American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity

by Appy, Christian G.

  “brilliant and sensitive” leadership: Deborah Nelson, The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth About War Crimes (New York: Basic Books, 2008), p. 97.

  “made the My Lai massacre look trifling”: Newsweek, “Pacification’s Deadly Price,” June 19, 1972; Nick Turse, “The Vietnam Exposé That Wasn’t,” Nation, November 13, 2008.

  Vietnam War Crimes Working Group: Turse, Kill Anything That Moves, pp. 14–16, 21, 104.

  a “My Lay [Lai]” each month”: Ibid., pp. 215–19. Before Westmoreland shut down the case, the Criminal Investigation Division identified the “concerned sergeant” as George Lewis and made plans to interview him. There is no record that it did.

  the army commissioned its own secret investigation: Ibid., pp. 254–55.

  Kinnard published his findings: Douglas Kinnard, The War Managers (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1977), pp. 72–75.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: THE WAR AT HOME

  “we are not sure there is a future for America”: New York Times, May 7, 1970.

  in 1965, antiwar protests had begun: Tom Wells, The War Within: America’s Battle Over Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 9–65; Charles DeBenedetti, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990), pp. 81–140; Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan, Who Spoke Up? American Protest Against the War in Vietnam, 1963–1975 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984), pp. 33–67.

  184Those who organized . . . were a diverse lot: Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Peace Now! American Society and the Ending of the Vietnam War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); Simon Hall, Rethinking the American Anti-War Movement (New York: Routledge, 2011); Melvin Small, Antiwarriors: The Vietnam War and the Battle for America’s Hearts and Minds (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).

  “All that we are and all that we can be”: New York Times, May 7, 1970.

  Daley . . . screamed back at Ribicoff: Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, The Gonzo Letters, vol. 2 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), p. 127.

  “blowing up the campuses”: Schell, The Time of Illusion, pp. 97–98; Perlstein, Nixonland, p. 482.

  “If it takes a bloodbath”: Philip Caputo, 13 Seconds: A Look Back at the Kent State Shootings (New York: Chamberlain Bros., 2005), p. 105.

  “We are going to eradicate the problem”: Perlstein, Nixonland, p. 486.

  “just imagine they [student protesters] are wearing brown shirts”: Peter N. Carroll, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: America in the 1970s (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990), p. 11.

  “Hey, boy, what’s that you’re carrying there?”: Tom Grace, “Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties,” forthcoming from University of Massachusetts Press (2015). Manuscript in author’s possession.

  “You did what you had to do”: For the passages on the Kent State shootings I am drawing primarily on the manuscript of Tom Grace’s forthcoming book, Kent State. See also Daniel Miller’s documentary film, Fire in the Heartland: Kent State, May 4th, and Student Protest in America.

  58 percent of Americans: Poll showing support for National Guard, see Martin Nolan, “What the Nation Learned at Kent State in 1970,” Boston Globe, May 3, 2000.

  “This should remind us all”: Schell, Time of Illusion, p. 98; Reeves, President Nixon: Alone in the White House, p. 226.

  Commission on Campus Unrest: Also known as the Scranton Commission. Jerry M. Lewis and Thomas R. Hensley, “The May 4 Shootings at Kent State University: The Search for Historical Accuracy,” http://dept.kent.edu/sociology/lewis/lewihen.htm.

  protested the war for the first time: Wells, The War Within, pp. 441–45.

  “Was the government so afraid”: Ron Kovic, Born on the Fourth of July (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), pp. 136–39.

  “Stop the bombing, stop the war”: Ibid., p. 180.

  “We did not question”: Ron Kovic, “Breaking the Silence of the Night,” Truthdig.com, October 10, 2006, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601009_ron_kovic_breaking_silence_night.

  “I remember tears coming to my eyes”: Ibid.

  “The most severely injured”: Kovic, Born on the Fourth of July, pp. 51–52.

  “You gotta stop crying like babies”: Ibid., pp. 202–3.

