Vietnam: The War We Cannot Escape

Part I: A Different Kind of War

The American war in Vietnam ended on April 30, 1975. On that day Saigon fell, and the last U.S. personnel were evacuated.

Those who saw the last days of Saigon will not easily forget them. U.S. helicopters, almost overwhelmed by frightened Vietnamese citizens begging to be saved, could barely leave the ground. Some of the Vietnamese were literally pushed out the doors of the departing aircraft by the Americans inside. This was no strategic retreat; it was a flight from chaos and defeat.

After the tumult, the silence. Saigon waited, as conquered cities sometimes do, its streets empty, its citizens hidden or fled, for the coming of the North Vietnamese troops.

So ended the longest war in U.S. history. American combat troops had been in Vietnam since the early 1960s; U.S. military advisors had been there since the mid—1950s; covert U.S. actions predated the advisors; and U.S. military aid to the French, whose colony Vietnam had once been, began in 1950. Over fifty thousand Americans and millions of Vietnamese had died. Much of the land had been deformed, scarred, and cratered beyond recognition by U.S. defoliation and bombing. In the end there was only the silence of conquered Saigon.

In the ten years since Saigon fell, the Vietnam War has passed from living horror to unwanted memory. We have never quite come to terms with it. The government—particularly the Reagan Administration, but also many of those who made the Vietnam policy—would rather that we forgot, or that we remembered the war as a "noble effort" to aid a distressed ally. Yet the recent outpouring of novels, war memoirs, and histories of the war shows that we cannot forget the agony of those years. Our country, one of the greatest military powers in the world, made war on an insignificant nation half a world away. We cannot escape or long ignore the consequences of that fact.

Most Vietnam veterans have gone on to ordinary, productive lives. But a disturbing number—more than 50,000—have committed suicide or been killed in single—car accidents (a form of death which is, for statistical purposes, considered suicide). A quarter of a million of them have less—than—honorable discharges, often resulting from antiwar actions. An unknown but larger number were contaminated by U.S. defoliants like Agent Orange and are suffering slow death from effects both known and at present unknown. No Vietnam veteran—healthy or ill, settled or still tortured by the nightmares of combat—can forget the war.

Those who protested the war, too, cannot forget. Most of them, like most Vietnam veterans, have returned to ordinary life. They form one part of today's anti—nuclear movement. But there remains among many a sense of missed opportunities: the country, at the end, rejected the war, but continued to prepare for new military interventions. We had hoped for better.

The war changed nothing—and it changed everything. U.S. policymakers learned little from the experience, and much of what they did learn was wrong. But, just as the 1914—1918 war did for Europeans, the Vietnam War has become central to our lives in ways we cannot always explain. No one can understand the last twenty years of American life without understanding the war. Because of it, we will never be the same again.

In 1969, a friend of mine, a pacifist with whom I agreed on most issues, remarked that he could not see why the war in Vietnam was especially bad. War is war, he said. It is an evil and a tragedy whenever and wherever it occurs. Why should this particular war be different?

The simple answer at that time was that this war was different because it was happening then and because the U.S. was involved. Americans were dying, and they were being forced to kill by cynical policies they did not understand. One must, first and foremost, try to stop the carnage. Then one could worry about whether this was a war like other wars or a war which was somehow different.

Yet this war was different from other wars. It was a war of intervention to support a puppet Vietnamese government with no interest in democracy. The U.S. had no right to impose its will on a smaller country. This alone made it wrong, regardless of the tactics ordered by our policy makers. There had been similar wars in our history—the Mexican War in 1845 and the intervention in the Philippines in 1899—but nothing quite like this.

We could hardly believe that Americans could use the tactics that were standard procedure in Vietnam. We were shocked, but we should not have been surprised. This was a war against guerrillas, a counter insurgency war—the largest, most sustained, and most destructive in history. Its brutality grew out of this fact. Guerrillas are nothing new; countering them has never been a gentleman's game.

Guerrilla warfare takes its name from the irregular Spanish troops who fought Napoleon's armies when the regular Spanish military proved ineffective. It almost certainly predates Napoleon's time. Guerrilla forces do not, if they can avoid them, engage regular forces in pitched battles. They attack quickly, and then they disappear into the rest of the population, into the mountains, or into the jungle. Sabotage, assassination, terrorism, and small hit—and—run attacks are the hallmarks of guerrilla tactics.

