Iraqnam and American Popular Opinion: DUers who were adults in the 70's?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

When America finally achieved "peace with honor" and pulled out of Vietnam in the early 70's, was there by then nearly unanimous opinion that the war was a disaster and our involvement needed to end, regardless which "side" of the political aisle?

Especially since Nixon was the one doing the pulling out?

Or were there still a lot of RWers lamenting our leaving and who felt we should continue to "stay the course" and show that we are "true to our word" etc.?

The reason I ask is because of how remarkably quickly U.S. public opinion is souring on the disastrous Bush War. It seems like there are a lot of parallels to the Vietnam era in that there's a lot of Repubs and RWers who "support the war" in principle but already feel it's a mess and certainly wouldn't be caught dead there themselves, so to speak, or advise their kids to go fight in it. Did Vietnam reach a point where even most of these folks felt it was a disaster and decided we must leave, and can we expect the same from the current Iraqnam supporters who are like this?

[rogerashton]

1. No.

Opinion was very divided, with a big pro-war faction, right up to the end.

[Warpy]

12. Right, but how visible each faction was depended entirely

upon where you were. It was very difficult to find pro war people in the student ghettos in Boston, but the suburbs were full of them. There were plenty of pro war people all through the south and midwest, all of them thinking the military needed to take the gloves off and drop a few nuclear bombs on the north (something that would have escalated into a world war very nicely, the dummies).

I remember standing in silent vigil with a dozen or so Quakers in 1962, the year I started paying close attention. It took forever to get sufficient numbers of people against that war to mount effective protests. Those protests were invisible outside big cities and college towns. Most people never really saw one except as an example of dirty hippie college kids behaving badly. It was easy to be for that war, more difficult to be against it.

[MaryH]

2. I don't remember that many people still supported the war.

But there had been a lot more of our young people killed in action by the time we pulled out.

It was so obvious that the war was a stupid mistake that no one thought we should stay. There was a lot of discussion about whether we won the war or lost it. It was probably more of a draw.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

3. yes by 74 it was nearly an unanimous opinion that the war was a disaster

except for the likes of ollie north and john o'neal types


the tet offensive was the turning point for most

[Dr.Phool]

4. It was pretty much equally divided back then

A big difference was that the media actually covered the anti-war protests. The NYT published the pentagon papers, and students were taking over campus admin bldgs.

Since there's no draft now, and no media coverage, it's amazing that so many people have turned against it so fast.

[Kikosexy2]

5. Vietnam..

was a no win situation. People just got tired of the endless deaths and destruction. No good came out of it at the time. And here we are again, in Iraq. And again we're finding ourselves in endless deaths and destruction and a no win situation. History repeating itself...how freakin' scary!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. People were glad we were out

the whole situation was considered by most to be a complete disaster. Of course, there were those who clung to the fig leaf of "peace plan with honor". They were also the ones who perpetrated the myth that returning GIs were spat upon and treated like dirt by the peaceniks. I know this was a lie because my brother did two tours in Viet Nam, and I went to the airport to pick him up. He was in uniform both times, and basically no one paid that much attention to him or us when he landed at O'Hare. I made a point of asking him if he'd been mistreated by anyone upon arrival on the west coast, and he said no. By the second tour, he was soured on the war and on US policy in general.

[blurp]

7. Communist imperialism beat capitalist imperialism

I think vietnam proved there can be much more to war than just dropping bombs and shooting people.

Iraq seems to be giving us the same lesson.

[knowbody0]

8. swift vets for truth

good example of the division. most were glad no more kids would die, many "hippies" after the long good fight against the war became hopeless yuppies, apathy set in, led us to this mesopotamia.(IMO)

[Oak2004]

25. I've theorized that the "counterculture" was mostly about partying hard,

and it became temporarily "political" because getting drafted and shot at in some jungle on the other side of the earth got in the way of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. That's why, IMO, we as a society went so fast from yippie to yuppie, from protest to disco (or at least one of the reasons why -- other things, like Cointelpro, and college grads becoming co-opted by the culture of their careers, played a big role too).

