richard lightner

Mar 25, 20234 min read

Anti-War Movement 1

“The war in Vietnam soon became the subject of violent political dissension, as well as a burden on the conscience of all Americans who do not believe that in the struggle against Communism the end justifies the means.” Only a free American press got the truth out. (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 488)

“As this truth became known to more and more people, opposition to Mr. Johnson’s conduct of the war, and, even more, opposition to the war itself, began to grow - slowly in 1965-66, but alarmingly for the Administration in the year 1967. No longer was it possible for the Administration to brush aside criticism of its policy because the serious exponents of the opposition did not reach the masses. (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 488) Nor could public protest in universities and street demonstrations any longer be denounce as the work only of left-wingers, draft-dodgers, beatniks, and other un-American elements. Veteran Administration critics, such as Hans Morgenthau and columnist Walter Lippmann in the press, and J. William Fulbright, Wayne Morse, and Ernest Gruening in the Senate, were now joined by a growing number of other experts in foreign and military policy, such as former Ambassadors George Kennan, John Kenneth Galbraith, and General James M. Gavin.” (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 488-489) Former Johnson advisors Arthur Schlesinger and Richard Goodwin came out against the war. Former Kennedy speech writer Theodore Sorenson claimed that President Kennedy would not have committed a large amount of the use military to Vietnam. (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 489)

The active protesters against the war were “professors, writers, artists, clergymen, doctors, lawyers, and occasional business executives,.” However, congressional opposition was a serious concern for Johnson. More and more Senators spoke out against the war and, against the “reactionary military dictatorship in Saigon.” Both Democrats and Republicans came out against the war. (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 489) “Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky . . . demanded an end to the bombing of the North, while [Senator Thurston Morton of Kentucky] in a personal attack on the President, said that he had been brainwashed by the military-industrial complex into believing in the possibility of a military solution.” (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 489-490) Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon claimed the Administration engaged in double-talk and deceit. In the United National most countries opposed the US and called for an end to the bombing. (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 490)

President Johnson’s call “for a 10 [er Celt tax increase made the question whether Vietnam was worth the cost in money and American lives suddenly more acute.” (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 490)

Critic noted that it cost Americans “more than 300,000 to kill one Vietcong demonstrated rather plainly some of the more absurd aspects of the war.” Senator Vance Hartke of Indiana broke down the cost of one amphibious operation and found that it cost $800,000 to kill one of these Vietcong.” (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 490)

After the riots of the summer of 1965 General Gavin testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February, 1967, “I recommend that we bring hostilities in Vietnam to an end as quickly and reasonably as we can, that we devote those cast expenditures of our national resources to dealing with our domestic problems; that we make a massive attack on the problems of education, housing economic opportunity, lawlessness, and environmental pollution.” (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 490-491) Republican Senator Charles Percy of Illinois echoed those concerns. (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 491)

“At least half a dozen other retired generals have also spoken up against the war, some even more forcefully than Gavin, who, in resigning from the Massachusetts Democratic Advisory Council because he could not support the reelection of President Johnson again made it clear that the sacrifices demanded for the Vietnamese war increased opposition to it.” (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 491)

However, “most disturbing for many Americans was the great number of civilian casualties caused by the manner in which this war was being conducted. Government propaganda tried to prove that civilian casualties were the result as much of Vietcong terror as of American military bombing, the widespread use if napalm and artillery against villages suspected of harboring Vietcong units, and the policy of shooting at anything that moved within a combat zone. (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 491)

“The deaths caused by Vietcong terror constituted a small fraction of the total civilian casualties.” Tons of bombs dropped from the air do not compare to mortars or knives. (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 491) “The New York Times wrote at the end of August, 1967, that the bomb tonnage dropped on Vietnam each week is larger than that dropped on Germany at the peak of World War II. (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 491-492) The Times further noted than the bombings destroy the social fabric of Vietnamese society. It is the Communists who pick up the pieces and put them back together. (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 492)

