Lessons From the
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
By Tony
Wilsdon and Philip Locker
Justice,
Issue 31, paper of the Socialist Alternative, US-CWI
September-October
2002
Thirty years ago in Vietnam, the US government was
defeated for the first time in a major war. With the revival of the anti-war
movement, and a possible new US war on Iraq, what can we learn from the
anti-Vietnam War movement?
In August 1964, following decades of US support for the
French occupation of Vietnam, Democratic President Lyndon Johnson manufactured
a fake attack on US forces, known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in order to
create political support for a massive US assault on Vietnam.
The US intervened in Vietnam to prevent a corrupt
capitalist government in South Vietnam from being overthrown by the popular
National Liberation Front (NLF) guerillas. The NLF was linked to North Vietnam,
where capitalism had been overthrown and replaced by a stalinist system which
was politically ruled by a privileged bureaucracy.
Although the NLF had a Stalinist leadership and did not
base itself on a genuine Marxist policy of workers' democracy and international
socialism, they did challenge capitalism and landlordism. The US feared that
the victory of "communism" in Vietnam would spur socialist revolutions
throughout Asia.
By 1965, 200,000 US troops were stationed in Vietnam,
growing to 500,000 in 1968. During this war the US dropped 8 million tons of
bombs, more than twice the total dropped during World War II. 20 million tons
of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange were sprayed, destroying vegetation and
spreading dioxin throughout Vietnam's food chain, leading to a massive rise in
birth defects. Altogether, the US government used $150 billion and 2.8 million
troops fighting in Vietnam, 57,000 of whom died there.
On the other side was a desperately poor country with a
guerilla army that used weapons from a previous era. Its only supply line
through North Vietnam to the Soviet Union was bombed every day by the US and
rebuilt every night. The massive bombing destroyed 70% of North Vietnam's
villages, leaving huge areas barren and the capital, Hanoi, completely
destroyed.
The US was defeated largely by the Vietnamese people's
heroic determination and fighting spirit. At least two million Vietnamese died
in wars against Japanese, French and US imperialism between 1945 and 1975. The
NLF's program of national liberation from imperialist domination, land to the
peasants, and a decent life for workers inspired the most astonishing support,
self-sacrifice, and willingness to fight to the death. This determination could
not be defeated by all the military hardware the US could rain down on Vietnam.
The result was that the US found itself bogged down in a costly, drawn-out war.
The earliest protestors against the war came out of the
civil rights movement. Malcolm X and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party,
for example, came out against the war in 1965.
The anti-war movement started as a small minority, with
student sit-ins and demonstrations. But as the war dragged on, its social and
economic consequences triggered a much larger, more effective opposition. When
the bombings began, a Boston Commons protest attracted 100 people. This grew to
a massive 100,000 by October 15, 1969, with 2 million in total protesting
across the country.
By 1969, there were 500 underground newspapers in high schools,
and protests had been held on 232 college campuses across the country with
3,652 people arrested and 956 suspended or expelled. The existence of the
draft, where all young people could be randomly selected to serve in the army,
led to mass draft dodging. Many middle class students were able to dodge the
draft, leaving working class and African American youth to be the majority of
those forced to fight. By early 1968, 40,000 soldiers were dead and 250,000
were wounded, with the numbers growing daily.
The media has attempted to portray the anti-war movement
as being mainly made up of well-off students. However, with working class youth
on the front lines in Vietnam, opposition to the war was actually strongest in
working class communities. A University of Michigan poll in June 1966 showed
that 27% of people with a college education favored immediate withdrawal from
Vietnam, compared to 41% of those with only a grade school education.
Eventually, mass opposition developed within the armed
forces themselves. With no confidence in the goals of an unwinnable war,
rank-and-file soldiers (essentially workers in uniform) revolted. With African
Americans disproportionately represented in the army, the effects of the civil
rights movement was a key factor. Black soldiers saw little reason to risk
their lives fighting a racist war, in a racist army, for a racist government.
In 1970, there were over 50 underground newspapers on
military bases. By 1971, 17.7% of US soldiers were listed as AWOL. In 1972, a
quarter of US soldiers had mutinied or defied military orders. Units refused
combat, fragging (soldiers killing their officers) was widespread, and almost a
quarter of US troops had become heroin addicts. Over 700,000 soldiers received
less than honorable discharges.