Of course there were those of us who took politics seriously from the get-go, and who did not disappear into apathetic self-indulgence by the late 70's, but I believe we were always a minority.

[bleedingheart]

9. According to my mom the pro-war people were pro war

as the last people were being airlifted out of Vietnam.

She remembers the loonies wishing that we had nuked the Vietnamese...sad but true.

[Sporadicus]

10. I Joined the Navy in 1973

and I served with a lot of RW types, but I don't recall much support for reversing the course of eventual withdrawal from Vietnam. Aside from some horror stories from guys who had served on destroyers along the coast of Vietnam - cruising just within range of Vietnamese 8" guns, drawing fire from them so the cruisers could get a fix on their positions - there wasn't a lot of discussion about Vietnam. Most people just wanted to put the whole debacle behind us.

[davhill]

11. There was little Questioning that the War was Lost

But a lot of right wingers did (and still do) attribute the loss to left wingers who lowered our troops morale with their demonstrations.

[Nay]

13. That was the way I saw it. I protested in a march toward the end

of the war, when everyone was wearing black armbands -- and I remember being treated badly by older, conservative people who basically thought we were traitors. A lot of them DID think the protests helped the NVA win, and they felt that if we had really TRIED to win and put our hearts and money into it, we would have won.

There was no such thing as a "security mom" -- all moms wanted the kids home. Also, no one liked Nixon, unlike today, where Bush seems to have quite the following. This is surprising, since Bush is twice as slimy and 1/10 as smart as Nixon. I have no idea where his support is coming from.

[tritsofme]

18. Lots of people LOVED Nixon

until the shit starting hitting the fan in 1974 or so.

It was the same sort of cult of personality that I see around Bush today.

I'll never forget the 1972 convention when the Nixon Youth were up on the stage dancing and singing, it was one of the most bizzare things I have ever seen.

Granted after Watergate started to break you couldn't find a Nixon supporter unless he was convinced that he was framed, but before that it was very scary.

[diamond14]

19. nixon was re-elected in 1972 by 60.6% of the American voters....

a much bigger man-date than bush* has...and a BIG boost to continue the carnage in Vietnam...which continues to be massively funded by Congress all the way until 1975.....

My WWII-vet father thought nixon was rail-roaded, as many people did....

The Americans who grew up in the 1980's (my younger brothers and sisters) never saw the Vietnam war and were never threatened by the draft.....that age-group became real reagun supporters - very pro-war, very greedy, big on nuclear bombs and star wars stuff....

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

24. My great aunt adored Nixon.

She had a picture of him on the wall in her house. It was almost a shrine. Even after the whole Watergate mess was exposed and he was forced to resign, she loved him; she was convinced he was framed. There were a lot of people like that, just like the loony Bushophiles.

[Nay]

31. Oh, I agree that people liked Nixon at first -- but after the shit hit the

fan in his second term, when I attended that protest, you couldn't find a person who voted for him...no one would admit it. And all through his first term, there were a few voices raised, calling him a shifty liar. Admittedly, these were not loud voices at first.

I agree with other posters who say the press was pretty incredible then compared to now. There is simply no comparison. You had all sorts of writers actually debating the war, talking about draft dodging, the money spent, etc., with actual wrangling over what was wrong and what was right. Now, shit, you're in the matrix unless you read on the internet.

[whistle]

14. There was never "Peace with Honor' in Vietnam, that was the

...slogan that Nixon ran under with Henry Kissinger as his political strumpet to get the American people to vote for Nixon a republican while keeping both the House and the Senate of the U.S. Congress with a democratic party majority. Vietnam was pure and simple, an American military and political defeat

<snip>

Hoff, Jean. Nixon Reconsidered. New York: Basic Books, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1994.