  “I believe in America!”: Ibid., p. 110.

  one of many sparks: New York Times, May 7, 1970; Fred Cook, “Hard-Hats, the Rampaging Patriots,” Nation, June 15, 1970.

  “day of reflection”: New York Times, May 7, 1970; Woden Teachout, Capture the Flag: A Political History of American Patriotism (New York: Basic Books, 2009), pp. 173–206.

  “swatting them with their helmets”: Homer Bigart, “War Foes Here Attacked by Construction Workers,” New York Times, May 9, 1970.

  mysterious men in suits: Cook, “Hard-Hats”; New York Times, May 9, 1970; Philip Foner, “Bloody Friday: May 8, 1970,” Left Review, vol. 4, no. 2, Spring 1980.

  “The word was passed around”: Teachout, Capture the Flag, p. 198; Francis X. Clines, “For the Flag and for Country, They March,” New York Times, May 21, 1970.

  All in the Family: Richard P. Adler, ed., All in the Family: A Critical Appraisal (New York: Praeger, 1979).

  Middle America Committee: Reeves, President Nixon, p. 138.

  Nixon’s pit bull: Perlstein, Nixonland, pp. 431–32. On the mythology surrounding the hard hat stereotype, see Penny Lewis, Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013); also, Milton J. Bates, The Wars We Took to Vietnam: Cultural Conflict and Storytelling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 86–131.

  antiwar opinion was stronger at the bottom: Mark D. Harmon, “Historical Revisionism and Vietnam Public Opinion,” Peace Studies Journal, vol. 3, issue 2, August 2010. Lewis, Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks, pp. 51–53; Bates, The Wars We Took to Vietnam, p. 89; Franklin, Vietnam and Other American Fantasies, p. 87.

  (AFSCME) adopted a resolution: Philip S. Foner, American Labor and the Indochina War (New York: International, 1971), p. 87.

  joined forces with students: Edmund F. Wehrle, Between a River and a Mountain: The AFL-CIO and the Vietnam War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), p. 159.

  “At no time in the history of our free society”: Cited in Frank Koscielski, Divided Loyalties: American Unions and the Vietnam War (New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 83.

  did not mention his opposition: “Reuther Dies in Jet Crash With Wife and 4 Others,” New York Times, May 11, 1970.

  more accurate to see them as pro-GI: Joshua Freeman, “Hardhats: Construction Workers, Manliness, and the 1970 Pro-War Demonstrations,” Journal of Social History, vol. 26, no. 4, Summer 1993, p. 735.

  “Get your clothes on”: Reeves, President Nixon, pp. 219–22.

  Brennan . . . presented Nixon with a white hard hat: Boston Globe, May 27, 1970. Nixon began wearing the flag pin on a regular basis that fall. See Teachout, Capture the Flag, p. 255n9.

  defang . . . affirmative action: Trevor Griffey, “‘The Blacks Should Not Be Administering the Philadelphia Plan’: Nixon, the Hard Hats, and ‘Voluntary’ Affirmative Action,” in David Goldberg and Trevor Griffey, eds., Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Action, and the Construction Industry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010), pp. 134–60.

  “Here’s to you, Chuck”: Griffey, “‘The Blacks Should Not Be Administering the Philadelphia Plan,’” pp. 154–58.

  school desegregation: Perlstein, Nixonland, pp. 459–76.

  “Orangeburg massacre”: Jack Shuler, Blood and Bone: Truth and Reconciliation in a Southern Town (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2012).

  “Better tell them security guards”: Tim Spofford
, Lynch Street: The May 1970 Slayings at Jackson State College (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1988), pp. 33–52.

  “When that bottle hit”: Ibid., p. 72.

  “From the facts at hand today”: Ibid., p. 141.

  “Matt, was that your stepson”: Ibid., p. 149.

