Vietnam and Protests

Of course, reading anything about the Vietnam War is always a wrenching experience. Frustration and anger that we were there at all, sorrow for the soldiers who fought there, pity for the civilians who had their lives torn apart… And now, there’s the vague feeling of déjà vu, thinking about a new country being destroyed, more soldiers senselessly losing their lives, another “holy war without allies,” as Susan Sontag so aptly put it. I guess she was right; “America is just crazy enough to try to do it.”

The list of questions that Sontag answers in her essay “What’s Happening in America” is still very relevant today. I wonder what kind of responses it would elicit? The first question, “Does it matter who is in the White House,” will be answered soon enough. What about “How serious is the problem of inflation?” I’d say very serious, as the current recession demonstrates, but the administration’s response of continuously doling out MORE money is the exact opposite of helping the situation. More inflation will only make the economic bubble larger, and it will burst all the harder. Later questions, “Where do you think our foreign policies are likely to lead us?” and “What, in general, do you think is likely to happen in America?” are harder to answer. Finally, perhaps the most difficult question to transpose to today’s world: “Do you think any promise is to be found in the activities of young people today?” We do not have the major countercultural movements of the ’60s, or at least, now they are more integrated into the mainstream and not as radical – or, I would say, as effective. There is promise in the number of young people who have discovered the logic of Libertarianism, and in the number who chose to speak out against the wrongs our government is committing. However, there is also a distinct lack of promise in the vast number of young people who are lethargic about what is happening in the world today, who know nothing and want to know nothing about politics, economics, the environment, civil liberties, or anything else that should concern us all. Sontag mentioned that “if the Bill of Rights were put to a national referendum as a new piece of legislation,” it would fail. I recently heard that people randomly stopped on the streets of D.C. refused to sign a petition because it was too radical – it was the Declaration of Independence with the first line removed.


There is also that rare and lonely section of literature on the Vietnam War that is uplifting, in its own way. My favorite piece in our reading this week was the excerpt from “The Free Speech Movement” by David Lance Goines. His humor is inspiring, given the subject, and his actions and ideas are both hilarious and pure genius! You simply have to respect someone who responds to his draft notice with a letter that starts, “Gentlemen: Please remove me from your mailing list…” By far the most astounding (and audacious) act Goines performed was the series of letters he wrote to the draft board under the assumption that if you keep your file out and moving, “sooner or later, they will lose it!” And it worked! This is absolutely the best draft-dodging story I have ever heard. Now I want to read not only Goines’ book, but also the one by C. Northcote Parkinson that inspired him to this incredible feat.

Finally, no collection of Vietnam memoirs would be complete without including “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. The chapter in our text (“The Man I Killed”) is not my favorite from O’Brien’s book, but it is certainly effective. What always strikes me about O’Brien’s writing is how easily he glides back and forth between truth and fiction, and—even more striking—that it is impossible to tell which is which. His point, of course, is that it doesn’t matter: whatever we experience can be explained with deeper truths than fact alone can provide. Perhaps that really is the only way to begin to understand something as awful in U.S. history as the Vietnam War.