Jean Hoff’s Nixon Reconsidered examined the “Nixon phenomenon” in his own time. The book, author, and topic typified the love/hate relationship Americans had with Dick Nixon. Hoff dedicated the work to Robert H. Ferrell and William Appleman Williams “for their very different views on Nixon.” She went to her first interview with the then ex-president in 1983, but “did not have a single positive personal memory of him.” Perhaps, the dichotomies, so apparent in these facts, reflect America’s historical paradox. Hoff hinted at as much in the pages of her masterful and scholarly examination. The historian relied on personal interviews with Nixon and administration officials. However, the heart of the book, and its value to the profession rested on its extensive use of the released Nixon papers and tapes.
In Nixon Reconsidered, Hoff argued that the thirty-seventh president of the United States’ represented, what she termed, the “Nixon phenomenon” which reflected both his successes and failures. These in turn were grounded in his personality and the flaws in the modern presidency and political (electoral) system. She contended that his domestic agenda in some instances went beyond the New Deal and the Great Society programs. On foreign affairs, she judged the Nixinger (Nixon + Kissinger) diplomacy not as superlative as conventional wisdom has presumed. And, in regard to Watergate, he done it. He was guilty as charged. However, Nixon represented more than Watergate. His was a transitional presidency in terms of executive power and the two party political system. This essay will look at the personality, foreign policy, Watergate, and finally at the domestic agenda.

Richard Nixon until 1988, was the only man elected president with his party “in control of neither house .” Before Watergate, Gallup ranked him as among the “most admired” presidents. During Watergate, he was in eleventh position as one of the “greatest presidents.” And, afterwards, in 1985, he rose in popular esteem to eighth position in the national polls. He was elected in 1972 with a 60.6% of the popular vote, a landslide of almost unequaled proportions. But, inspite of such statistics, Nixon was “The man we loved to hate.” Hoff called him a national problem for fifty years, a thorn which could not be removed from the American political scene even with resignation. His enemies had long memories of his red-baiting days as a young Congressman from California. He was never forgiven for his attacks on Jerry Voorhis and Helen Gahagan Douglas in political campaigns twenty years before he became president. Liberal Republicans and Liberal Democrats positively felt an obsession about Dick Nixon. He thrived on adversity and the hatred of his enemies. He served the press as the original “comeback kid.”

Nixon Reconsidered contravened the traditional interpretation which has lauded the president’s foreign policy with the exception of Vietnam. Hoff noted there was no peace and no honor in Vietnam, only defeat. However, in other areas, his foreign policy left much to be desired. In foreign policy, Nixon took a geopolitical approach. His term during a transitional period marked the end of the “bipartisan cold war consensus.” From 1969-1972, he ran the show. National Security chief, Henry Kissinger played a decided role, to be sure; but it was not until the Watergate “problem” that Henry came into his own. Kissinger, the flamboyant, headline-grabbing, and insubordinate advisor made diplomacy more difficult. He conflicted with the Secretary of State. Secretary William Rogers generally lost; and Nixon usually sided with Kissinger. The “odd couple of U. S. foreign policy” as Hoff dubbed the duo, shared many characteristics. They shared a paranoia for covert operations, including the surveillance of the each other. The evidence pointed in the opposite direction. They seemed to share a grand design, a geopolitical view, and similar operational methods. They created a New Federalism overseas, what Hoff labeled regional globalism. They both liked acting in a unilateral capacity, distrusted governmental bureaucracy especially the controls which emanated from the Hill, and sought to protect their position from perceived enemies. They wished to create an orderly and stable world. And, they would accomplish this goal by “appearing conciliatory but acting tough” — whatever Hoff meant by this statement alluded the reviewer.


<more> http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/hoff.htm

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

15. I meant the "peace with honor" ironically. I guess there's no "smiley"

for irony. :eyes: is the closest I suppose...

[diamond14]

16. Congress FINALLY choked off the money for the Vietnam war....

the Vietnam War was a huge MESS for years....years and years...and there was regular DEBATE about it in Congress....just like today...and there were tons of Congressional Committees and Investigations and all the same stuff you have today.....but Congress couldn't stop the war, no matter how hard they tried....the war-profiteers were just too powerful (same ones: Halliburton as Brown and Root, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, etc.)....and the American public continued to support the WAR because of COMMUNISM (which was amazing PR spin, since we were allies with communists in WWII, and nixon opened trade with China...but a good boogie-man like terrorism or communism will go far with the lumpenproletariot)

just like today, the American Public re-elected nixon in 1972, even as nixon was engulfed in flaming war scandals, and LOTS of body bags, and a huge importation of opium and heroin coming back in the DEAD soldiers body bags, and mai lai and all that crap...NIXON WAS RE-ELECTED....Americans were WANTING THOSE COMMUNISTS TO BE KILLED RIGHT NOW, before they parachute into Nebraska (there was a scary movie about that too)....