The war threatened to divide Americans like nothing had since the Civil War. Despite the intense bombing over the previous three years and adding more American forces to the war victory remained elusive. US Ambassador to South Vietnam, Ellsworth Bunker, and General William Westmoreland were brought back to the United States to say that we were winning the war. But Senator Mike Mansfield “dismissed this campaign with a warning against deluding ourselves.” (Joseph Buttinger. Vietnam: a political history. 495)

It was not an authoritarian movement. There were many destructive disagreements. (Nancy Zaroulis and and Gerald Sullivan. Who Spoke Up?: American protest against the war in Vietnam, 1963-1975. 1984. xii)

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Different Points of View over the future of Atomic weapons.

During the Afghan War, President Donald Trump (GAG!) authorized a General to use the Mother of all Bombs, a bomb just shy of the power of an atomic bomb, on his own. Notice that this had no positive affect for the US in the outcome of the war. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/world/asia/moab-mother-of-all-bombs-afghanistan.html)

There is a plethora of information about the development and use of the atomic bomb during World War II. Much of the world was astounded that the US used such a bomb on civilians. Others said, drop more.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 9, 1945, “served as the symbolic coronation of American global power.” Nevertheless, the use of the atomic bomb in World War II brought international condemnation. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trials of 1946-1948, Justice Pal of India cited the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes. U.S. President Harry S. Truman responded by publicly saying that the atomic bombs were dropped “in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands of young Americans.” However, President Truman in correspondence with John Foster Dulles that his reasons for dropping the atomic bombs were the attack on Pearl Harbor and the murder of our prisoners of war. “The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.” (Martin Sherwin. “Hiroshima and Modern Memory.” The Nation. October 10, 1981)

“In the summer and fall of 1945, US atomic policy left us troubled and perplexed. Roosevelt, we thought, had been committed to a policy of international understanding and conciliation. . . . Truman’s policy, however, appeared to have the opposite aim: to keep a monopoly of the atomic bomb in U.S. and British hands, and to use it as a strong trump card in tough political bargaining with the Soviet Union.” (Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. 1975. xi)

And, well before the bombings FDR and Churchill “rejected steps that might have led to the international control of atomic energy.” (Martin Sherwin. “Hiroshima and Modern Memory.” The Nation. October 10, 1981)

According to nuclear physicist Hans Bethe who worked on the Manhattan Project, “Many of us had been influenced directly or indirectly by Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist. He argued that only international control of nuclear weapons could save the world from a nuclear arms race, and that such a race would imperil, not enhance the security of the United States and Great Britain. Many other scientists, especially at the University of Chicago Metallurgic Laboratory, at the initiative of Leo Szilard, had come independently to the same conclusion.

Martin Sherwin, George Mason University History professor who specialized in the history of nuclear weapons, wrote that, this interpretation by physicists and historian is wrong. Roosevelt decided, with Churchill, “that the bomb should remain and Anglo-American monopoly.” (Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. 1975. xii)

However, this is not mentioned in Hiroshima in America: fifty years of denial, by Robert Jay Lifton and Gregg Mitchell.

KOREA

There are numerous arguments about whether or not the atomic bomb should have been used in Korea, Vietnam, or other existential circumstances.

In late 1950, following their invasion of Korea, Chinese forces surrounded U.S. Marines. “Distraught himself, the chief executive (Truman), told a press conference on November 30 that nuclear bombsight be used against the enemy and seemed to indicate that the decision would be MacArthur’s.” (William Manchester. American Caesar. 608, 610; Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 30)

The U.S. developed the ability fire an “atomic shot from a cannon.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 34)

“In mid-May Ike (President Dwight Eisenhower) told the [American] National Security Council that using nukes in Korea would be cheaper than conventional weaponry, and a few days later the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended launching nuclear attacks against China.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 34)

This is interesting since Eisenhower’s reaction to Hiroshima was, we didn’t have to use that awful thing on them. (Lifton, Robert Jay and Mitchell, Greg. Hiroshima in America: fifty years of denial. 1995. 213)