The anti-war movement was strengthened by the thousands of
veterans who returned home radicalized by their experience in the war. Driven
by anger at the US government's lies and the atrocities they witnessed, they
moved to the forefront of the anti-war movement – in their uniforms, many on
crutches or in wheelchairs.
This process was summed up by Col. Robert D. Heinl Jr.
when he wrote "The morale, discipline and battleworthiness of the U.S.
Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at any
time in this century and possibly in the history of the United States. By every
conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state
approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat,
murdering their officers and non commissioned officers, drug-ridden, and
dispirited where not near mutinous." ("The Collapse of the Armed
Forces," Armed Forces Journal, 6/7/71)
The most powerful army in the world disintegrated. This is
an important lesson for activists today, as the ruling class attempts to make
its massive firepower appear unstoppable. In reality, the US military is not
immune to wider social and political processes. Any major wave of
radicalization and revolt in US society will inevitably find an expression
within the rank-and-file of the US armed forces, who are mostly working class,
thus tending to undermine the military's effectiveness as a tool for repression
by the ruling class.
The war also hit people in the pocket book. At first,
increased war spending boosted the economy, but the cost of the war and
increased social programs at home (to stem an uprising of African Americans)
forced the government to print excess dollars to pay for it. This led to a
spiral of price increases, inflation, a ballooning budget deficit, and the
erosion of the purchasing power of workers' wages – which triggered an increase
in strikes and opposition to union leaders who refused to fight the bosses in
order to win decent contracts.
At this point, the anti-war movement developed into a
truly mass movement, cleaving society in two. After national guardsmen,
recently coming off a Teamster picket line, shot dead four students at a Kent
State University protest, mass occupations of colleges erupted. By 1972, one
million blacks considered themselves revolutionary. Millions began to see
clearly through the rhetoric of a "war against communism", and saw
the naked aggression of the US ruling class in its pursuit of profits and
imperialist domination.
By this point, important sections of big business
concluded that it was better to end the war rather than suffer further social
explosions at home. They feared the civil rights movement, the growing threat
of ordinary workers going out on wildcat strikes, and the youth movement all
coalescing into one giant movement against the government and the capitalist
system.
In 1973, Nixon was finally forced to withdraw all US
troops. Two years later saw the complete victory of the NLF. Suffering such an
embarrassing defeat, and terrified of provoking new social upheaval at home, US
imperialism held back from major military interventions abroad for almost 20
years. Only in the last decade have they been confident enough to contemplate
starting wars that risk a serious loss of US lives.
Since then, the spokesmen and politicians of big business
have been trying to re-write history. The right wing argues that the US never
really lost the war, but just failed to conduct it energetically enough. These
same elements believe that their quick victory in Afghanistan has shown that
determined military action can overcome all obstacles.
This is a completely wrong conclusion. As New York Times
correspondent C. L. Sulzberger wrote: "The US emerges as the big loser and
the history books must reflect this...We lost the war in the Mississippi
valley, not the Mekong valley. Successive American governments were never able
to muster the necessary support at home."
The distinguishing mark of the Vietnam War was that the US
waged a war against a social revolution. The majority of peasants and workers
in Vietnam were fighting for their national and social liberation and were
therefore prepared to make great sacrifices.
There is no comparison between the war in Vietnam and the
war in Afghanistan, where the reactionary Taliban was hated by the majority of
the population. As soon as the ground war began, the Taliban was isolated with
no social base and quickly collapsed. It became a conventional war of armies in
which the US had a huge advantage. This was the key factor that led to the
swift US victory. The terrorist outrage of 9/11 and the reactionary nature of
the Taliban also meant that there was no social support for the Taliban in the
US, making it much easier for Bush to win public support for his war.
The enormous worsening of social conditions in the
semi-colonial countries, due to neo-liberal globalization, will force the
workers and peasants in the łthird world˛ into struggle in the coming years. As
the main global policeman of corporate interests, the US will attempt to
throttle these movements. But any military intervention in a revolutionary
situation, like in Vietnam, would force the US once again to put hundreds of
thousands of ground troops into the field of battle, risking significant US
casualties. The US would be forced to restore the draft, opening up the
potential for revolt among the armed forces.
September 11th represents a turning point in history,
ushering in a new period marked by great instability, crises, and wars. The
tremendous anti-Vietnam War movement is rich in valuable lessons. In the more
turbulent and violent epoch we have entered, these lessons can be of great use
in building a powerful, effective anti-war movement, which contains the seeds
of a new world.
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