OMNI
VIETNAM WAR NEWSLETTER #7, March 24, 2015.
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.
(#1 July 24, 2011; #2 June 9, 2012; #3 Sept. 25, 2012; #4 April 13, 2013; #5, April 9, 2014; #6, Feb. 18, 2015). Thanks to Marc.
2015, the 50th anniversary of the start of US direct combat operations in Vietnam.
What’s at stake: To the Pentagon and Obama: don’t whitewash this war.
We must not forget this atrocious war, the destruction and suffering it caused for no good purpose. The Pentagon, President Obama, and others are trying to turn it into part of US patriotic history. Let us instead seek the truth about the war—and all the other US wars of aggression since WWII.
My blog: War Department and Peace Department
Newsletters:
Index:
See: Agent Orange, Air War, Chemical War, Civilian Deaths and Suffering, Deceit, Imperialism, Kissinger, Killing Civilians, Land Mines, Literature About the War, Lying, Militarism, Nixon, Pentagon, Propaganda, Protest, Recruiting, Suicides, Torture, US Westward Empire, VFP, War Crimes, Waste, Whistleblowing, and more.
See OMNI’s Westward, Pacific/E. Asia Empire Newsletters
Contents #6 at end.
Contents: Vietnam War Newsletter #7
Telling the Truth About the War vs. Pentagon/Pres. Obama Official History
Editorial from Peace in Our Times
A Call to the Wall, Peace in Our Times
Veterans for Peace, Vietnam: The Power of Protest. Telling the Truth.
Learning the Lessons
Learning the Lessons
Lembcke, Refuting the Myths
Keating, GI Resistance During the War
Peace Movement
From HAW, Two Commemorations
Consequences of the War to US and Vietnamese Troops and Vietnamese People
Dick, Literature and the Wall
Contact Pres. Obama
Telling the Truth About the War vs. Pentagon/Pres. Obama Official History
Editorial, “Commemorating the American War in Vietnam.” Peace in Our Times (Winter 2015). Argues for full disclosure,“an honest commemoration” of the war, instead of the one initiated by the Pentagon, supported by President Obama, and funded by Congress at $65 million. The official commemoration avoids many realities of the war, including the “moral injury” many returning soldiers experience as PTSD. Veterans for Peace offers a Vietnam Full Disclosure campaign in rejection of the Pentagon’s efforts to “sanitize and mythologize the Vietnam war and to thereby legitimize further unnecessary and destructive wars.” See Vietnamfulldisclosure.org for more information. –Dick
Veterans for Peace Editorial, “A CALL TO THE WALL.” PEACE IN OUR TIMES (Winter 2015). Announces a demonstration at The Wall in Washington, D.C. on Memorial Day, May 25, on the 50thanniversary of the beginning of the American War in Vietnam, in opposition to the Pentagon’s initiative to convince young people the war was a noble enterprise. For more on the Vietnam War Full Disclosure movement go to vietnamfulldisclosure.org . VforP calls us to send a letter addressing the Vietnam War Memorial (i.e. US soldiers who died) and the millions of killed Vietnamese, who deserve their own memorial, to share our memories of the war from any perspective. Email your letter to vncom50@gmail.com, with subject line Memorial Day 2015, or mail it to Full Disclosure, Veterans for Peace, 409 Ferguson Rd, Chapel Hill, NC 27516, by May 1. –Dick.
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VETERANS FOR PEACE
VIETNAM: THE POWER OF PORTEST
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May 1-2 Washington commemoration, April VietnamTrip, Kicklighter letter update,
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Spat-upon Veterans,
Abandoned POWS,
and ‘Hanoi Jane’:
VIETNAM and the
Making of America’s ‘Great Betrayal’ Narrative
Prof. Emer. Jerry Lembcke spoke at the U. of Tulsa March 3, 2015.
Sponsored by the University of Tulsa Social Science Interest Group (SSIG). For further information, call 918-631-2797. Lembcke’s scholarship is important today because the Pentagon and the Obama admin. have organized and funded a decade-long campaign to whitewash that war.
Jerry Lembcke, Emeritus Prof. of History at Holy Cross University, is the author of numerous books on the Vietnam War including The Spitting Image: Myth Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam, andHanoi Jane: War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal.
KEVIN KEATING, “GI RESISTANCE TO THE VIETNAM WAR: The Collapse of the Armed Forces.” VETERANS FOR PEACE, PEACE IN OUR TIMES (Winter 2015, successor to War Crimes Times). About the demoralization of US troops. High desertion rate: “By 1970, the U.S. Army had 65, 643 deserters”; plus widespread insubordination, sedition, and even fragging. The rebellion caused leaders to turn more to air war and US Navy, but the rebellion occurred in the Navy also, with refusals to report and sabotage. –Dick.