Operation Hudson Harbor - flying lone B-29 bombers over North Korea to simulate a dropping of an atomic bomb. North Korean leaders must have had “steel nerves” as this simulation was eerily similar to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Operation Hudson Harbor concluded that the use of atomic weapons would not be “useful” as it was difficult to identify “large masses of enemy troops.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 157-159)

The United Nations/United States forces faced defeat in Korea but Truman looked strong because he “threatened to use the atom bomb against China.” However, this “made peace talks virtually impossible.” (Stone, I.F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. 213)

Major General Emmett (“Rosy”) O’Donnell, commander of the Far East Air Force’s Bomber Command . . . [stated that] “We have never been permitted to bomb what are the real strategic targets, the enemy’s real sources of supply.” He said that the strategic bombing commanded been “designed to deliver the atomic offensive to the heart of the enemy” and indicated very clearly that he thought the bomb should have been used against the Chinese.”” (Stone, I.F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. 245)

RICHARD NIXON

Richard Barnet, former State Department aide, activist and scholar, who founded the Institute for Policy Studies (Wikipedia) warned “of the danger that the United States government might resort to the use of nuclear weapons. Barnet then cites Vice President Richard Nixon speaking to the Executive Club of Chicago on March 17, 1955 as saying,

“The weapons which were used during the Korean War and World War II are obsolete. Our artillery and our tactical Air Force in the Pacific are now equipped with atomic explosives which can and will be used on military targets with precision and effectiveness.

“It is foolish to talk about the possibility that the weapons which might be used in the event war breaks out in the Pacific would be limited to the conventional Korean and World War II types of explosives. Our forces could not fight an effective war in the Pacific with those types of explosives if they wanted to. Tactical atomic explosives are now conventional and will be used against the military targets of any aggressive force.”

Of course, we are not aggressors by threatening China or invading Vietnam.

VIET NAM

1964 American Republican Presidential candidate Senator Goldwater of Arizona was a reserve Air Force General and “suggested that the United States could isolate the Vietcong in South Vietnam any bombing the supply routes connecting China and North Vietnam.” He also proposed using nuclear weapons “to clear the jungles where the Vietcong were presumably hiding. The public reaction to those notions was one of horrified alarm.” (Thomas Powers, The War at Home. 2) It turns out that the United States bombed Southeast Asia the equivalent of many atomic bombs through out the war.

“Although Goldwater was finally persuaded to stop talking about nuclear weapons.”

Although Goldwater’s advocacy of atomic weapons scared people his idea to win the war did not. Johnson portrayed himself as “responsible” as opposed to Goldwater who he implied would get us all killed. (Thomas Powers, The War at Home. 9)

Noted military writer Hanson Baldwin believed that the US should use its overwhelming technological power to counter communism even if that meant nuclear weapons. Of course, only for “defensive purposes.” “If we cannot do this, he says, we had better “call it quits.” (Noam Chomsky, At War with Asia. 52)

General Curtis LeMay advocated the use of nuclear weapons to end the conflict with communism once and for all. “We ought to nuke the chinks. . . . We are swatting flies when we should be going after the manure pile.” (Thomas Powers. The War at Home. 40; Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. Lyndon B. Johnson: the Exercise of Power. 538)

So, there is pretty much agreement that the use of the atom bomb was on the table. The horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki completely ignored.

In 1954 the United States “assuming the Chinese Communists intervene would engage in a “highly selective atomic offensive.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 46) However, if the “Chinese Communists do not intervene” then the use of atomic weapons would occur if it would aid the US in the war. (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 47)

McNaughton drafted a “Proposed Course of Action” to McNamara. In his long list of actions McNaughton noted risks. One was the “escalation to the use of nuclear weapons.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 442-445, passim)

Presidential assistant for national security, Walt. W. Rostow, wrote a memorandum on May 6, 1967, analyzing U.S. bombing strategy in Viet Nam. One of his conclusions was “we do not want a nuclear confrontation over Viet Nam.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 585, 588)

Anti-War Movement 1

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