Vietnam and Today's Students

Each year for the past thirty years, April and May bring the calls from high school and college students writing their papers on the 1960's and the Vietnam years. I am about to do my third interview on the subject. The college students are usually UW seniors and the high school students are from all over the state.

The questions are carefully researched.  I am impressed by the interest and sincerity of the students. They are not going through the motions, they are committed to scholarly research. The interviews run an hour and even longer.

• Like many of my contemporaries, I was politicaly active prior to arriving at college. My parents were politically active.
• The anti-war movement had its immediate roots in the civil rights movement but its history ran deeper than that. It drew on the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the anti-nuclear movement (particularly SANE), the effort to save the life of Caryl Chessman and opposition to the death penalty, opposition to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and here in Wisconsin, the Progressive Movement.
• As teenagers, we were profoundly moved by World War II. Our parents experienced the war and they continually reminded us of horrors in Nazi Germany and that our nation stood for justice, fairness, and equality. That led many of us to expect the application of those high standards to our domestic policy - ending discrimination, and foreign policy - ending a diplomacy designed to replace the crumbled British and French empires with American domination.
• The first rally opposing  the presence of U.S. military advisors in Vietnam was held on the steps of the Memorial Union on October 16th(?), 1963, a month before the assassination of President Kennedy.
• The first major sit-in took place in May, 1966 when students occupied the UW  Administration Building attempting to halt the university complicity with the Selective Service System. The UW would forward student status and grades, which were subsequently used to determine who would be drafted. Even some students with a deferment (2-S) would be drafted if their local draft board was desperate for bodies. That meant that grades might determine who went to Vietnam and who did not.
• Yes, the absence of the draft makes it much harder to intensify today's efforts to halt the war in Iraq.
• No, anti-war protesters were not Hippies, though many Hippies were engaged in anti-war activities.

Comments

[Anonymous]

Paul - let's face it, our generation didn't listen to the older generation and now we don't listen to the younger generation. We want to pad ourselves on the back with the younger generation but a lot of things suck in the counrty that we allowed or did not do a good job with.

It's easy to oppose war but its not easy to keep our freedoms and branches of goverment from eating away our rights. Are we as civil as we used to be? I don't think so and there is nothing you can do about it unless of course the media is watching. Then suddenly, people do what is expected of them, judges uphold the law instead of other judges or lawyers, you know the problems that should be dealt with but are left undone. Its a free for all because people aren't self governing as they used to be.

Wouldn't it be great if we could get the voter turnout that France just got? Perhaps our students should pay some attention to that as well.

[Bob Keith]

I think I can say I have done more work in-country in both Iraq and Vietnam than most average Americans (I look at the culture of places we have had or are having wars). In general, few people know when Saigon and South Vietnam collapsed officially (April, 1975). Literally no one knows the last battle of the Vietnam Era took place in Cambodia (May, 1975) where a couple dozen Americans were killed - pretty much the last names on the "Wall." Peoples' lack of knowledge of Iraq and its nuances is similar.

Yes, students are interested in my stuff if prodded by their professors and instructors. They do ask good questions that challenge my own ownership of the era and continually add to my own understanding of the wars and countries as we go through time. The distressing crowd however, is the rabble over 25 years old on up - basically the rest of America. In general, they rarely know what questions to ask. They don't care by default because they do not know about either country. It should be know surprise we are repeating many of the same mistakes we made in "Nam" now in Iraq.

One of the sad realities of knowledge in regards to Iraq and Vietnam is that it is sought in the context of school or civic groups or news. I go to schools if asked. I do interviews if asked. I talk to civic groups if asked. I talk to reporters if asked. But, what is the common denominator in all the above? No one - literally no one except a couple of hesitant co-workers, in three years of doing this research has called me up out of the blue for peace of mind or just information in general and asked, "Hey Bob, just what in the heck is going on in Iraq, I know you have been there? And by the way, just what was that Vietnam thing all about - I know you have done work there too?

The questions come in the context of school, a group needing a speaker, or a reporter doing their job. Now all of these things are better than no response at all. And everyone has been kind to my work - very kind considering the contentious issues both wars have generated. Yet, think real hard about the picture I have just painted and ask yourself again, "just how did we get in Iraq?"

[Michael Leon]

You once wrote that as Republicans moderates opposed the war (as a consequence of citizens turning against it), the Iraq war would see its end. See today's NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/us/politics/30swing.html?_r=1&oref=slogin