and every year, for 14 years, Congress gave all the money that the pentagoon asked for to conduct the massacre of the Vietnamese people and the slaughter of our young American boys....there were lots of PATRIOTIC send-offs, and WWII parents encouraging their children to SIGN-Up.....only about 20% were actually draftees....it was like watching sheep go to the slaughter.....

and there was LOTS of Public Relations spin out of both the White House and the Pentagoon...making anyone who protested a "communist", like John Kerry (haha....that one was tougher for nixon, what with all the war medals, so nixon hired the swift boat liar, john o'neill, same one still screaming 'John Kerry's a communist' even as I write this sad story)


After all the war-profiteers consumed the entire American economy and all OUR savings and taxes...those greedy war PIGS started loosing money on their government contracts (PIGS was a anti-war theme at the 1967 Democratic convention in Chicago...the Chicago 7), and Congress was under increasing pressure to STOP FUNDING THIS CARNAGE...when Congess cut of the money, the incredible exit from Vietnam began....


so far, in Iraq...Congress has been under NO pressure from Americans to STOP FUNDING THIS CARNAGE...sadly, Congress is funding it because any Congress rep who doesn't will immediately be put out of office due to lack of PATRIOTISM and maybe even branded (like John Kerry was) as being soft on terrorism...terrorism sympathizer....

so I don't expect the Iraqmire to end any time soon....

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

17. It is really sad and amazing how this history repeats, isn't it... even

with the same people in many instances.

[Stinky The Clown]

20. The recollections posted here already match my own .... but the dif today

But the difference today is that time is sort of moving faster. In Vietnam, we were there for years before it really got bad. I was in the Navy in the late 60's and recall many of my fellow sailors feeling pretty ambivalent about the war even then. I simply do not recall - in the military - any real gung ho kinda crap. We joined because our upbringing (very 40's 50's kinda mindset) said we had a duty to serve.

Today things seem much different to me. As I said, Vietnam went on for years without a lot of anti war sentiment. Remember, we got in there in the '50s under Eisenhower. The real shit didn't hit the fan for nearly 10 years.

In Iraq, we went in hot and it has just gotten hotter. The public is actually much more aware of The War in Iraq(tm) than they were in the early days of Vietnam. And as things like technology progress at a geometric rate (as opposed to a straight line arithmetic rate), so progresses public opinion. I suspect the country will become visibly and actively anti war in a far shorter time than for Vietnam. Hell, this time the left was antiwar *before* we went in.

As bad as things look now, I suspect the tide of public opinion will ultimately head the country where we want it to go .....

We should always filter our views of today (whenever "today" might be) by looking at it through the lens of historical precedent.

[diamond14]

21. My cousin was KILLED in Vietnam in 1966...USN HM3 Medic....

Silver Star, Purple Heart DEAD, age 19.....he died saving Marines...I don't even know name of the Marine that he saved, but when he went out to get a second Marine, he was KILLED....

I remember vividly being shocked at the number of caskets in the funeral home in Detroit....every room had a military casket, flag, and the framed photo of the DEAD guy in uniform...some rooms had TWO caskets...the place was FULL....surprisingly, most rooms had no visitors at all....in retrospect, I guess the funeral home had a military contract....it was my first impression of the Vietnam war...up until then, I didn't think much about it...it was pumped as PATRIOTIC service within my community, everyone cheered on the soldiers just like today....

my cousin grew up with me...we played together as children....I still miss him....

In January 2003, rummy spoke about my cousin at a DOD press briefing....he talked about the draft, said that some guys got out of Vietnam by going to college, or by getting married and then the rest were "sucked into the intake...and then they went out....and were of NO VALUE to the United States Military"...

