbying their congressional delegates even before dropping their gear at the campsite. We were angry. Over a thousand vets who had fought in our country’s latest crusade, we were treated as scum for speaking the truth, barred from paying tribute to our dead, and hounded by the government we had served. When the Washington Evening Star came out that afternoon and treated us honorably, a wave of relief swept our camp.

The next day two hundred vets went to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings, while others met with their senators and representatives. Another two hundred went back to Arlington National Cemetery, marching in single file across the Lincoln Memorial Bridge. This time they were permitted entry. Having led the guerrilla theater during Operation RAW, I was asked to do the same thing in the streets of D.C., again with Buckeye Recon and the Philadelphia Quaker troupe, now augmented by many other vets. We began that Tuesday afternoon, 20 April, on the steps of the Capitol.

That night, during a fund-raiser by Senators Claiborne Pell and Philip Hart, we learned that Chief Justice Warren Burger of the Supreme Court had reinstated the injunction against us, and had ordered us to leave the Mall by 4:30 the next afternoon. We continued to march, spending much of the day lobbying and doing guerrilla theater, while fifty vets went to the Pentagon and offered to turn themselves in as war criminals.

Meanwhile, we prepared to face the injunction deadline. The national coordinators decided early that it would be the entire encampment’s decision whether to stay and face arrest or to do something else. As part of preparing for an alternative, I was sent to the National Cathedral, where I negotiated successfully for permission to camp on the grounds there if we decided to leave the Mall.

That afternoon, 2,000 of us met to decide what to do next. Our lawyer, former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark, announced that the Supreme Court had met in special session and offered us an option: if we stayed awake, we would not be arrested. By a close vote, we decided to sleep on the Mall, risking arrest. After everyone agreed to abide by that decision, we wrote "POW" (for "prisoner of war") on our shirts as we waited for the arrests that never came. It turned out that while Senator Edward M. Kennedy waited with us, the head of the park police refused to "throw some guy in a wheelchair into the gutter in the middle of the night." After painstakingly obtaining its injunction, the administration proved unable to enforce it. The next day’s Washington Evening Star bore the headline "Vets Overrule Supreme Court". A district court judge scolded the executive branch for its behavior, quashed the injunction, and dismissed a similar ban against the upcoming Mayday demonstrations.

Throughout our stay, new members joined us—some still on active duty—as well as would-be infiltrators. It proved difficult to tell them apart because members of both groups had relatively short hair and new facial growth. The presence of several thousand legitimate vets, however, made it easy to challenge suspicious characters. Members would ask what unit the newcomer served with, find somebody from that unit, and make or break the suspect’s story. Among those with phony stories who were recognized by men who had met them in Vietnam were a CIA agent and a Special Forces type who claimed to have served only in a regular infantry outfit. We became used to it. People continually approached me with offers to supply weapons or explosives. Assuming they were provocateurs or crazies or both, I gave them a speech on nonviolence.

Thursday, 22 April, was another busy day. In the morning a large group of vets, led by the Ohio chapters, marched to the steps of the Supreme Court—perhaps a bit tired and cranky—and demanded to know why the nation’s highest court had not ruled on the unconstitutionality of the war. When they sang God Bless America," an equally cranky Supreme Court had 150 vets arrested for disrupting court business. The veterans negotiated the terms of arrest with friendly police, who took them away one by one—with their hands on their heads, POWstyle. They soon gained release on their own recognizance after Ramsey Clark worked out an arrangement whereby one test case would settle whether charges were dropped or the vets would all plead guilty. In the test case, a judge ruled that the veterans had not disrupted court business and threw out the charges.

The charismatic and eloquent John Kerry testified for two hours that day before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with a presentation that electrified the media and the public. "Where is the leadership?" he asked. "Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war. . . . (T)his Administration has done us the ultimate dishonor. They have attempted to disown us and the sacrifices we have made for this country. In their blindness and fear they have tried to deny that we are veterans or that we served in Nam. We do not need their testimony. Our own scars and stumps of limbs are witness enough for others and for ourselves." That night we held a candlelight march past the White House.