Such forces are difficult opponents. Regular armies learn to stand and fight; guerrillas refuse to do so. Guerrillas often wear no uniforms; they are hard to find, let alone fight. Military experts reckon that a regular army must outnumber a guerrilla force by ten to one before it can hope for victory.

War against guerrillas has two peculiarities above all others. Most nervewracking for the troops who are fighting it, there is no definable front. And it is war not merely against another military force, but against an entire people.

For the soldiers who fought there, the Vietnam War quickly became an intolerable trap. Attacks could come at any time, anywhere, in random fashion calculated to break the most unshakeable nerves. There was neither success nor failure, but only the day—to—day boredom of patrols, the excitement and blood of a firefight, and the carnage wrought by Viet Cong booby traps.

"After a few months, it began to seem crazy, but you didn't dare to draw conclusions that might point in terrifying directions. Maybe we Americans . . . shouldn't be in Vietnam. . . . Still, it never occurred to me to lay down my rifle and quit. Instead, you develop a survival mentality. You stop thinking about what you're doing, and you count days. I knew that I was in Vietnam for three hundred and ninety—five days, and if I was still alive at the end of those three hundred and ninety—five days, I'd go home and forget the whole thing."1

Most civilians—among them, sadly, many in the peace movement—never understood why the Americans in Vietnam did not refuse to do what they were forced to do. It was almost as though we blamed the war on the ordinary soldiers who fought it. Yet they did not make the war, and they did not decide the policies that led to the horror. They lived with fear, and they could survive only by counting the days until their ordeal ended. The wonder is not that there was so little protest among GIs; it is that there was so much.

The destruction of Vietnam was no accident. To suggest that it was is to ignore the nature of counter insurgency warfare. Guerrillas, unless they are supported by outside aid (as the contras are in Central America), must live with the people where they are fighting. They depend on many of the same roads, supply lines, and farms as the rest of the population. A counter insurgency army cannot destroy the guerrillas directly, for often it cannot find them until they attack. It must instead attack their means of support.

In the Boer War, the British burned farms. In Vietnam, U.S. troops burned villages. U.S. aircraft sprayed millions of tons of weed—killer over the jungles of Vietnam to destroy Viet Cong hiding places. U.S. officials measured success not in battles won or territory held, but in "body counts," a gruesome reckoning that more often than not included bystanders caught in the crossfire. U.S. bombers dropped more tons of high explosive on Vietnam than had been expended in the entire World War II strategic bombing campaign.

The tactics of counter insurgency warfare have changed very little since the turn of the century. Military technology has. The British had the power to burn farms; the Americans had the power to burn an entire country. They very nearly did.

There were other, seemingly unintended, attacks on the people of Vietnam. Anti—personnel weapons like napalm and the cluster bomb are in many ways ideal counter insurgency weapons, for they destroy everyone—soldiers and civilians, adults and children—around them. Napalm, a sticky substance which adheres to human flesh while burning at high heat, causes indescribable burns. The cluster bomb, which upon exploding releases hundreds of other bombs over an area the size of one or more football fields, causes multiple wounds which, when not fatal, are extremely difficult to treat.

The military effects of napalm and the cluster bomb are clear. They kill and wound opponents who are widely scattered and impossible to see. They also force one's adversary to use more hospital beds, bandages, and surgical time. In the cold—blooded calculus that gave us the body count and interdiction bombing, the use of such weapons is perfectly logical. When one sees no target until one is under attack, indiscriminate destructiveness—the very quality which makes anti—personnel weapons so repugnant—is an advantage.

Military logic explains, but cannot justify, the destruction of Vietnam—the killing and maiming of civilians, the burning of villages, the poisoning of wells. Acts like these, indeed, are violations of the laws of warfare. But the use of such weapons and tactics points toward what made the Vietnam War different.

The evils of the war did not occur because of an overzealous command or ill—disciplined subordinates. They were part and parcel of the U.S. policy. Once the U.S. had committed itself to counter insurgency warfare, all else followed. Twentieth century warfare is brutal. Counter insurgency warfare with the full panoply of modern military technology proved to be among the most brutal of all.

We had been led to believe that we could not do such things. We had always fought the oppressors. This was not quite true, but we had believed. Now, suddenly and shockingly, we could no longer believe. For in Vietnam, we ourselves had become the oppressors.