  “It was supposed to be a quiet rally”: Time, September 7, 1970.

  one of the most distinguished: Ruben Salazar, Border Correspondent: Selected Writings, 1955–1970, Mario T. Garcia, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

  “the minds of barrio people”: Frank O. Sotomayor, “End the Never-Ending Mystery of Ruben Salazar’s Death,” LAobserved.com, August 27, 2010, http://www.laob served.com/visiting/2010/08/end_the_never-ending_mystery_o.php.

  “Murdered in Vietnam”: The first sign appears in a ten-minute documentary at the 2-minute, 19-second mark, “Chicano Moratorium,” made by Tom Myrdahl, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=famNeiosTVk. The other signs are cited in George Mariscal, ed., Aztlan and Viet Nam: Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 187.

  “Two Chicanos died”: Lorena Oropeza, Raza Si! Guerra No! Chicano Protest and Patriotism During the Viet Nam War Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 145–82; Matt Meyer, ed., Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free U.S. Political Prisoners (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2008), pp. 22–23.

  The projectile struck Salazar: Hector Tobar, “Finally, Transparency in the Ruben Salazar Case,” Los Angeles Times, August 5, 2011. One of the few contemporary journalistic efforts to explore the Salazar killing was Hunter Thompson’s “Strange Rumblings in Aztlan,” Rolling Stone, April 18, 1971.

  “To us, it was a political event”: Jeb Stuart Magruder, An American Life (New York: Atheneum, 1974), p. 119.

  “We hate writing for a repressive reactionary”: Anthony Lukas, “This Is Bob (Politician-Patriot-Publicist) Hope,” New York Times, October 4, 1970.

  “If we ever let the Communists win”: Time, November 21, 1969.

  “Bullshit! Bullshit!”: Perlstein, Nixonland, p. 502.

  Honor America Day: “Nation: Gathering in Praise of America,” Time, July 13, 1970.

  “America—Love It or Leave It”: See, for example, Time, June 6, 1969, “Los Angeles: Bitter Victory”; Reeves, President Nixon, p. 226.

  More than fifty thousand left: John Hagan, Northern Passage: American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).

  the Bob Hope Christmas Special: This analysis draws largely on the nine-hour, 3-DVD collection, Bob Hope: The Vietnam Years, 1964–1972, designed and developed by Respond2 Entertainment.

  “They didn’t laugh at anything”: Bob Hope, The Last Christmas Show (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), p. 290.

  V for victory: William R. Faith, Bob Hope: A Life in Comedy (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1982), p. 329.

  marijuana jokes: Boston Globe, December 23, 1970.

  racial brawls: Westheider, The African American Experience in Vietnam, pp. 72–82.

  “Phony ambushes”: Tim O’Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone (New York: Delacorte, 1973), pp. 107, 131–32.

  “combat refusals”: Richard A. Gabriel and Paul L. Savage, Crisis in Command: Mismanagement in the Army (New York: Hill and Wang, 1979), pp. 45–46.

  “military disintegration”: Ibid.

  47 percent admitted to acts of dissent: David Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005), p. 270.

  The World of Charlie Company: This documentary is included in volume 1 of a twelve-hour, 3-DVD collection called The Vietnam War With Walter Cronkite offered by Timeless Media Group.

  wildly distorted myth: Jeremy Kuzmarov, The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009).

  collective resistance among GIs: Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt, pp. 10–17.

  “fragging”: Richard Moser, The New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent During the Vietnam Era (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), pp. 48–51; Appy, Working-Class War, pp. 246–47.

  “a state approaching collapse”: Robert Heinl, “Collapse of the Armed Forces,” Armed Forces Journal, June 1971, p. 35.

  “Suppose they gave a war and no one came”: The phrase is a slight rewording of a line from Carl Sandburg’s poem The People, Yes (1936), which portrayed a young girl responding to her first military parade with the line “Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.” The 1960s version of the line began to spread after the publication of an article by Charlotte Keyes about her son’s draft resistance. “Suppose They Gave a War and No One Came” (McCall’s, October 1966). The bumper sticker phrased it as a question: “What if they gave a war and nobody came?”

  they gathered in Detroit: See Vietnam Veterans Against the War, The Winter Soldier Investigation: An Inquiry into American War Crimes (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972). On the VVAW and its medal turn-in demonstration, see Gerald Nicosia, Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement (New York: Crown, 2001), pp. 133–144.

