The Politics and Culture of the 1960s

The Vietnam Reader shows how poorly the soldiers were treated during and after Vietnam. The soldiers and marines were pushed hard and were give orders that were not only extremely difficult but near impossible. This gave soldiers an odd hatred for their commanders and a conflict with orders and self preservation. There also was a huge problem with morale. How do you fight when you don’t even want to be there. In all previous wars American troops knew they had to fight an why. Its hard to fight when you don’t quite know what you are fighting for. Then there is also the fact that there was no health care, well good health care, at home. If they got injured the government would pay for it, but in some of the lowest quality hospitals you can find. There have been accounts where some would rather have been dead than taken home and have had to live in a nursing home for the rest of their lives. The GI’s knew it was a no win situation. How do you keep your hopes up if you knew that? Why fight?

My question to you all: What effect did the US Governments actions have on the morale of the GI’s? Would the war turned out diffrernt if there was better leadership and higher morale?

The accounts of Vietnam from Blackboard, as well as John Kerry’s speech against the war, both display how those fighting the war truly felt about it. When people speak about Vietnam, you largely hear about the antiwar movement and those who were alive at the time and protesting. It was interesting to get the perspectives of soliders who were in Vietnam, as well as John Kerry, who could clearly voice his concern about the war in which he fought. His speech was particularly moving, especially when he spoke about those in command abandoning their troops, and relating the government to “those in command” and how their pride forced them to think about the solider who were being butchered in battle. Kerry’s voice extremely passionate, and he calls for answers, claiming that everyone has a right to know the governments true intention for sending their own citizens in Vietnam. He also talks about mistakes made by the higher ranking officers, when troops were forced not to retreat so they would not have to face a shameful defeat, even though it was clear they would lose the battle. The accounts of Vietnam were moving as well. The first account I thought was interesting. Ron Kovic takes you in the mind of a soldier who will be paralyzed for life and his feelings about sacraficing his body to a war. While he is writing, he is in a hospital in Queens, and discusses all of those crippled soldiers who are there and the hell they encounter every day. At one point he even makes the connection between the hospital and a concentration camp. What was really surpring was how he feels almost betrayed by his government, the same government he fought for so vehemently in Vietnam. He mocks the president for asking for more guns and supplies for the war, without giving thought to those permanently crippled, whose hospitals are severely underfunded. The corruption is all around, and this must of fueled a great deal of the antiwar movements that took place in the late 1960s.

Discussion Question: What obligation did the U.S. government have for their Vietnam veterans? Were those obligations fulfilled?

John Kerry’s speech to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, “Vietnam Veteran Against the War,” in 1971 reflects not only a growing sector of the military who opposed the war, but also the rising anti-war sentiment of the general public.  In his speech, Kerry not only illustrates the atrocities of war that young men are exposed to, and many times take part in (with their commanders approval), but also the lack of responsibility taken by America’s leaders, the arrogance of the war’s main intentions (“Vietnamizing the Vietnamese”), and the glorification of unnecessary death (of both U.S. and the Vietnamese body count).  Although I don’t have much previous knowledge on the anti-war movement of the era, this seems to illustrate how LBJ’s decision to  be less than honest with the American public about what decisions were being made and what was actually happening in Vietnam.  The Vietnam Reader gives the populous a more detailed and emotional account of the effects of war on veterans.  Ron Kovic describes how the paralysis, caused by a wound received in Vietnam, a young man has to go through effects him emotionally; exposing more than just the tragedy of body count that most Americans were used to hearing.   

Question: Was this the first major “calling-out” of the administration for the war by the public? And, how do you think that veteran literature influenced the future of the public feeling’s about the war?

For this journal response I am choosing to focus on the passage Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic. I want to focus on this passage because it was the most moving and disturbing passage of this semester. Kovic details his experience when coming home from the war wounded and newly paraplegic.   Kovic has to learn to deal with is new disability as well as the lack of attention demonstrated by the medical personnel and the filthy medical facilities provided for wounded soldiers.

Perhaps the most poignant statement of the entire passage is when Kovic asks, “What is going on here? I want to get out of this place! All these broken men are very depressing, all these bodies so emaciated and twisted in these bed sheets. This is a nightmare. This isn’t like the poster down by the post office where the guy stood with shiny shoes; this is a concentration camp. (125)” This quote represents Kovic realization that war is not about the glory of being a war hero, but rather that it is real danger that could change a life forever or kill. He feels duped by the promotion of the war; it was never explained to him the danger that lies in war. It may seem like a given concept but the glorification of war can be a pretty blinding image that makes people forget the consequences of war.