Part II—The Resistance

For the Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian peoples, the Vietnam Era was a time of war and suffering. For the United States, it was not only a time of war, but a time of increasing public protest, disaffection, and war resistance.

Those who wish to rewrite history have tried to minimize the public's opposition to the war. Richard Nixon spoke of "those few hundred" who left the country in protest. Others suggest that the public protest was the work of a few, most of them young, who have lost interest in peace and gone on to pursue blue—chip stocks and esoteric foods. They would like us to believe that the resistance was a media—created phenomenon with little substance and not much public support.

In fact, the Indochina War brought protest and war resistance on a scale without precedent in American history. Far from being insignificant, citizen opposition was a major factor in ending the war. The revisionists can take little comfort from the truth about the resistance.

Statistics on the resistance, particularly those for dissent in the military, give at best an incomplete picture. No one, for example, knows how many draft—age men failed to register for the draft and simply told no one. Incomplete as they are, however, the available figures belie any claims that opposition to the war was confined to a few.

Approximately 8.6 million men and 250,000 women served in the military during the Vietnam era. Of these, about 2.2 million were drafted. A minimum of 570,000 refused induction or failed to register. This figure, which includes 250,000 "silent" non—registrants, may be low. The actual number of non—registrants may have been closer to a million. At least one authority believes it was two million.2 By any estimate, however, resistance to the draft was widespread in the Vietnam Era. For every four men drafted, at least one broke the law.

Of all issues raised by the Vietnam Era resistance, few are more important and more puzzling than the question: What is resistance? The answer is not merely a matter of definition. If resistance includes only actions which violate the law, the statistics are impressive, but they do not show the full agony of the nation and of the people who faced the draft or were forced to go to Indochina. But if resistance includes legal acts of draft avoidance, it becomes clear that—particularly toward the end—few served willingly.

One of the most effective forms of draft resistance, indeed, was in no way illegal. In July, 1965, 4 out of every 1,000 men appealed their draft classifications; by July, 1969, the number had risen to 102 per 1,000—more than in any previous war.3 By 1971, the number of appeals had far outstripped Selective Service's ability to process them. The system was on the verge of breakdown from the sheer weight of perfectly legal paperwork. Arguably this, and not open refusal, ultimately broke the back of the draft.

Just as the number of appeals grew as the war went on, so did the numbers seeking legal alternatives. Millions of men—nearly 16 million in all—avoided the draft by deferment, exemption, or medical disqualification. None broke the law, but it is reasonable to include many of them in the resistance. Because of the war, millions who in normal times would simply have entered the military instead sought alternatives to induction.

In 1965, few people applied for conscientious objector status. That year the Supreme Court's decision in U.S. v. Seeger opened conscientious objector status to people with unorthodox religious views. Seeger led to a major increase in the number of CO applications, but its effect was small compared to that of Welsh v. U.S., a 1970 case which held that one could qualify for CO status on purely moral grounds. In the first month after Welsh, Selective Service received 100,000 applications for CO status.4

The bulk of those who avoided the draft by lawful means sought medical disqualification or other deferment. This occurred in part because the draft law did not—nor does it now—recognize conscientious objection to particular wars. But even many who should have qualified for conscientious objector status under the law sought medical disqualification when their claims were illegally denied by local draft boards.

Those who did not actually experience the Selective Service System of the Vietnam Era have difficulty comprehending how chaotic, unfair, and poorly administered it was. At the top, Lt. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, Director of Selective Service, was a colorful figure who thought nothing of telling his local boards to (illegally) reclassify anti—war protestors as "delinquents" and order them (illegally) for priority induction. At the bottom, thousands of local boards administered the law with virtually no training, little time, and ample prejudice against the registrants in their charge. Of 209,000 draft offenders who were formally reported to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, 197,750 escaped prosecution when U.S. Attorneys dropped their cases because of Selective Service errors.

Class discrimination was built into the system. There was wide dissatisfaction with student deferments, which, it was argued, favored the rich who could afford college. This was perfectly true, but the class biases of the system went far beyond the deferment system. Selective Service provided quite literally no information to registrants on deferments, exemptions, and conscientious objection. Those who sought such information were usually advised by local board clerks who knew little of the law. For accurate information, registrants had to seek draft counseling. Poor and minority communities had little or no draft counseling.

At the same time, the draft law was then, as it is now, complex and forbidding. For many draftees, the Selective Service System was the first government agency they encountered. Filling out draft forms was their first experience with government forms. The middle class, with the help of draft counselors, could cope—barely. The poor, with little access to counseling, could not. Little wonder that the draft was widely hated.