Friday, 23 April, was our last day in Washington. While the House began hearings on distortion of news and information on the war and the Senate held hearings on atrocities that American soldiers committed in Vietnam, as many as 3,000 Vietnam veterans filed past the steps to the Capitol and one at a time threw away their medals in one of the most effective antiwar protests of the period. As press and electronic media recorded the emotional scene, a vet tossed the artificial leg he had been issued into the pile of Silver and Bronze Stars, Purple Hearts, army and navy commendation medals, and Vietnamese Gallantry Crosses. It was a cathartic experience for the vets: their faces became radiant as they dispelled their guilt and anger. The medals represented a burden of shame for heroic service in a corrupt and dirty war.

By the summer of 1971, VVAW, like the rest of the antiwar movement, had spent much of its energy. For many Americans, Vietnamization, or the withdrawal of American ground troops and the stepping up of bombing to "change the color of the bodies," had taken the urgency out of ending the war. The public watched in dismay as some antiwar groups, frustrated at their apparent lack of success, turned to terrorism and sectarian infighting.

Although VVAW continued to grow—by that summer we had several hundred active-duty members in Vietnam and hundreds more awaiting discharge at army and marine camps in the United States—we, too, felt the pull of internal disputes. National policy was determined at meetings of the regional coordinators, usually held in the Midwest for logistical reasons, but in the interim the national office ran things. Conflicts ensued, especially in the early 1970s, when every movement organization became divided over the "correct line."

The growth of the regions decentralized VVAW. And, like much of the rest of the antiwar movement, we were also sinking into sectarian conflict. At a national coordinators’ meeting in 1971, we had voted in the spirit of revolutionary solidarity to do at the national level what many chapters had done: admit members who were not Vietnam veterans. This reflected both the enthusiasm of other vets and the importance of nonveteran women—most, but not all, wives and girl friends—in the daily workings of chapters. We rechristened ourselves Vietnam Veterans Against the War/Winter Soldier Organization (VVAW/WSO) so that we could speak either as Vietnam vets or as the larger Winter Soldier Organization.

Almost immediately, we became aware that an organization called Revolutionary Union (RU) was attempting to take over VVAW/WSO in what seemed to be outside penetration by a disciplined cadre of leftists. For VVAW/WSO this was a period in which frustrated macho drives sometimes took the form of posturing to show who was the most revolutionary. RU appealed to a number of members impatient with our relative moderation.

While that dispute raged, VVAW/WSO held a second march on Washington in the summer of 1974, called Dewey Canyon IV (even our powers of imagination seemed to be fading). It was not fun. The dying Nixon administration, perhaps grimly mindful that it had set up the selfdestructive White House plumbers partly to deal with Daniel Ellsberg and the VVAW, became determined this time to enforce another injunction against sleeping on the Mall. The few hundred vets, harassed and threatened constantly, found little rest. These tactics culminated in a confrontation at daybreak on our last day, when dozens of mounted police with clubs prepared to disperse us, breaking off only after we formed a defensive link to meet their charge. We had no intention of going peacefully, and they rode away into the dawn.

That fall, RU became the Revolutionary Communist party (RCP). VVAW/WSO members Barry Romo (who had testified at the Winter Soldier Investigation), Bill Davis, and Pete Zastrow numbered among the founders. Although initially cautious about attempting to take over VVAW/ WSO because they had no mass base of their own, Davis, Zastrow, and Romo were elected to the national office. Their takeover resulted in the disintegration of the organization. By the fall of Saigon in May 1975, VVAW/WSO had become just another small left-wing splinter group.

