10 years on, Vietnam War debate comes to the boil

Press, 2 May 1985, Page 31

10 years on, Vietnam War debate comes to the boil

By

Arthur Spiegelman,

of Reuters, through NZPA New York General William Westmoreland has celebrated his seventy-first birthday and the former Vietnam War commander is seething. He has just read a “New York Times" newspaper article about it being a decade since the United States lost its first war and says: “America never lost the Vietnam War. The American Army was not beaten in Vietnam.” Ten years after the fall of Saigon, the debate has boiled up again over who lost and who won, over who was ‘right and who was wrong, over whether America is better or worse for trying to fight a war in the swamps and rice paddies of South Vietnam. Key figures from the war have resurfaced, some, General Westmoreland prominent among them, to defend themselves while others, such as the activist Jerry Rubin, proclaim that history justified them even though they were not right in every detail. “We were wrong to eulogise the North Vietnamese. We needed good guys and bad guys then," Mr

Rubin says today. Other figures from America’s battle with itself are anxious not to be heard from and still others have made peace with themselves and their experiences, considering it but a prologue to their lives. What follows is an update on some of those who played roles in America’s Vietnam War; some were main players, others minor ones. All, however, were seared by the experience: • H. Rap Brown, the black student activist who shocked patriotic Americans with his declaration, “Violence is as American as. apple pie,” has changed his name to Jamil Abdullah alAmen and runs a black Muslim grocery store in Atlanta.

• Lieutenant William Calley, the pardoned convicted killer of 22 Vietnamese in the shameful My Lai massacre, works in the V. V. Vick jewellery store in Columbus, Georgia. He refuses interviews, although he almost agreed to talk to one writer last year if he was paid $U525,000 (5NZ55.000). Friends say “Rusty” is bitter and thinks he was made the scapegoat. The last time Calley

spoke publicly was in 1976, when he told a radio interviewer he thought all the young Americans who refused to fight in the war should be granted an amnesty.

• Ron Ridenhour, the former soldier who learned from friends that the My Lai massacre had taken place and then blew the whistle — sending angry letters to the Pentagon and Congress — is today an investigative reporter for the underground newspaper, “Gambit,” in New Orleans. “I have mixed feelings. I felt it was the correct thing to do, but life confronts you with difficult situations. Do you betray your friends or do you uphold the principles you think make up civilised society? I could not have it both ways,” he said in a telephone interview recently. Mr Ridenhour says he went through difficult periods after the war until a journalist friend told him: “There are My Lais in the world every day and you have to let go of this and deal with other atrocities that Governments commit against people.” “I realised he was right,” he said. “I became an investigative reporter.”

• Abbie Hoffman, the Yippie (Youth in Protest) founder who with Mr Rubin was a co-defendant in the notorious Chicago Seven trial of anti-war protesters, has become an environmentalist concerned that America is moving into a new Vietnam in Central America. He lived several years in hiding after jumping bail on a cocaine-selling charge and then surrendered and spent 10 months in jail. • Jerry Rubin, now a business executive involved in “networking” groups in which young executives are brought together with other young executives.

“Abbie and I do ‘Yippie versus Yuppie’ college lectures. Things are quite strained between us. He’s still in the 19605, I into the 1980 s. We are not buddybuddy any more. He thinks Nicaragua is another Vietnam.”

• Daniel Ellsberg, who was put on trial for leaking the Pentagon papers, lives in California and is active in the anti-nuclear movement. • Leonard Boudin, Mr Ellsberg’s lawyer and also the lawyer for the anti-war activists Daniel Berrigan and Benjamin Spock, is teaching at the Stanford University law school. He believes America learned nothing from Vietnam.

“We came off badly and we are repeating our mistakes with no justification in Central America. We are interfering in the affairs of other countries. We are doing this because we have the worst administration in the history of the American Republic,” he said. Mr Boudin’s daughter, Kathy, was radicalised by Vietnam and was convicted last year of taking part in an armed robbery with black revolutionaries in which three were killed. Asked if he had suffered from the war, Boudin snapped a quick “no,” and then, asked about his daughter, said: “My daughter was — and is — an idealistic person. She is, in a sense, paying the price for that idealism.”

• Graham Martin, who as the last American Ambassador to South Vietnam bad 11 minutes to pack in an evacuation that many say he botched by refusing to prepare, is in retirement in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

He thinks South Vietnam would have won the war if the United States had “kept the promises (on aid) it made in 1973. But we talked ourselves out of those commitments and the peace movement continued. The great cry was to stop the war and then the killing began and went on and on and goes on today.”

Martin also blames the press for sapping America’s strength to keep fighting. “You never know what really would have happened, but we might have had a more stable world if we had done what we said we would do.”

• Dean Rusk, Secretary of State under Presidents Ken-

nedy and Johnson, teaches at the University of Georgia. He agrees with Martin that the press sapped America’s energies to fight and suggests that in a next war censorship might have to be instituted.

“We stopped aid to the South Vietnamese and we did pull the rug out from under them. I was a little surprised that President Nixon tried to stick it out as long as he did. We turned over to him a military position in which the north could not overrun the south, but we did not turn over to him the backing of the American people.” Rusk thinks that the war’s outcome might have been different if President Kennedy had committed 100,000 American troops at the start of the war, instead of escalating gradually and not countering North Vietnam with massive force at the start. • Peg Mullen, whose son, Michael, was killed by “friendly fire” (fire from American tropps mistakenly hitting United States positions), splits her time between Texas and lowa. She drew national attention to “friendly fire” attacks by taking out a full page advertisement in the “Des Moines Register.” The advertisement was a page of crosses, symbolising the dead from that state. She recently contributed money to help construct a Vietnam War memorial in Des Moines. • Nguyen Cao Ky, South Vietnam’s premier, owns a chain of liquor stores in California and has been accused but never charged with leading a South Vietnamese crime ring in the United States. He denies the charges and says: “I am a poor man.” • Richard Nixon, the President who both prolonged the war and ended it, lives in retirement in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. His latest book is called “No More Vietnams” and argues that America has to be tough. He, too, blames the press for the outcome of the war. • Norman Thomas, the old Socialist leader who led early demonstrations against war, died several years ago. But his battle cry of “I’d rather see America save her soul than her face” is one that still rings true today for many Americans.