Center for a Stateless Society » Vietnam War

“The Iraq War was, as wars go, not an especially harsh or brutal one, and was largely conducted according to all the latest precepts of “humanitarian intervention.” The free-fire zones of Vietnam were largely absent, as were the brutalities of massed, prolonged aerial and artillery bombardment. And yet, the results are unimaginably horrific to us in our First World comfort. Sandy Hook and Columbine reverberate to this day in America; in the hell into which we plunged Iraq, neither would even make the front page. There is no war without horrific violence and nightmarish suffering. Never forget.”

Eleven Years of War

Alan Smithee — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 16:57:20 +0000

Today, the Iraq War turns eleven. If you’re an American, you’d be forgiven for thinking the war in Iraq was over. After all, Barack Obama, after being thwarted in his desperate attempts to extend the American military presence there, has been crowing about how he “ended” the war in Iraq. But the war never ended.

Last night, 13 people were killed when a café in Baghdad was bombed, bringing the total killed yesterday to forty-six. In America, we are still discussing a terrible shooting at a school that killed 28 people, including the perpetrator, over a year ago. In Iraq, more than 2,000 people have been killed just so far this year. Every single one of those deaths, and every single one of the 500,000 killed since 2003, is an entirely foreseeable consequence of American foreign policy.

But today, rather than rehashing the well-known arguments against the war, let us focus on what the war has cost us. The American death toll is well known- 4,489 killed, 32,021 wounded. According to several studies, a minimum of 4% and a maximum of 17% of American veterans of the Iraq War suffer from PTSD. Applying the lower bound to the population of Iraq, we can estimate that at least 1.3 million Iraqis suffer from this debilitating condition, which can cause difficulty sleeping, emotional detachment and outbursts of rage, among other things, and which denies those who suffer from it the possibility of leaving their suffering behind and living a normal life.

Worse still, these victims of the Iraq War, along with the survivors left behind by the dead and the wounded, do not have the support structures American veterans enjoy. American veterans are eligible for disability pensions, career retraining, and free medical care for their war wounds, physical and psychological. However dysfunctional the institutions providing these services may be, American veterans still fare much better than the Iraqi people. The Iraqis, who bore the brunt of the war, are simply left to suffer while some “libertarians” wonder why they are not more grateful for their plight.

The Iraq War was, as wars go, not an especially harsh or brutal one, and was largely conducted according to all the latest precepts of “humanitarian intervention.” The free-fire zones of Vietnam were largely absent, as were the brutalities of massed, prolonged aerial and artillery bombardment. And yet, the results are unimaginably horrific to us in our First World comfort. Sandy Hook and Columbine reverberate to this day in America; in the hell into which we plunged Iraq, neither would even make the front page. There is no war without horrific violence and nightmarish suffering. Never forget.

La Coscrizione non Ha Mai, Mai, Fermato una Guerra

Alan Smithee — Thu, 26 Dec 2013 20:00:51 +0000

Nel 2011 partecipai ad una discussione pubblica presso King’s Books a Tacoma, nello stato di Washington. Si parlava dell’effetto che hanno le guerre sui soldati e le loro famiglie. Mi ero preparato a rispondere parlando dell’impatto che le guerre continue hanno sulle famiglie che incontravo nella sala parto dove lavoro. Durante questa discussione, però, fui sorpreso da uno dei partecipanti che invocava rumorosamente il ritorno alla coscrizione obbligatoria. Il pubblico approvò vivacemente.

Da allora mi è capitato di vedere molte, molte altre richieste, l’ultima delle quali nell’ultimo libro di Andrew Bacevich, di un ritorno alla coscrizione da parte di persone apparentemente contro la guerra. La premessa, a volte esplicita e a volte no, dietro queste richieste è che la coscrizione fermerebbe la brama americana di guerre e di interventi all’estero distribuendone il peso più equamente. La coscrizione è stata condannata, giustamente, perché è una forma di schiavitù; e qualche volta una forma mortale, per giunta. Ma anche chi sviene alla sola idea di considerare schiavi i soldati americani non può negare la semplice realtà storica che la coscrizione non ha mai, mai, neanche una volta, fermato o rallentato o in qualche modo inibito il corso di una guerra.

La prima guerra americana combattuta con la coscrizione fu la rivoluzione, e fu combattuta tutta quanta fino alla sua conclusione. La seconda fu la guerra civile, che costò più vite americane di ogni altra guerra. E se la coscrizione causò diverse rivolte, prima fra tutte una protesta anti-coscrizione degenerata in pogrom contro i neri a New York, anche questa guerra fu combattuta fino al suo sanguinoso esito finale. Anche la prima e la seconda guerra mondiale furono combattute in gran parte con coscritti e fino al loro infelice esito finale. Nel secondo caso, due grandi città furono immolate al dio della guerra da una nuova odiosa arma sganciata da aerei con un equipaggio composto parzialmente da coscritti.

La guerra di Corea e, soprattutto, quella di Vietnam formano quella che la lobby pro-coscrizione considera la chiave di volta del loro ragionamento. L’interpretazione classica è che l’americano medio era stufo di vedere le vite dei suoi figli distrutte dalla guerra d’attrito di Westmoreland, mentre Lyndon Johnson apparentemente diceva: “Se ho perso Cronkite, ho perso l’americano medio.” Apparentemente, le manifestazioni di protesta persuasero il governo americano a lasciare il Vietnam. Questa interpretazione non considera chi realmente fermò la guerra americana in Vietnam: i vietnamiti.