  “we are the troops”: Ibid., pp. 110–111.

  Operation RAW: Ibid., pp. 59–61.

  “You men are a disgrace”: Wilbur J. Scott, Vietnam Veterans Since the War: The Politics of PTSD, Agent Orange, and the National Memorial (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), p. 14.

  unique in world history: For a classic example of Commager’s view of American exceptionalism, see Henry Steele Commager, “Do We Have a Class Society?” Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 1961. This article has been reprinted in Alexander Burnham, We Write for Our Own Time (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2000); on Commager more generally, see Neil Jumonville, Henry Steele Commager: Midcentury Liberalism and the History of the Present (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

  “it is a war we must lose”: Henry Steele Commager, The Defeat of America: Presidential Power and the National Character (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974), p. 104. The title article originally appeared in the New York Review of Books, October 5, 1972.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: VICTIM NATION

  covers of Time and Newsweek: Edwin A. Martini, Invisible War: The American War on Vietnam, 1975–2000 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), p. 13. On the decline of media coverage, see William Hammond, “Who Were the Saigon Correspondents and Does It Matter?” Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Working Paper Series, Spring 1999, http://shorensteincenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/2000_08_hammond.pdf.

  The failure of the Accords: See Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 2001).

  another major story to cover: Michael Schudson, Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past (NY: Basic Books, 1993).

  This was no longer a stalemate: Schell, The Real War, pp. 48–55; Arnold Isaacs, Without Honor (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).

  Ford went to Tulane: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=4859&st=&st1=. Hagopian, The Vietnam War in American Memory, pp. 32–33.

  Nguyen Van Thieu gave an emotional . . . address: Samuel Lipsman, Stephen Weiss, Clark Dougan, and David Fulghum, The Fall of the South, Vol. 18 (Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1986), p. 139.

  Snepp whisked Thieu to the airport: Appy, Patriots, pp. 500–501.

  “exhausted and dispirited”: Time, April 28, 1975.

  “fated for tragedy”: Ibid.

  “Let’s look ferocious!”: Ron Nessen, It Sure Looks Different from the Inside (New York: Playboy Press, 1978), p. 129.

  “it puts the epaulets back on”: Newsweek, May 26, 1975, p. 15; poll cited in Emerson, Winners and Los
ers, p. 32.

  no longer in danger: Ralph Wetterhahn, The Last Battle: The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War (Boston: Da Capo, 2001), pp. 189–90.

  the United States had blasted Cambodia: William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979); Elizabeth Becker, When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution (New York: Public Affairs, 1998), p. 17, on food shortages.

  unprovoked attack followed by glorious victory: Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture.

  58 percent: Herring, America’s Longest War, p. 300.

  “the destruction was mutual”: Martini, Invisible Enemies, p. 45.

  in his inaugural address: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=6575.

  suffering a “crisis of confidence”: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/carter-crisis/.

  “Death to America!”: David Farber, Taken Hostage: The Iran Hostage Crisis and America’s First Encounter with Radical Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 103.

  “den of spies”: Ibid., p. 141.

  America Held Hostage: Ibid., pp. 137–39.

  CIA . . . plan to . . . overthrow Mossadegh: Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003).

  “blowback”: Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001).

  extended national family: Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East Since 1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 207.

  “The Year of the Hostage”: Steven V. Roberts, “The Year of the Hostage,” New York Times Magazine, November 2, 1980; cited and analyzed in Michael J. Allen, Until the Last Man Comes Home: POWs, MIAs, and the Unending Vietnam War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), p. 202.

  the Pueblo . . . was seized: Mitchell B. Lerner, The Pueblo Incident: A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002).