Army casualty rates for 1969 show that the system's unfairness continued after induction. Draftees, who made up 88 percent of infantry riflemen in Vietnam in 1969, suffered out of all proportion to their actual numbers. 23.7 percent of draftees were killed or wounded in 1969, while 13.7 percent of volunteers became casualties. When a group of Congress members proposed to ban the use of draftees in Vietnam, the Pentagon protested loudly. This was not surprising. The war needed draftees; without them, combat units would have been understrength, and continuing the war would have been difficult.

Yet when the troops began to protest the war in significant numbers, most of those who protested were volunteers. This contradicts the stereotype. The public assumed that the Vietnam Era military was largely composed of draftees, and that the disruption of the military was the result of disaffection among draftees. In fact, draftees made up about 20 percent of the Army; an insignificant number of draftees were assigned to the Marine Corps; the Navy and Air Force took none at all.

By 1971, military analysts began to warn that the U.S. military was breaking down entirely. "The morale, discipline and battle—worthiness 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."5 Like all armies, the U.S. military had a breaking point. It had very nearly reached that point, but not because of "poor troop quality" or lack of support at home or any of the other causes cited by government spokespersons. The military reached breakdown in the early 1970s because of the nature of the war it was fighting.

Soldiers are not automatons, to be manipulated by the command and held in thrall to harsh discipline as if they were not human beings at all. They are, on the whole, wise in matters which concern them most directly. If the command is incompetent, the mission suicidal, the war meaningless, the troops can sense it. By 1970—71, it was clear that the war was meaningless, the command incompetent, and many of the missions suicidal.

Thus the rebellion in the armed forces. Most of those who rebelled had enlisted with high hopes and patriotic ideals, only to see their comrades die for a South Vietnamese government which manifestly had little popular support. Others, like the B—52 pilots who refused to fly missions in the early 1970s, were elite troops. Many were officers like Lt. (now Senator) John Kerry of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

It is difficult, and in some cases impossible, to find exact figures on Vietnam Era resistance in the military. The Pentagon recorded 1.5 million "incidents" of absence without leave (AWOL), but since one person could be reported AWOL more than once, this figure does not represent 1.5 million individual absentees. The number of AWOL individuals was probably between 500,000 and 550,000 —the highest AWOL rate in U.S. military history.6

For other forms of resistance there are no figures at all. Thousands of military personnel petitioned their Congress members, sought legal discharges, formed anti—war coffeehouses, and published underground newspapers. No one kept track of such matters at the time. It is, however, clear that disaffection within the military ran high. 563,000 military personnel received less—than—honorable discharges during the Vietnam Era, many for war—related or protest—related offenses. Group refusal of orders was so common that toward the end of the war unit commanders were forced to negotiate with their troops about which orders the unit would and would not follow. Called "working it out," this system was standard informal procedure in Vietnam in the later years.7

The breakdown of the U.S. military was never as severe as alarmist supporters of the war claimed. But it was very real, and it showed, as few other events could, that the uses of military force are limited. They are limited not merely by what is politically practical, but by what the troops will tolerate. One could force the troops to follow ill—considered and brutal policies for one year, or five, or perhaps even ten. But eventually many would simply refuse to go along.

Revisionists would have it that the resistance was insignificant. Yet they also suggest that it prolonged the war by giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Both arguments are clearly false.

The revisionists cannot, in any event, have it both ways. If the resistance was insignificant, the enemy, whose political judgments were nothing if not shrewd, would have paid no attention to it and sought other means to force the U.S. out of Vietnam. If, on the other hand, the resistance was widespread enough to give aid and comfort to the enemy, it could have helped force the government to end the war regardless of what our opponents did or thought. This would hardly have prolonged the war.

As it happens, there can be little doubt that the resistance and the public protest did help to shorten the war. No army in the condition of the U.S. military in 1970—1971 could have fought for long against determined opposition. The draft had, for all practical purposes, broken down. Congress no longer supported the war. Sixty—one percent of the public, according to opinion polls, viewed the war as a mistake. No president could have been elected on a pro—war platform. On the contrary. Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 largely because he claimed to have a "secret plan" to end the war. (That the "plan" included an intensified air war was not mentioned publicly.)