That rummy remark really hurt me, and I wrote to my congress reps about it....but now, two year and two wars later, rummy continues to insult those who serve OUR country and NOBODY CARES.....

[rzemanfl]

22. Vietnam

I am sure there was a time in the 1960's when only 19% of the people thought that the War was a mistake, just like right now only 19% of the people think the election was stolen.

Now, here's the bad part, once we finally got out, in the 1970's we had run away inflation and in the 1980's we had incredible interest rates like 16 1/2 percent on a first mortgage (if you could get one). Why? Because the U.S. tried to fight a war and have "business as usual" at home. So the oh-ohs are going to be followed by fifteen to twenty years of hard roads. About then you folks will be running out of oil and I'll be dead and gone.

Merry Christmas in Bushworld.

[EVDebs]

23. Iraqnam and the hardliners

Mayberry Machiavelli

You sound like you lived through the Vietnam fiasco. I was between ten and twenty when the war was going on (1H student deferrment) but guy in my dorm was drafted in 1972. The war ended mainly because we refused to fund it anymore. The picture above is from an Evergreen air helicopter and I believe from the CIA station, not the embassy. Read "Decent Interval" by Frank Snepp and also David Butler's excellent "Fall of Saigon". The real wackjob was a Democrat, Ambassador Graham A. Martin, at the time in S.Vietnam. In 1965 while he was ambassador to Thailand his adopted son Glenn Dill Mann was KIA in Vietnam immediately after the Ia Drang battle. Mann was a helicopter copilot. This deeply affected the ambassador (JFK appointed him to Thailand Nov 1, 1963 oddly enough...BTW, Wm. 'Wild Bill' Donovan was Thailand ambassador in the 50's). Later Nixon appointed Martin ambassador to Italy (the Golden Triangle was really taking off by now '69) and funding for the war was starting to get more and more difficult. By '73-74 Martin is installed in Saigon as ambassador and is pushing for around $500million at the end. The first oil crisis had hit and Pentagon people were worried more about how they would get gas enought to get to work !

Anyhow, Iraqnam as you put it will end the same. A long occupation that cannot win hearts and minds followed by a cutoff of funding. Congress will ignore public dissent; too much oil money and war profits to be made.

[DemBones DemBones]

26. One big difference today is the media. They play up the Iraq

war as if it were WW II and every American GI a gen-you-wine hero. Viet Nam didn't get that sort of attention, and neither did Korea. The media's reporting of Viet Nam helped end it and the RW hated them for it, and still hates them for it. I watched about ten minutes of Fox News yesterday and heard Fred Barnes claim that the Tet offensive was misreported by the American media, especially by Walter Cronkite. Yeah, Fred, tell us another one.

I don't remember anybody trying to sell us on Viet Nam being a danger to us here in the US. It was all domino theory all the time: if we didn't keep the Vietnamese from communism, than Laos would go communist, then Cambodia, etc. In contrast, of course, the media all went along with the administration story that Saddam was a real threat to us and put up no objection to the "Bush doctrine" of preemptive war.

[diamond14]

29. 1967 "Violent Upheaval in U.S. Feared if We Pull Out of Vietnam"

This was headlines in the Detroit Free Press, Sunday, October 15, 1967, page 16D....I still have the paper, because of the list of 25 Dead American Soldiers on the bottom of the same page, including one of my friends.

Such insane headlines comes from Radical Right Wing Think-Tanks, who manipulate the news with their press releases, TV and radio interviews, and book....for this headline, the book came from the Hudson Institute, still a GIANT reTHUGlican-funded and adored Washington DC Stink-Tank....

and in case you have a hard time believing this garbage, remember, YOU are listening to the SAME garbage from the SAME stink-tanks TODAY...on C-span, and all the major TV and radios....same stink, change Vietnam to Iraq....

you can still read the book about the "Violent Upheavals" because the reTHUGlicans LOVE IT SO MUCH, it's online, along with the stinky autobiography about their loving war-pig that wrote that book, Defense Analyst, Herman Kahn, founder of the Hudson Institute....now deceased....