Vietnam Veterans Against the War grew from a handful of antiwar veterans to a national organization with thousands of members. During a war in which the specter of McCarthyism remained, and in a time of cultural revolution, the loyalty of war protestors was constantly impugned. VVAW members possessed credibility that could not be ignored or scared away. Our slogan was "What can they do to us—send us to Vietnam?"

The history of the antiwar movement in America is a story of courage, integrity, creativity, and diversity. Although VVAW worked within the broad, mostly middle-class, coalition, it may have been the most working-class, nonunion organization in the movement. Like much of the movement, our members tended to be college students, but VVAW was concentrated at public universities—and even those we could barely afford on the meager GI Bill that an ambivalent nation provided. Guilt feelings about our roots troubled us far less than they did many nonveterans at elite schools.

The guilt we faced was not handed down from our parents. We incurred it ourselves. Raised on the best images of valor from what may have been the most just war in human history, World War II, the soldiers of the Vietnam War entered combat in the mistaken belief that our democratic nation could never do anything as evil and destructive as what the Nazis or the communists had done. We went willingly, for the most part, to a war in which the collapse of the officer corps, the racism of our society, and an overzealous reaction to the fear of communism put incredible firepower into the hands of nineteen-year-old young men with far too little supervision. What we learned as a nation, thanks to the honesty of VVAW and the courage of a handful of war correspondents, is that atrocities result from unchecked power—not limited to dictatorships.

Protesting against policies that sent us into combat in Vietnam had a healing and cathartic effect on many of us. It is no wonder that the "rap groups" VVAW formed to handle the psychological scars we bore were the foundation of the vet centers, a whole new treatment modality, or that we played such a crucial role in identifying PTSD as a genuine psychological problem. Nor did it come as a surprise to learn, when Nixon’s lawyers finally released a number of unclassified papers in 1987, that his White House, afraid to admit that the Vietnam War had been detrimental to its veterans, had scrapped Veterans Administration initiatives to deal with PTSD as a response to Dewey Canyon III.

Being a member of VVAW was not easy. Members were wiretapped, beaten by police officers, shot by drug agents, and stabbed in jail cells. But for many of us, no other choice existed. The high price our generation of veterans has paid in suicide, mental illness, and substance abuse testifies to the cost of remaining silent and alone. We were reviled as much as we were honored. But we also prolonged, for many years, that wonderful alchemical bonding and camaraderie that is known only by those who face great dangers together. In fact, because of VVAW activities, our members less often fell prey to the psychological traumas associated with coming home from Vietnam than did our other cohorts.

When we went into the service, we had taken an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. In VVAW we served a second hitch. We made it possible for a nation that hated the Vietnam War to honor its veterans. Our truth helped make America free again. In the face of a great national tragedy, ours remained a prophetic voice, summoning America to be true to its deepest beliefs. What we learned is that a prophet is never without honor, whether the state bestows it or not.

http://www.g0lem.net/PhpWiki/index.php/VietnamVets

Forum posts

  • What’s relevant now is that George Bush did not receive his party’s nomination for what he did over three decades ago, but John Kerry did. That’s why we need to get to the bottom of what the Swift Boat vets are saying. The original exaggerations or lies are not the problem. The current cover-up attempt is, because that goes to the heart of the man and the heart of what kind of president we could expect John Kerry to be. This spoiled rich-boy, Clinton style, slash and burn of anyone who dares question him is something sir that I am not willing to contend with on a daily basis for 4 more years, we had 8 Clinton years of that already and I voted for the cad. Bush has been a breath of fresh air with his upfront honesty and what’s best for the country ethics.

  • I think history shows us that even though the U.S. policy for fighting Vietnam was incorrect, the Democrat administrations that took us into that war understood that action was needed. At the time, they were fighting tyranical enemies:

    Russia - who had already murdered over 20 million of its own people (and others)
    Communist China - who was in the process of murdering over 30 million of its own people

    These are quite possibly the most murderous governments in the history of the world. Even the nazis were NATIONAL SOCIALISTS i.e. socialism with a heavy dose of bigotry. It was natural to be threatened by them and it was natural to fight Vietnam. I wish no disrespect on that war’s veterans, as I am in my 9th year of service in the USMC. I believe, however, that their actions were misguided and that numerous communists worked with the "peace" movement in an effort to destroy this country.