No one will ever know what would have happened without the resistance. Given the nature of the war, however, public opposition and private resistance were nearly inevitable. It was hard to believe that our troops were defending our country when the reality of such "defense" consisted of destroying villages, uprooting peasants, and counting bodies half a world away.

Government officials have never quite understood that the resistance had nothing to do with a "failure of nerve." It opposed the war because it believed the war was wrong. The troops did not lose morale because they lacked public support. They had seen the war first hand, and many had decided that it should not go on. Toward the end, GIs and Vietnam veterans were among the leaders of the anti—war movement. The civilian leaders were exhausted from years of futile protest; the GI movement became the cutting edge of dissent.

By 1971, the end was in sight. But the war had gone on for twenty years. 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese had been killed. Even in 1969, the draft continued to supply ground troops; even in 1970 and 1971, induction orders went out and some men obeyed them. Even at the height of the GI movement, many soldiers fought and died. If the resistance had won, it had done so only at great cost.

Yet without the resistance, what would have prevented the war from going on for another ten years? It is difficult to say. Few in the government were prepared to admit their mistake, cut their losses, and negotiate an orderly withdrawal. Without the protest, would they have been willing at all? No one will ever know. What we do know is that the resistance, in all its forms, made the draft untenable and the war difficult to continue. In the end, it helped to stop the carnage. That is its enduring contribution.

Part III—Learning and Unlearning History

The Indochina War, President Reagan once said, was a "noble effort" to aid an ally in distress. The President is not alone. It has become fashionable in some circles to say that we should have done what we did and that Vietnam would be better off today if we had not lost our nerve and withdrawn. Central to such justifications for the war is the fact that the current government of Vietnam is totalitarian. This, it is said, shows that the war was right.

One is reminded of the eighteenth century doctor who bled his patient of two quarts of blood and then blamed the patient's death on loss of blood. Democracy is fragile. Thirty years of savage warfare can destroy it utterly. The U.S. helped to prolong the war. When it was over, we did not rebuild as we had in Japan and Germany. We tried to isolate and punish our former enemy. The plight of Vietnam is, in some measure at least, our responsibility.

To explain an evil is not, of course, to condone it. A repressive government remains repressive, and dictatorship remains dictatorship no matter how it arose. But it will not do to suggest that Vietnam would have been free if only we had won the war. The record of the South Vietnamese government included concentration camps, torture, corruption, and the indiscriminate use of violence against its own people. Similar repression would almost certainly have continued after a U.S. victory.

The war was not a confrontation between freedom and tyranny. It was a struggle for power between two dictatorships. The real issue was not which of two governments, North or South, was the lesser evil, but whether the United States had any right at all to decide the question for the Vietnamese.

A second issue was U.S. tactics. These included violations of international law, use of terror, attacks on civilians, destruction of the environment, support for torture of prisoners, and a hundred other acts which were fundamentally at odds with accepted standards of human decency. No outcome could justify them.

This was a war in which U.S. planes dropped more bombs—and more efficient bombs—than were dropped on Europe and Japan combined during World War II. It was a war which destroyed 50 percent of Vietnam's inland forest, 41 percent of its coastal forest, and 40 percent of its rubber trees.8 1.9 million Vietnamese died; countless others were made homeless, and unknown numbers fled to the cities to live in the streets. Would more bombing and more U.S. firepower have helped these people or brought the land back to life? The question hardly requires an answer.

At the end, the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam. Saigon fell, and South Vietnam ceased to exist as a separate country. By any reasonable definition, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces had defeated the United States and South Vietnam.

Or so it appeared until recently. Now, however, those who supported the war have discovered that, far from losing it, we won. Or, in the current euphemism, we were "never defeated in the field." Our withdrawal is attributed to a failure of nerve unrelated to the military situation on the ground. The war, it is said, was a political but not a military defeat.

This is a perverse reading of events. If, as Clausewitz argued, war is a violent means to seek a political end, then a political defeat in Vietnam was identical to a military defeat. It would not matter—even if it were true— that we were "never defeated in the field." We lost in the only arena that mattered. We set out an objective, failed to achieve it, and left in disarray. That is a defeat. No amount of rationalization can change it into a victory.

A similar argument in Germany in the 1920s led to disaster for Germany and the world. The German right wing proclaimed that Germany had not been defeated in the trenches, but had agreed to an armistice because its leaders lost their nerve. This was the "stab in the back" theory, and it was close enough to the truth to look convincing. The German Army was never decisively routed in the trenches. The war was in stalemate and might have remained so for months if there had been no Armistice.

