Arms and the Movement

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

The claim that the U.S. peace movement ended the war in Vietnam contains the usual set of flaws. With unforgivable self-righteousness, peace activists ignore the fact that 3 million to 5 million Indochinese died in the fight against the U.S. military; tens of thousands of U.S. troops were killed and hundreds of thousands wounded; other troops were demoralized and had become ineffective and openly rebellious; and the United States was losing political capital (and going fiscally bankrupt) to a point where pro-war politicians began calling for a strategic withdrawal.

Some pacifists claim that the huge number of conscientious objectors who refused to fight points to a nonviolent victory. But far more significant than passive conscientious objectors were the active rebellions by black, Latino, and Native American troops. The government's plan, in response to black urban riots, of taking unemployed young black men off the streets and into the military, backfired. Fragging, sabotage, refusal to fight, rioting in the stockades, and aiding the enemy contributed significantly to the decision to pull out ground troops. The Pentagon estimated that 3 percent of officers and noncommissioned officers killed in Vietnam from 1961 to 1972 were killed by their own troops. In many instances, soldiers in a unit pooled their money to raise a bounty for the killing of an unpopular officer.

'By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse,' wrote Marine Corps Colonel Robert D. Heinl in the Armed Forces Journal in June 1971, 'with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and noncommissioned officers, drug-ridden and dispirited where not near mutinous. Elsewhere than Vietnam, the situation is nearly as serious.'

Although they were less politically significant than resistance from within the military, bombings and other acts of violence in protest of the war on white college campuses should not be ignored in favor of the pacifist whitewash. In the 1969-70 school year (September through May), a conservative estimate counts 174 antiwar bombings on campuses and at least 70 off-campus bombings and other violent attacks targeting ROTC buildings, government buildings, and corporate offices. Additionally, 230 campus protests included physical violence, and 410 included damage to property.

In conclusion, what was a very limited victory -- the withdrawal of ground troops after many years of warfare -- can be most clearly attributed to two factors: the successful and sustained violent resistance of the Vietnamese, and the militant and often lethal resistance of the U.S. ground troops themselves. The domestic antiwar movement clearly worried those in power, but it had certainly not become powerful enough that we can say it 'forced' the government to do anything, and in any case, its most forceful elements used violence.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print