Not only is this a realization of war but it is also a cry for help that is falling upon deaf ears. Kovic describes the hospital as “a concentration camp.” He is a prisoner in the hospital and a prisoner in his now crippled twenty-one year old body. He could not live without the help from the inattentive medical personnel and was forces to live in a place where the patients had to throw bread crumbs on the floor so that the rats wouldn’t chew on them at night.  With all the money going to the war where was the money for better facilities. The harsh reality that Kovic had to come to face was that the war only cared for the soldiers that were actively fighting and in good health, once someone was injured to the point that he could no longer fight he was useless to the government and forgotten about.  Through Kovic’s analysis of the situation he is enduring it seems as if the government is simply a large war machine that disposed of those that are no longer used to it without considering that what they are disregarding is a human life that had fought for the cause.

Also the question of whether it is better to die in war or to return home seriously injured. Kovic states that regardless of the case each type of man was a casualty of the war. He calls the people in the hospital with him, “the living dead. (123)” This means that even though these men are physically living their soul and will to live have died. They can do nothing for themselves and have to rely on the compassion and help from others which are hard to come by for it is hard to relate to his situation. Also the abandonment that the men suffer, not only by the government and the hired medical personnel, but by their own families as well for they don’t have the medical means of supporting their injured family member, makes the men feel as if they are a burden; dead weight.

The treatment of the men returning home from the war in this passage is not the first time that these sentiments have been expressed about coming home from war. The questions that remain are why are the accommodations for these men still so appalling? Why is there no psychological help for these men? Why is there no one for them to talk to?  There is no excuse for placing a person in a hospital that so filthy that they have to fear the rats.  It is the treatment of these men, not so much their injuries, that make the feel live the living dead.  The war will be a never ending experience for these men for they have forever been altered by it. The war may have ended in 1973, but it never ended for the veterans. The majority of the men in the Vietnam War didn’t even know what they were fighting for except for the platitudes, such as “for freedom,” that was fed to them by the government, and they gve their lives for the war.

Discussion question: Would it have made a difference if the soldiers of the Vietnam War were more informed about what they were fighting for like the veterans in World War II? Would that make sustaining a life changing injury any different or is it still the same situation?

Reading the excerpt from The Vietnam Reader struck me as an emotionally wrenching piece of literature. To hear a first-hand account of a wounded Vietnam soldier and his feelings of isolation from society was eye-opening. The journey this man was going through is both external and internal. He is suffering from paralysis and the trauma of life as he knows it being over. He cries out: “Someone please help my understand this thing, this terrible thing that’s happening to me. I’m a brave man and I want to be brave even with this wound. I want to understand how I can live with it and with everything else that happened over there…” (127). The agony of loneliness is potent throughout the excerpt. How tragic is it that a generation of young men suffered like this. Though not all were killed or injured, the emotional angst and trauma from killing and from witnessing their comrades killed was overwhelming in itself. The lack of care and proper treatment for these wounded soldiers frustrates me because of the deficiency of action on the part of the government. Vietnam marked a low time in our nation’s history of terrible circumstances coupled with a government that did not adequately look out for its wounded.

Discussion Question: Discuss the lack of attention the government seemed to have given to the wounded soldiers from Vietnam.

Rememberances from American troops who fought in Vietnam describe  a totally different place than the way the American government portrayed it during the war.  The government conveyed images of progress and the American troops succeeding and gaining ground while trying to liberate a country and keep Communism at bay.  The stories written by men who were there tell a story of not just carnage and defeat, but of war crimes, injustices, the annihilation of a people because they were not smart enough to learn English and leave their homes or stay hidden at night.  The troops relay stories of a simple people just wanting to be left alone to live simple lives and grow rice.  These people did not want to leave a land with which they felt a strong connection.  For generations the Vietnamese had to fight outsiders from gaining control over their land, and have continually succeeded.  American government saw Vietnam as a last effort to prove that America has the right to claim “world power.”  What the American government refused to acknowledge was the fact they did not belong there.  Their intentions, even with ulterior motives, may have been on the side of good at the beginning.  But, the mentality of winning at all costs, sending increasingly large numbers of troops to replace fallen heroes, being willing to sacrifice your own people, not to mention the Vietnamese, to save face, and allowing and turning a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the guilty, is unconscionable.

How is it that America was able to effectively avoid being charged with war crimes that were committed during the Vietnam War?

Text: Vietnam Reader; Bloom and Breines 219-222.