    After we left Vietnam, their communist government went on another killing spree, murdering over 1 million of its own citizens. Anyone who thinks that is "peace" demonstrates a level of ignorance that is truly dangerous.

    • Talk about brainwashed, you wouldn’t know a breath of fresh air from an enormous fart.....if you believe that lying bastard and his corporate cronies. Ike Eisenhower warned the American people about the coming of the military industrial complex and the end of democracy. Well folkes here it is with Bushco. Our V.P. Cheney is a cororate crook and how could anyone disagree? The government has even launched several investigations into his company Haliburton’s ripping off the taxpayers with fabricated billings and gouging. This says it all, in this time of war an honest V.P. would have prevented his company from war profiteering, but the point of this war was for profit. Wake up America, kick these theiving maggots to the curb.

  • Great article.

    It’s really too bad there are veterans today who would attack their fellow veteran’s service to country. I would like to point out that one of the recent SBVFT, Larry Thurlow, not only dishonors John Kerry with his false affidavit, but he also dishonors his 2nd in command, Mr. Lambert, who also won a Bronze Star for his heroic actions that day. Mr. Lambert took command of Thurlow’s boat when Thurlow boarded the disabled SB. Mr. Lambert then directed supressing fire to both banks UNTIL Thurlow fell off the crippled boat. At which time Mr. Lambert, disregarding his own safety by ignoring incoming (small arms as well as automatic weapons) fire, pulled Thurlow from the water. Now, 30 some years later Thurlow repays his right hand man who risked life and limb for him by dishonoring his actions and casting doubt on the Bronze Star the USN says he earned that day. I have no respect for Thurlow or any of the SBVFT for they have presented no evidence of their claims as they seek to discredit others. How disingenious and disgusting.

    • The problem is Kerry, himself will not address the issue. He keeps sending out people who were not there either. The problem I have is this in regards to the March 13th 1969 mission. Five boats went on that mission. These skippers all knew each other , the enlisted knew each other, but yet no one can identify who wrote the reports regarding this mission. The initial match up to no one. The other skipper seem to think it was Kerry who wrote the reports. Granted the SBVFT stories have some holes, but as the Washington Post brought up, Kerry’s stories has holes also. Between Unfit for Command, Tour of Duty, Boston Globe Bio and Kerry’s own Senate testimony, many questions have to be answered.

  • Let’s not waste any more time debating John Kerry’s military service. Military records show that John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam and was honored three times for his heroism. The men who actually served with him say the same thing. Those are the facts. Everything else is just opinion, but opinion based on partisan politics, not facts. If we call Kerry’s medals into question, we call the medals of all veterans into question as well. That is something we should not do. Let’s focus on the real issues — the war in Iraq, our economy, education, health care, etc. But if you want to go back into the past, search out George W. Bush’s past. His personal history is quite disreputable. It includes arrests for disorderly conduct, driving under the influence, hazing of fraternity pledges during his college years at Yale, going AWOL from the Alabama National Guard, one business failure after another, influence peddling, lieing to the American public about weapons of mass destruction, and so much more. These aren’t opinions; these are facts. Be open minded enough to check them out.

    • Are you surprised? The whole Bush family are like a gang of thugs. Look at Neil Bush and his S&L rip off, the whole family has a sorted past if anyone wants to waste time checking them out you will find that their theiving and influence pedaling goes back several generations. The only thing daddy Bush did while he was the president besides build his fortunes on sleeze was to get his wife Barbara’s face on the one dollar bill. But since he was a one termer, he managed to get his idiot son in there to finish his miserable work.