So much was true. But Germany was in desperate trouble in late 1918; the German people and the German Army could not have gone on much longer. Stopping the war, whatever the cost, was the only real solution. The "stab in the back" theory was false, and it had sinister implications. It implied that in the next war Germany could win if only its forces were given the freedom to prevail. It implied that there would be a next war. There was. The world knows the results.9

So with the Indochina War. If the war was not really a defeat, it is argued, then the remedy for our failures is to make sure that we intend to win future wars. The results are clearly displayed in Central America. U.S. forces are already in Honduras in numbers large enough to mount an invasion of Nicaragua. More forces are on the way. Our firepower in the region will soon be overwhelming.

The government has learned from Vietnam. Our war in Nicaragua is carried out by troops we have bought and paid for, but they are not U.S. troops. If we do send our soldiers, they will fight brutally and efficiently. There will be no more Vietnams. We will win this time.

An invasion of Nicaragua would, of course, be folly. We could no doubt "win" militarily. But the political effects of our victory would be disastrous. We would become once again—as we still are to a great extent—a hated country in the Third World. We would be seen as the bully, the oppressor, even the source of much of the evil in the world. Victory in Nicaragua would be possible; but would it be wise, prudent, decent, or moral? To all these questions, the answer is clearly no.

That is the danger of rewriting history. If we deny our failures, if we gloss over the evil we have done, we will not learn from the past. Or worse: we will draw the wrong moral. Already the Pentagon has put one "lesson" of Vietnam into practice. During the invasion of Grenada, press coverage was restricted beyond anything in recent American experience. This policy was a result of the government's belief that unfavorable press coverage hampered the war effort in Vietnam.

If all that we learn from the Vietnam experience is that we must censor the press and invade other countries with overwhelming force, God help us.

As it happens, U.S. policy makers did betray the troops in Vietnam—but not by any failure of nerve. The betrayal was more fundamental. It occurred the moment the decision was made to intervene. From that decision, all else followed. This was a war we could win only at the cost of our integrity and humanity. The war corrupted everything it touched, even more than most wars, because the policies that led to it were bankrupt from the outset.

It is in this context that one must consider the plight of Vietnam veterans. Those who fought the war are not, as portrayed in the 1970s, unstable killers given to psychotic outbursts—though some are. They are not uniformly heroes—though some did heroic things. They were, as most soldiers are, ordinary people caught up in a terrible situation not of their own making, doing their best. Most probably supported the war; a significant percentage, more than in previous wars, did not. But all, without exceptions, were victims of a policy that should not have been.

Vietnam veterans deserve justice, perhaps even more than justice, for what they endured. But it would be a mistake to confuse justice for veterans with justification for the war. Many Vietnam veterans, by their own admission, took part in war crimes. Under international law they could be convicted of criminal actions, for it is no defense to assert that one was following orders. Common sense, however, says the opposite. The troops in Vietnam who committed war crimes did so because U.S. policy made such crimes inevitable.

It will not do to deny this reality in the name of justice for Vietnam veterans. Indeed, to deny that our policy forced many soldiers to commit shameful acts is to deny the agony of those who fought the war. Many did not wish to do what they did, but they saw no alternative. Little wonder that they are still suffering. To rewrite the history that these people lived is to do them the greatest injustice of all.

The Indochina War showed that U.S. power is limited, that the U.S. could not maintain an empire, try as we might. It showed that we could not order events to our preference. All of these lessons are painful. None of them is convenient for the government or those who support future intervention.

Thus the rewriting of history. And thus, among those who opposed the war, the sense of missed opportunities. We told the truth about Vietnam, and we thought people believed us. Now the public is trying to deny that truth. Yet if the U.S. denies the truth, it hurts only itself, for we will lose the chance to develop new and creative policies that promise a more peaceful world.

Our government has not learned. The evidence is there for all to see—in Central America, in Lebanon, in Grenada. But if Vietnam teaches one hopeful lesson, it is that citizen protest against bad policies can make a difference. If there had been no resistance and no demonstrations, a second generation of U.S. troops might be dying in the Southeast Asian jungles.

The government will not change itself. But the people can change it. They can—albeit slowly and with great suffering—stop the madness. That is the hope which we can draw from Vietnam.

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