                Throughout this reading I kept returning to the same question: how could the government let this happen? How could Johnson and Nixon sit back relaxing in the oval office and watch as soldiers were becoming the “living dead.” Moreover, how could they not provide more for the paralysis’s comforts? Yes, in Kovic’s story they provided “the machine,” yet the machine did not really help the boys. How could Johnson and Nixon lack the humanity to put themselves in the place of the injured soldiers? Beyond the images described in the Vietnam Reader I was struck by the stories that Kerry was telling. They were images of horror which depicted a complete lack of humanity.  How could Nixon even think about the humility of being the first president to lose a war, when so many are losing their lives? Yet, then I began to think about who is truly to blame. Was it Eisenhower, the president who first got us into Vietnam? Was it the fault of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon who kept us there? Was it the generals who were allowing the fighting to occur? Were the authors of the Geneva Accords to blame? Was congress to blame for drafting and passing the Tonkin Gulf Resolutions? Or, were the horrors of this war simply caused by an unfortunate mix of all of these scapegoats? I don’t think that one entity can be blamed for the entirety of the war, yet, the injured soldiers deserve to have someone to blame.

Discussion Question: Do you think the war would have turned out differently if the horrors and criminal acts had been addressed publically by either Nixon or Johnson? Why or why not?

The atrocities faced by soldiers in their daily life during their time in Vietnam only coincide with the fact that the war was one of the US’s governments biggest faults. The corrupt nature of the politicians that allowed us into this war, were only amplified through the stories that the soldiers returned home with. So far only the civil unrest on the home front has been detailed, about citizens reaction to lawmakers decisions. When Kerry states that someone has to die so a president won’t look bad, it is an unbelievable and realistic statement at the same time. The general consensus of the soldiers is that they had no drive to serve in this war, which in truth was a war based on nothing. Their day-to-day anguish and the lasting effects instilled upon the soldiers was all in vein for a leaders desire for US supremacy. There was no pride in what the men were doing, which often resulted in a mass confusion and lack of definite progress. Wallace Terry’s commentary on how easy it was to be shot by American fire shows the mental affects that slowly enveloped long serving soldiers. Terry also makes note of the racial unjustness of the military itself of the time. It is baffling to me that the US was willing to devote so many lives and so much money into a war that was supposedly for human rights in a country half a world away when it failed to recognize its own domestic failures. This war changed how people viewed their government and how they even viewed their own lives. Pride that was intended to maintain US as a world power, only succeeded in distrust and disdain by the people for their country. Vietnam can only be perceived as a failure for those who initiated and those who fought in it on their behalf.

Question:
Had veterans not returned from the war bitter towards the government, would Vietnam have been viewed as such a failure?

            No word or expression can explain the emotions of the people involved in Vietnam. From the Vietnamese people to the American soldiers who were serving their country no one wants to admit the atrocities that were committed. American citizens blamed U.S. soldiers but the soldiers suffered and as John Kerry summed it up suffered while they were doing their job of, “protecting freedom”.  The American soldiers, those who made it back after the war, had stories no one had heard before and if they did not speak about the stories their wounds certainly showed the horror of the war. Men had to come to realize they were not who they were when they left and they had to rehabilitate their bodies and minds. As in the Vietnam Papers, the soldiers feel that they are the living dead and their amusement in life is to feed the rats leftovers so they do not bother anyone. The men fought in the war but cannot live with the nightmares and the pain that will never go away. The reality of war is not ideal and the gruesome details are not explained to the men who signed up to fight for the U.S. The men were just kids, twenty years old, and not prepared for Vietnam, the fighting, the killing, the terror, death, and injury. Reading their stories is heart-wrenching and brings up the question, when was it enough? Was it not enough to have hospitals filled with soldiers who would never be the same person they were before? The administration clearly did not think so and that is the tragedy of Vietnam.

An anti-war movement emerged among Vietnam War veterans. This was the first time veterans came home and massively organized against the war they fought in. Veterans were so negatively impacted by the War that at anti-war demonstrations many of them threw back their medals and citations. John Kerry’s testimony exposed the foul play occurring in Vietnam. Shockingly these were not even isolated incidents but day-to-day atrocities. Soldiers that felt their country was at fault for making them experience the horrors they witnessed. It was more horrifying for these soldiers to see the true colors of the conflict in Vietnam. Kerry said, “what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.” The horrifying stories soldiers told of their experiences in Vietnam reflected the loses that Johnson did not consider. Many were unaware of the actual conflict going on in Vietnam and with an unclear cause came confusion and lack of motivation. What could have been done to access more cooperation between American troops and the South Vietnamese?