PEACE MOVEMENT
[haw-info] HAW Notes 3/24/15: Vietnam War commemorative events in DC, April 29 - May 2
March 24, 2015 | 2:11 PM (1 hour ago) | | ||
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Two major events regarding the Vietnam War will take place in Washington, DC between Wednesday, April 29 and Saturday, May 2, marking the 50th anniversary of the war's end. At both events, many of the speakers and panelists will be well familiar to readers of these mailings. The websites that are linked from the following paragraphs give full information.
"The Vietnam War Then and Now: Assessing the Critical Lessons." Wednesday evening April 29 to Friday afternoon May 1 at the NYU-DC Global Academic Center, 1307 L St., NW. Sponsored by the Kroc Institute for International Peace at the University of Notre Dame and the Provost's Global Research Initiatives and History Department at New York University.The registration deadline is April 1.
"Vietnam: The Power of Protest." Friday eveningMay 1 and Saturday May 2 at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, 1313 New York Avenue.This program of panels and workshops is sponsored by the Vietnam Commemoration Committee, including many well-known leaders of the Vietnam-era antiwar movement, and is co-sponsored by a number of groups including the Institute for Policy Studies and MoveOn.org. At 4pm Saturday there will be a commemorative walk to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial via the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Vietnam Women's Memorial.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE WAR
Literature and The Wall: Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country
Inquiry and empathy toward those who have suffered war—both combatants and non-combatants--thankfully continue through stories about fictional characters and their responses to the monuments of wars. The literature of the Vietnam War and its monuments has perhaps equaled that of World Wars I and II. In Country, by Bobbie Ann Mason, gives an account of a journey to the memorial by a Vietnam veteran, Emmett, his niece Sam (Samantha), and her grandmother Mrs. Hughes (Mamaw, the mother of Sam’s father killed in Vietnam). The three characters are revealed by their different perceptions of The Wall. Emmett seeks to come to terms with his grief by saying goodbye to his dead comrades whose names are in “a V in the ground, like the wings of an abstract bird, huge and headless”; the niece/daughter seeks to learn more about her uncle and father by confronting the “black gash in a hillside,” the “black boomerang, whizzing toward her head”; the mother /grandmother seeks reunion with her son, bringing him a pot of geraniums for his “hole in the ground.” Sam sees the Washington Monument in one direction and the American flag in another; both “seem like arrogant gestures, like the country giving the finger to the dead boys.” She and her grandmother climb a borrowed ladder to touch the name of father and son, Dwayne E. Hughes. Mamaw strokes the name “affectionately, like feeling a cat’s back.” Sam, up on the ladder, “feels so tall, like a spindly weed that is sprouting up out of this diamond-bright seam of hard earth.” Emmett finds the names of his dead friends and sits in front of the wall until “slowly his face bursts into a smile like flames.”
Although some who come to the memorial feel the patriotic nationalism and imperial majesty that the Monuments for past wars explicitly sought to inspire—from Greece and Rome to Great Britain and the United States--, while others value it for its warning against war, so people won’t forget, and we won’t have war again, Mason’s characters visit for its healing power. The title of the replica of the memorial that traveled around the country reflects this latter response: “The Wall That Heals.” It is a place where people grieve as individuals. Ordinary people seek the names of their loved ones lost in a possibly, seemingly (could it be?) meaningless war. In trying to represent the human pain and sorrow of war instead of the valor and glory of warriors and nations (the American flag, the inscription “God Bless America,” and the heroic statue of three soldiers, all later compelled additions), Mason represented The Wall as it was originally designed by Maya Lin and has been perceived perhaps by most of the visitors—the names in chronological order.
For more see “From Patriotism to Peace: The Humanization of War Memorials” by James R. Bennett, The Humanist (Sept. Oct 1998), 5-9. –Dick
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2. If you write a letter, please consider typing it on an 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet of paper. If you hand-write your letter, please consider using pen and writing as neatly as possible.
3. Please include your return address on your letter as well as your envelope. If you have an email address, please consider including that as well.
4. And finally, be sure to include the full address of the White House to make sure your message gets to us as quickly and directly as possible:
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Contents Vietnam War Newsletter #6, Feb. 18, 2015http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2015/02/uswestward-imperialism-pacifice-asia.html
Telling the Truth about the War vs. Pentagon/Pres. Obama’s “Rehabilitation”
Veterans for Peace project, "Full Disclosure”
Sally Kohn, Pentagon Whitewash
Schell, Rev. of Turse’s Kill Everything That Moves
Christian Appy’s Books
Working Class War
Patriots
American Reckoning
TomGram: Christian Appy, “Honor” the Vietnam War, Forget the War
Books Reviewed or Cited in OMNI’s Vietnam War Newsletters Nos. 1-6
Struggle at Home
Lemisch, Historians, American Historical Profession
Peacemaking During the War
Celebration of Peacemakers in May
Judy Wu, Radicals on the Road
Consequences of the War: To US and Vietnamese Troops and Nations
What It Did To Our Troops: Film We Went to War by Michael Grigsby
Suffering of Vietnamese Civilians, Google Search, Feb. 18, 2015.
END VIETNAM WAR NEWSLETTER #7, 2015