In our ETS 192 course, we have used the study of culture to better understand the influences of gender in the Vietnam War. We, as the students were asked to find out more about the culture itself to better enhance our comprehension. There were so many topics to choose from. I have personally been touched by this course and I don’t ever think I will look at War the same. After seeing the horrific way in which people were killed, including women and children, I will never forget those faces. The images will forever haunt me in my mind. It is so hard to believe that Vietnam Wars themselves have been occurring since 1945. Although I was not there to voice my opinion about the war, perhaps this is my way of doing so. For this reason, I have chosen to further look into the Anti-War Movement during the Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War caused so many mixed feelings between the people here at home. Because of the different ideals between gender, races, and of course generations, there were many different ways in which people were voicing their opinions about the war itself. Many chose to take the demonstration route that was not very effective in creating a change in the war. Demonstrations did however cause awareness of the severity of the war and how it was affecting the people not participating in the war.
There were many types of organization that went into demonstrating and also different methods of doing so. There was civil disobedience, and extreme pro-activism. I am going to focus on civil disobedience and its challenges throughout the war.
Civil disobedience was a part of the peace movement during the Vietnam War. The peace movement consisted of three main points: (1) a clear, practical and urgent goal: to end the Vietnam War, (2) a distinctive historical situation that consisted of a committed minority, and (3) a moral ideal with which they understood how to handle the approach (civil disobedience). In civil disobedience the attitude was to allow anything and everything that would somehow bring about some kind of change toward ending the Vietnam War. The radical pacifists best demonstrated this attitude. Radical pacifists such as A.J. Muste, Dorothy Day, and David Dellinger, led the movement at the time.
Even though the law was broken in one way or another, the demonstrators of the peace movement respected the law as an institution and submitted without resistance to its processes. They did not want to coerce anyone into believing their beliefs, but rather persuade others of their ideas. They rejected physical violence, moral force, or psychological force.
Instead of using force, the peace movement decided that it would draw the nations legal system into the struggle against Vietnam. Because of the individual rights of the citizens themselves, the courts could not deny the peace movement the opportunity to gather peacefully and demonstrate. One good example is that of David Henry Mitchell III. On May 20, 1965, a grand jury in New Haven, Connecticut, indicted him for willful failure to report for induction into the armed forces. He was arrested ten days later, and on September 13, 1965, he came to trial before Judge William Timbers in the Unites States District Court in New Haven. Mitchell pleaded innocent.
Mitchell was found guilty although he had hopeful plans of putting the United States Government on trial by expressing his opinions about the war. Mitchell was sentenced anywhere from eighteen months to five years in prison and a five thousand dollar fine. At this point, many people saw civil disobedience and peaceful demonstration as an unsuccessful way of getting a point across. What many people failed to understand, however, is that civil disobedience had its challenges.
First of all, many people did not really understand why civil disobedience even existed. For the most part, people felt that this democracy protected the rights of protest within broad limits. The right to assemble, picket, stage freedom walks, or mass demonstrations was protected. Secondly, civil disobedience was seen as going against the "principle of majority rule." Most critics strongly believed that it was a minority rule that was protesting and the majority unwillingly go along or abstain. Finally, many saw the different forms of proetesting as criminal. "Draft card burinings, blocking induction centers, destruction of draft files, carrying a Vietnam flag, speaking of "our friends the North Vietnamese," all of these acts constitute treasonous forms of behavior." (180, Law, Morality and Vietnam) For this reason, many people of the general public refused to support and believe that civil disobedience was in any way peaceful.
Although civil disobedience was sometimes an effective way of protesting, many never saw it fit as a part of America. But then again, why have a democracy? Why promise freedom to do so many things at one's own will and then take it away when it is a direct threat to popular belief? Civil disobedience will always remain a part of history no matter how wrong it may have been. People were somehow strong enough to go against all odds and express to the public that there was injustice being done in Vietnam. No matter what the consequences, the demonstrators would fight for their belief in this country not through guns and platoons, but through love and expression of the basic ideal in this country: freedom.
These are other kewl links about the Vietnam War:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/middle_east_and_asia/Vietnam.jpg
http://www.umich.edu/~vsawww/hispol.html
http://www.vietvet.org/thepast.htm
http://metalab.unc.edu/vietnam/vnpic.html
Works Cited
1.) Bannan, Rosemary S., and Bannan John F. Law Morality and Vietnam: The Peace Militants and the Courts Indiana University Press, London 1974
2.) Lynd, Alice We Wont Go: Personal Accounts of War Objectors Beacon Press, Boston 1968
3.) Schoenburn, David Vietnam: How we got in, How to get out Curtis Publishing Company, New York, 1967
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