How the Vietnam war was stopped wasteland of bomb craters.
The Tet offensive and the US military's savage, inhuman response, was fully recorded by the press and TV. It convinced additional Americans that the war was morally indefensible and unwinnable.
This was the turning point for the antiwar movement, which grew rapidly and became more and more an international movement.
In 1968 the demonstrations were not concentrated in two or three cities but took place all over the United States. Several hundred thousand marched. There was a march to the Pentagon of 100,000
The american antiwar movement of the 1960s and early 1970s arose in response to the US government's "dirty war" against the people of Indo-
It was a war that lasted for 15 years - from 1959 until 1974. Vietnam, especially the South, was virtually destroyed. More bombs were dropped on Vietnam - and later Cambodia - than in all the previous wars combined.
Vietnam was the first "television war" — showing all the brutality of the
US military machine.
The following article is reprinted from Socialist Action published in the
US, in its April 1985 edition.
Asher HARER
All in all, 3 million US soldiers served in Vietnam. Sixty thousand died; 46,000 of them in combat. And how many Vietnamese were killed, maimed and burned to death? Perhaps millions.
The movement of the 1960s was antiwar all the way. It was not the old-style pacifist movement that opposed war until it began - only then to become gung-ho patriots. That leadership was bypassed.
This antiwar movement was the first mass antiwar movement in this country that opposed a war while it was going on and that played a decisive role in stopping it.
It united students, workers, Blacks,
Latinos, Asians.
Yet most of those who marched were Democrats or Republicans, not socialists - although the leaders were radicals.
The movement, however, was successful because certain political and organizational questions were fought out and approved before every big action. These included the following:
- Non-exelusion. No red-baiting.
- Political autonomy. No endorsement of political candidates.
This would split the movement.
- A nonviolent, mass-action approach aimed at youth and GIs. Organized civil disobedience was not excluded but was strictly secondary and individual.
A single-issue,
"multi-issue"
The approach.
wanted to combine such things as community organizing with called Democratic Party "peace" candidates.
- Democratic decision-making. One activist, one vote. No secrecy.
The Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS) - in the process of breaking with the right wing Social Democrats - took
In 1965, on April 17, SDS organized an antiwar demonstration in
Washington, DC. Twenty thousand came, mostly youth.
There had been demonstrations before, but not of this size.
Then came the "teach-ins." campus during daytime, met from 8 p.m. until 8 a.m. They discussed the war, debated government spokespersons, and learned the truth in this process.
Then came the Berkeley, California, teach-in of May 21-22, 1965. In the course of 36 continuous hours, 30,000 attended.
The first big march and rally in the San Francisco Bay Area took place on April 15, 1967. About 75,000 people marched up Market Street to Kezar Stadium. It was a broad coalition, including many young marched behind a banner, "The NLF. Viet Cong never called us Nigger!"
Seven many of them behind their union banners - especially those of the International Longshoremen's Union. Very little official union endorsement or support had developed at that generally solidly behind AFL-CIO President George Meany, who was "All the way behind LBJ." [Lyndon Baines Johnson, US president]
The year 1968 opened with a major setback for the US military in Vietnam -the Tet Offensive. On January 31, the lunar New Year holiday known as "Tet," the National Liberation Front launched a counterattack the length and breadth of South Vietnam. The NLF occupied the US Embassy in Saigon for one day.
For a few days the NLF held almost Their success, which came as a complete surprise to the US military, showed that the population was behind the NLF. The US Army held only its own bases.
The United States responded with massive carpet bombings of the cities. Thousands of civilians died. Over 500,000 were made homeless by B-52s from Guam. Vietnam, a beautiful country, once the "rice bowl" of Asia, was turned into a people, led by Vietnam veterans. Over 600 demonstrators were arrested.
Time magazine's cover featured a photo of a banner, "Bring Our Boys Home Now!" This magazine went all over the world - including to Vietnam, to the GIs fighting the "dirty war."
The GIs saw that the movement was not against them. It wanted them home, where they also wanted to be.
