I was going to stay out of this discussion, but reading what I’ve read and thought about from the opinions of the guys here, I thought its time to chime in and let everyone here know a few things from the friends I have who were there, other friends I’ve made in years gone by that were there and my opinions from what all those guys have said and what I seen at that time (late 60’s and early 70’s)
By the time I graduated from high school in 1969 the war was in fullblown swing and every night on the news everyone was told how many guys died and what political policies were being put in place to justify the war. I was young and didn’t know a thing about the Vietnam war but was hearing it every night on all 3 channels, ABC, CBS, and NBC, yep that was it, just 3 broadcast channels.
So by the time I graduated Id been hearing daily what was going on but didn’t know a thing politically about what was going on and what had gone on the previous 10 years.
At 18 I moved too Madison Wisconsin and moved in with a friend and got a job to get my own place. Well in 1969 the University Of Wisconsin campus at Madison was the second most political campus in the United States, second only to the Berkley campus in California. Beings there was a lot of anti war discussions everyone was talking about I couldn’t help but listen, and did.
After a couple months there was an anti war protest around the capitol building that was organized by local people who were anti war and then later on I learned that some of those organizers were also Vietnam vets themselves. Well during the anti war protest there was 100,000 people who showed up all around every street and avenue that went in all directions from the center capitol building. We listened to the speakers talk about what was wrong with the war and the numerous various topics that took place before the war and during the war.
Now is the time I should say that I was never against the troops who fought in Vietnam and all of my friends at that time weren’t against them either. In retrospect we made the right decision by standing behind our troops, unlike the Jane Fonda crowd of ill informed and to this day its hard for me to fathom why they thought the way they did, like it was the troops fault who did what they did and had to do. The Jane Fonda crowd was small in numbers and was a very minor influence in changing anyones mind about what the troops were saying that gave speeches for over 12 hours. Those troops told everything that was going on, why it happened and we got almost all our information from what they said. They were there on the battle fields and they knew.
To give a perspective on how versed these troops were there were troops from all branches of the services but mostly from the army and marines. These guys who were giving their speeches were in full dress and proud of what uniforms they were wearing and some had so many medals on their chests that they needed a wheel barrow to carry the rest around in, these troops were highly decorated, so we figured they knew what they were talking about and at the time they sounded like they did.
Some gave their opinions on why the war stared and the facts that took place to get the war going. A few of the troops stated that the nation of France had complete control over the economy in Vietnam at the time and a lot of the Vietnam nationals didn’t like that. Everything the Vietnamese worked for was in the grips of the French and the French exploited the people of Vietnam terribly, basically get their products as cheap as they could and selling them all over the world and returning very little of the money back to the everday working class people of Vietnam, in other words they were being heavily used and the money was going into the pockets of the French and the ruling class of Vietnam at that time. We also heard that the president of Vietnam was put in place by the French. Vietnam was a satellite country and controlled by the country of France.
The words Im saying are in laymens terms and I don’t remember some of the technical things the speaking troops had said but im doing my best and not trying to cloud the air. Sentiment grew against the president of Vietnam and the French to the point where Ho Chi Mien from a wealthy family in Vietnam went to college in America and was a Harvard graduate and his major was capitalism.
After he graduated he went back to Vietnam still not a communist yet and the people he was in contact with there, came to America and tried to get the United States to get the French out of Vietnam or atleast loosen their strangle grip on the Vietnamese economy. The United States at that time refused to help Ho because of previous south pacific world war two treaties that were drawn up at the end of world war two. To this day I don’t know if the united States just couldn’t over ride those treaties or just didn’t want to because of the alliances between America and France at that time which were a lot closer, in my opinion more then they are today.
So what did Ho Chi MIEN DO, he went to China to ask for help to get the French out of Vietnam, and they said they would help. One of the stipulations was that Ho had to become communist and had to study that before they would help.
So he went back to Vietnam after making the agreement with china and the war esculated, slowly at first but faster after time went by.
From what a couple speakers said this is what happened to start and fuel the war.
I have a neighbor who served in the navy in 1964 or 65 and to this day he still doesn’t get credit for that time, and he is bitter and very bitter at that. He said the government in America should have helped HO get the French out of Vietnam and he personally said they threw the screws to him. He said the whole Vietnam war wouldn’t have taken place if they would have helped Ho chi Mien get the French out or atleast bring them to a bargaining table, if you would talk to him you would agree he is very bitter, he said a lot of troops died for nothing that shouldn’t have.
I thought to myself if hes this bitter then how many other troops are too, evidently the speakers in full dress at that time were telling the truth. I have a few friends who fought over there and made the statement to Bill that sometimes I wish I would have enlisted and his immediate response was, no Dan you just think you should have, you didn’t miss anything. Bill is undergoing intravienous feeding right now because of agent orange they sprayed on everything to kill all the vegetation so the communists couldn’t hide as good. John is a total alcoholic and I consider it no fault of his own. Mick is a full blown hard liquor drinker and is on and off the wagon all the time, mostly off. The lottery at that time was started in 1968 and if they drew your birthday out of a hat you had to go, in hindsight and from what my fiends have said I’m now glad I didn’t.
The Jane Fonda crowd calling all our troops killers and the speeches she made and what she did, is outrageous. This type of information is what the different branches of the service told the troops before they came home to beware of the war protestors who made it home.
I can tell you this, the people who were my friends at that time and a couple still are, made our minds up by listening to those highly decorated troops and they are where we got most of our information from, not the streets and hearsay. We never ever heard anyone talk negatively about our troops but when we did hear about what the very minor Jane Fonda crowd was saying we couldn’t believe it and stood behind our troops, and everyone I talked to which was many at the time, stood behind them too 100% and still do. The war protestors at that time got a bad rap by our different branches of the service by misinforming our troops and making them think that all the protestors were that way, I can say accurately that probably 95% of the protestors were behind our troops and the small amount that thought the way Jane Fonda did were in few numbers but had a large impact. Remember the movie Forest Gump and the signs they held that said bring our troops home, they weren’t the Jane Fonda crowd, they were the ones who knew about the war machine and the previous things that escalated the war, they were the good guys.
As time went on everyone was forming an accurate opinion and sentiment grew to get our troops home and as soon as possible, We heard many reasons from those decorated speakers why we shouldn’t be there. Richard Nixon had Millions of dollars of his own money invested in napalm. There were very many investors from everywhere in America including all over the world investors who had billions, who had their money invested in Haliburton who built the second largest Navy base in the world in Camron Bay in south Vietnam for supplying the troops, and it goes on the many reasons the decorated speaking troops gave and why they also grew negative in their opinions of the war.
This is my perspective and many others also on what happened and why we still think we shouldn’t have been there and doing just a few things would have changed things enough that the war would have never taken place and so many wouldn’t have lost their lives. If anyone has a different perspective I respect your opinion and I don’t want to make any enemies as I’m forming mine from the opinions from the guys who were there. War is hell and accuracy is very important to keep us from it.
