But I'm disturbed by Miles's overly simplistic portrayal of vets and vet
"guilt" for the war.
On Mon, 18 Aug 1997 webmaster@BRIGHT-IDEA.COM wrote:
> The war in Vietnam, as we said then and is still true today, was an
> abomination and a crime against humanity. It was not merely a mistake, it was
> a calculated political move which was misconceived politically, militarily,
> morally and culturally.
True enough--but the problem arises when he asserts that:
> And, like it or not with this recent trend toward
> revisionism, the U.S. soldiers who fought in that war
> were all, to one degree or another, compliant accomplices to this crime.
>
> Certainly, nothing can be said in defense of those GI's who enlisted. For the
> most part they were real, born-again believers in Amerika and they went off
> willingly to kill the "slope-head commie-gooks".
>
> Draftees are, of course, much more problematic -- especially those Third World
> boys who came out of a culture of poverty. And, of course, with draftees
> especially, it is important to keep in mind the distinction between the
> government and it's functionaries. However! -- they all went willingly! Each
> and everyone of them! They might not have been gung-ho, they might not have
> wanted to go, they might have even been opposed to the war -- but they all
> went, they fought, they killed (and yes, unfortunately, many of them died)!
>
> What choice did they have? They had they same choice that other boys had:
> jail or leaving the country. Both surely difficult choice, especially for
> kids without advantages, but they were real choices which others made.
This eithor/or logic totally misrepresents the complexity of social
history during the period. It proposes that we consider all war
resisters as necessarily brave martyrs to a noble cause and anyone
serving in the military (w/the grudging exception of VVAW) as simply
dupes or, worse, racist murderers. The choices to resist the draft,
desert, march against war, etc. were framed by myriad social, cultural,
racial, gendered, and class configurations. And while I firmly believe
such resistance was right, it doesn't follow that then all resisters
necessarily acted on noble principles. On the other hand, while I am
strongly anti-militarist, I don't believe that each and every soldier in
the military is the walking embodiment of the military's evil.
Just to cite a few obvious historical examples: many of the most active
members of the GI Resistance movement were enlistees, and a significant
number were officers--especially in the early years of the active-duty
resistance among troops--which suggests that many who willingly entered
the military were profoundly disillusioned by US policy in Vietnam,
enough so that they were willing to protest it--thus risking severe
reprisals (often risking death) and willing to mutiny. More soldiers
were involved in sabotage, mutiny, and resistance during duty in Vietnam
than in any previous US war. This suggests that ideology among troops
cannot be so simply generalized as Miles would have it.
There is also the fact that members of certain far-left groups actually
signed up with the specific intention of sabotaging the military from
within and/or mobilizing troops for revolution. Clearly their motivation
for enlisting would not fit Miles's assessment, although they might not
have the sort of pacifist leanings Miles seems to favor.
There were also cases of African Americans, Chicanos, and Native
Americans who enlisted because the newly desegregated military seemed to
offer the best hope for jobs and a respected position in US society--and
some of these "third world" voluntary soldiers became radicalized by
their Vietnam War experiences, later joining militant groups, such as
the Panthers and AIM.
Ironically Miles's binaristic view on the Vietnam era (either one was a
war resister or one was complicitous with the death machine) is itself a
kind of "war"--it imposes a kind of "epistemic violence" that implicitly
calls forth the language of fascism (check out M. Foucault's "War in the
Filigree of Peace")--it's an "us against them" logic that has been cited
by numerous historical and cultural studies of the Vietnam era as a
central strategic flaw of the antiwar movement.
But I'm more sympathetic with Miles, though, when he asks:
> How come no one is building a monument, holding a memorial concert, or waxing
> poetically for the War Resisters. Were they not the real heroes!
>
> And how about the Peace Makers? What about we everyday Joes whose lives were
> unalterably diverted by our commitment to stopping the war? Kids who were
> jailed. Students who gave up earning degrees from "sheltered" academic
> institutions because the horror of the real world outside beckened to them?
> What about those of us who were beaten, brutalized, injured, maimed and yes, killed?
>
> Who is out there to lionize them? What about those of us, typified by Phil
> Ochs, whose anomie was fueled by our identities as anti-war activists and were
> left stripped of our "selves" and our purpose when the war finally ended?
But I'm not sure such "memorialization" is appropriate for antiwar
work--because doesn't it exactly follow the form of war
memorialization? Doesn't "lionizing" depend on a trope of heroization
rooted in militarism? It seems much more productive to me that we do
justice to the memory of antiwar activists through careful
historicization, telling the stories of lived experience, educating for
peace.
Michael Bibby
mwbibb@ark.ship.edu