La rivoluzione, la guerra civile, le due guerre mondiali: per il governo americano, queste sono guerre vittoriose. La vittoria è sempre popolare; una guerra vittoriosa, per quanto ovviamente aggressiva o assurdamente ingiusta, raramente genera un’opposizione significativa. Ma in Vietnam l’America non stava vincendo. Stava perdendo, e malamente. L’americano medio scese in strada, è vero, ma non perché Johnny tornava a casa in una scatola. Scese in strada perché Johnny stava perdendo.

L’interpretazione pro-coscrizione della opposizione alla guerra di Vietnam ha un fondo razzista e imperialista; nega ai vietnamiti il loro ruolo di protagonisti della loro storia; esalta orgogliosamente i bianchi americani che protestavano agitando cartelli per le strade, ignorando i contadini vietnamiti che davano le loro vite per cacciare via l’ennesima potenza imperialista che pretendeva di comandare in casa loro. A fermare la guerra di Vietnam non furono gli studenti dei college che agitavano i cartelli; furono i risaioli con gli AK-47. Gli americani si commuovono per la morte di un coscritto solo quando il coscritto muore in una guerra che sta perdendo. Il credito per l’opposizione a questa guerra non va agli americani a casa ma alle vittime straniere del governo americano.

L’idea secondo cui la guerra perderebbe popolarità se solo il peso fosse distribuito fra tutti sembra intuitiva e accattivante, ma storicamente è un’illusione. La vittoria rende le guerre popolari, e la sconfitta le rende impopolari. Se vogliamo fermare la macchina della guerra dall’interno del centro imperiale, dobbiamo fare tutto il possibile per incepparla, che si tratti di contrastare gli arruolamenti, appoggiare l’opposizione al mondo militare, far conoscere i costi del militarismo, ricorrere allo sciopero fiscale, o fare altro che possa servire. E mentre dibattiamo sui fini ultimi dei comunisti in Vietnam o degli islamici in Iraq, dobbiamo sempre ricordare che le persone che fanno più di ogni altro per fermare la macchina da guerra sono quelle che prendono le armi in mano e la combattono.

Di Jonathan Carp. Originale pubblicato su Center for a Stateless Society il 17 ottobre 2013 con il titolo The Draft Never – Ever – Stopped a War. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

The Draft Never — Ever — Stopped A War

Alan Smithee — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 18:00:41 +0000

In 2011 I sat on a panel discussion at King’s Books in Tacoma, Washington, on the subject of the effect of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on soldiers and their families. My prepared remarks were a discussion of the impact of repeated deployments on the families I saw on the labor and delivery floor where I worked, but during the discussion after I was startled to hear a forceful call for the re-reinstatement of the draft from one of my fellow panelists- a call that met with widespread cheers from the audience.

Since then I’ve seen many, many more calls for a draft from ostensibly anti-interventionist voices, most recently in Andrew Bacevich’s latest book. The underlying premise of these calls, sometimes made explicit and sometimes not, is that a draft would stop America’s lust for war and foreign interventions because it would force the burdens of war to be spread more equally. The draft has been damned, and rightly so, for being a form of slavery and at times a particularly murderous one at that, but even those who might get the vapors at the idea of seeing American solders as slaves cannot deny the simple historical fact that the draft has never, ever- not once- stopped or slowed or in any way inhibited the conduct of a war.

The first American war fought with conscription was the first American war, the Revolution, and it was fought all the way to its conclusion. The next war fought with conscripts, the Civil War, claimed more American lives than any other and while the draft helped provoke some riots, most notably a draft protest turned anti-black pogrom in New York City, that war too was fought all the way to the bloody finish. The First and Second World Wars as well were fought largely with draftees and fought to the bitter end, in the latter case with the immolation of two major cities by a hideous new weapon delivered by aircraft in part manned by draftees.

Korea and especially Vietnam form what the pro-draft lobby thinks of as the lynchpin of their case. The conventional narrative of resistance to the war in Vietnam is of Middle America tiring of seeing its sons’ lives destroyed by Westmoreland’s war of attrition and rising up, of LBJ allegedly saying “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Supposedly the marches in the streets somehow persuaded the American government to leave Vietnam. What this narrative leaves out is what actually stopped the American war in Vietnam- the Vietnamese.

The American Revolution, the Civil War, the World Wars- for the American government, these were all victorious wars. Victory is very popular; victorious wars, however obviously aggressive or absurdly unjust, rarely generate any significant resistance. But in Vietnam, America was not winning. America was losing, and badly. Middle America was in the streets against Vietnam, it is true, but they weren’t there because Johnny was coming home in a box. They were there because Johnny was losing.

The pro-draft narrative of domestic resistance to the Vietnam War is at heart a racist, imperialist narrative, denying the Vietnamese their place as actors in their own history, giving pride of place to white Americans holding signs in the street over Vietnamese peasants giving their lives to drive out yet another imperialist power coming to lord over their country. What stopped the Vietnam War was not a college kid with a sign; it was a rice farmer with an AK-47. Americans only get upset about draftees dying when they are dying in a losing war, and credit for resistance to such wars goes not to Americans at home but to the victims of the American government abroad.

The idea that if only everyone had to share the burden, war would be less popular seems intuitive and appealing, but history reveals it to be deluded. Victory makes wars popular, and defeat makes them unpopular. To try to stop the war machine from inside the imperial center, we must do whatever we can to gum up its works, be it counter-recruiting, supporting GI resistance, spreading awareness about the costs of militarism, tax resistance, or anything else that might help. And while we might debate their ultimate aims as Communists in Vietnam or Islamic radicals in Iraq, we must always remember that the people who do the most to stop the war machine are the people who take up arms against it.

Translations for this article:

Italian, La Coscrizione non Ha Mai, Mai, Fermato una Guerra.