The US Army became more and more demoralized. It was reported that GIs were questioning authority, refusing to follow orders to advance if they considered the situation to be dangerous.
In 1969 came the huge marches and rallies. Life magazine called the November 15 marches "a display without historical parallel, the largest expression of dissent ever seen in this country."
Vietnam veterans and active-duty soldiers participated. There had been widely publicized cases of GIs refusing to go to Vietnam, such as the Fort Hood Three and the Fort Jackson Eight.
Just before the November 15 marches, the story of the massacre at My Lai in South Vietnam broke in the newspapers. Eighteen months earlier, on March 16, 1968, My Lai had been occupied by American troops.
There had been no resistance. None of the villagers bore arms. Still, their homes Former US president Richard Nixon (DR)
International Viewpoint 6 May 1985
Vietnam again remained divided, but that the Republican and Democratic parties.
April 15, 1967, San Francisco. Demonstrators call for US troops out of Vietnam (DR) were destroyed and the villagers - men, women and children - were lined up and machine-gunned. In total, 799 people died. Buried under the bodies of the dead, 132 villagers lived to tell the story.
This event, probably one of many, was covered up for one-and-one-half years. The American people were revolted.
The "unwinnable Now it could be seen openly as a genocidal war to destroy the rural population, considered the base of the Viet Cong. became necessary "to reduce the population," as one American general put it.
The infamous "body count" became the index of how the war was going. Some Americans, not even radicals, found themselves rooting for the Viet Cong - a strange turn of events.
Larry Rottman, a Vietnam veteran, expressed this sentiment in a poem:
"Ask what kind of war it is/Where you can be pinned down/ All day in a muddy rice paddy/While your buddies are being shot/And a close support Phantom Jet/ Who has napalmed the enemy/Wraps itself around a tree and explodes/And you cheer inside?"
The power of the antiar movement was based on the indignation of millions who had learned the truth about "the dirty war" in Vietnam.
When on April 29, 1970, the United States invaded Cambodia, the antiwar coalition immediately called for a demonstration on May 9 - only one week away.
The campuses exploded. In one most unlikely place, Kent State, Ohio, there International Viewpoint 6 May 1985 was an antiwar rally. It was fired on by the National Guard and four students
Within a few days 350 uni-
On May 9, 1970, with one week's preparation, 100,000 marched on the White House. Walter Reuther, UAW [Union of Auto Workers] president, finally sent a telegram to Nixon condemning the shooting down of students.
At Jackson State College in Mississippi, a Black school, the National Guard killed two students charged with "rioting."
But the war continued and the demon-
The biggest of all occurred on April 24, 1971. In San Francisco an estimated 250,000 to 350,000 participated. In New York there were over one-half million. A Harris Poll showed 60% of Americans in favor of the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. Nixon was re-elected after he promised he But he broke off negotiations and rained 100,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam in 10 days. It was an act of ven-
In the middle of the bombings he went to Moscow to negotiate a trade agreement and was received with honors.
The combined historic resistance of the Vietnamese and the tenacious struggle against the war by the American antiwar movement finally forced the United States to pull out. In 1973 the pullouts began.
On January 27, 1973, a ceasefire was signed. These were the Paris Accords.
wouldn't last long. The war resumed. But without US troops, the new US puppet, General Van Thieu, lost all of Vietnam to the North Vietnamese armies -and the war was over.
Yes, this movement altered the course of history. It demonstrated that working people in this country could effectively change the foreign policy of this government if mobilized on a correct
Today, as the US government rains down napalm bombs once again - this time on the people of Cental America - a new antiwar movement is emerging. What we did in the 1960s and 1970s will
But this time, I believe, the movement will be compelled to develop on a much higher political plane. Today, for example, the unions are in on the ground floor in this developing antiwar movement. the case of the San Francisco Spring Mobilization, the unions are in the leadership of the movement.
And out of it must come something that did not come out of the antiwar movement ot the 1960s and 1970s, and that is a political organization that represents the American working class — a labor party.
The next big step the labor and antiwar movement must take is the formation of a labor party that would oppose the war and actually begin the fight against the political system dominated by both
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