a real war-profiteering pig from the Vietnam era...now deceased...but still greatly loved and honored by all radical right-wingnut reTHUGlicans....Herman Kahn


read his 1967 book on-line...linked here, called 'The Year 2000'
it's a frightening insight into the reTHUGlican stink-tanks....

in his 1967 book, Kahn makes the arguments that justify the Vietnam war for ANOTHER EIGHT YEARS. He also writes about his other concerns like the "Negro Population Growth" and the "Black Muslims"

War-pig Kahn claims:

"There is a real serious cost of fighting any war. The cost of fighting an unpopular war is larger. But the cost of a dishonorable
withdrawal at this point might overwhelm each of these other two costs."

Kahn cites the possiblity of a Negro or military terrorism as illustrative of the kind of thing that might happen if we pull out dishonorably from Vietnam....

starting on page 203....Kahn goes into his 'Extended Disarray World Scenerio" for the year 2000...

"In it, the U.S. makes a face-saving withdrawal from Vietnam, becomes isolationist, cuts its armed forces and is relatively unprepared toward the end of the century when Chinese volunteers aid a COMMUNIST uprising in Mexico. The fighting will quickly excalate into into a nuclear confrontation. Such an outcome is a chilling possibility."

here's the book online, and Donald Rumsfeld's gushing remarks about Kahn
"Herman Kahn was a giant. He boldly confronted public issues with creativity and the conviction, in his case correct, that thought and analysis could help make ours a better world." Donald Rumsfeld
http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=HermanKahn

and on the Board/Trustees of this madhouse are the same old war-profiteers PIGS: Richard Pearle, Alexander Haig, Dan Quayle...the whole team of insanity...now happily running the Iraqmire for profit
http://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?fuseaction=board_of_trustees

[Liberal In Texas]

27. WAR

I was an adult in the 70's working for a local TV station. Yes, the media was different then. News was only just starting to be a big money maker for broadcasters.

There is no way the media in the 70's would have obeyed an edict not to show the coffins returning home of the kids killed over there. Reporters questioned what they were told by officials, not like today where you see the "company line" blindly repeated by most of the media.

Yes, there are still some mavericks out there yelling "The Emperor Has No Clothes" but most news organizations are owned by large corporate interests who are eager from more deregulation and the cons are the way to get it. So they don't rock the boat too much.

And that's the big difference, friends. The cons have cleverly taken steps in the last 20 years or so to control much of the media and in doing so, control what Joe Six-pack thinks.

Even their favorite term, Liberal Media is really just an ironic joke now.

[BrotherBuzz]

28. Sadly, thirty-four years later some still don't get it

I read the following response in the Sept 2004 National Geographic feedback forum about an article the previous month on Hanoi. Sad.

"Your article states, 'Not until 1975...did Vietnam and Hanoi see the end of war and foreign subjugation.' I, and other veterans I knew, did not go to South Vietnam to help subjugate South Vietnamese people. We went there to try to help protect them from being oppressed by North Vietnam." - Ken Rought, Willamstown, New Jersey

[autorank]

30. Consensus that it would go on forever; many, many deaths, injuries.

Not to mention drug addiction and shattered psyches among the troops. People you went to school with came back having seen the "horror" and were never the same, ever.

What struck me was that there were so many more deaths and injuries over a 7-8 year period and the public tolerated it. I think we're approaching our limit now with Iraq after just over a year and far fewer deaths and injuries.

We left Viet Nam because it was a huge waste of people and resources. We also left because we were fighting a real army with brilliant leaders who knew how to fight a war and play US public opinion. When we leave Iraq, people will see it as a huge waste. No one will think we "lost" because we're doing pretty much what we want with 150,000 soldiers in a country of 26 million. It took 500,000 soldiers to fight in Viet Nam, a much smaller population.

The right wing seized in public denial of the loss and a need to vilanize the left and pushed back on the disaster theory of Viet Nam. This time around, it won't work: where's Osamma? why didn't we have enough troops, armor, etc? and who in the political leadership (Repuke) betrayed us? will be the questions. In addition, this time around nobody in the anti war movement says anything bad about the troops. Whole different ballgame.