During the 1950s Americans went into a Mad Panic about Communists taking over the world. We built thousands of Nuclear Missiles and Fallout Shelters. The US Congress had witch hunts (Joe McCarthy-HUAC) to expose "Commies" who worked in The Hollywood Movie business and blacklisted folksingers that were leading our young people astray with Labor Union Organizing songs.
During the height of this hysteria Vice President Richard Nixon went on Television and explained "The Domino Principle" while pointing to a map of Asia. His theory was... if we did not prevent Vietnam from becoming Communist, one by one those countries over there would turn Commie and soon Commies would take over the Entire World and We Would be fighting them at Our Border With Mexico... Communism Would threaten the American Way of Life Right Here at Home!
Dominos was a Family Game popular before the invention of Computers and Video Games... Since "Everyone" Knew what they were... the US Government Named our Foreign Policy for that Game... Because It Made the Policy Easy to Understand...
President Eisenhower and Kennedy sent advisors to help the South Vietnamese soldiers fight the North Vietnamese soldiers.
VIDEOS: Domino Theory: Cold War Misconception About Communism's Spread...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo_qCGNd2tE
I participated in a Candlelight March down Main Street in Los Gatos with my parents. I also collected signatures on an Anti-War petition from passers-by in front of the Post Office in Los Gatos. One man who was in favor of the war gave my father a book for me. "You can Trust the Communists" was the title and it's contents explained the justification for the war.
The Movie "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming" documents in a humorous way the PANIC Attack of the USA about Global Communism and the threat to our way of life. ALSO, "Doctor Strangelove" ridiculed the Pro War people... Both movies are worth watching. "Team America: World Police" is a more recent mockery.
Ironically, during the 1960s most Americans were in favor of the war because they believed in obedience. The concept was that if the government told them to do something that people should simply do what they are told. During the late 1960s there was a global awakening and people started
to think for themselves and question authority.
I protested against the war in Vietnam not only because it was pure evil but also to save my own life. I turned 18 in 1972 and registered for the draft but was NOT asked to go to war. I missed the war by exactly ONE year. Thanks to Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, John Lennon and the millions of other people who protested the war. "All We are Saying, is Give Peace a Chance" ...
.jpg "Do The Math - Peace Saves Money - meme pie chart")
Fifty years ago today, on April 30, 1975, Vietnam defeated the United States of America.
It’s called “The Vietnam War” — but the Vietnamese call it, more accurately, “The American War.” Because it was the Americans who invaded Vietnam eleven years earlier to kill and dominate its people.
In those 11 years, we slaughtered two million Vietnamese and perhaps another two million southeast Asians in Cambodia and Laos and beyond. Nearly 4 million murdered by the United States! (For context, that’s about two-thirds the number of Jews that the Germans killed in the Holocaust during World War II.)
Unlike the Germans, we, collectively as a nation, have never paid for these crimes against humanity. We have never admitted our guilt in this genocide, never apologized, never shown a speck of remorse, never made any reparations (and no, I don’t count the Nike factories).
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And we have continued our policy of invasion and funding and arming genocide to this day. We funded and armed the slaughters in Central America well into the 1980s. We armed the Iraqis in their war with Iran. Then we spent over two decades bombing and eventually invading Iraq and slaughtering their people — while also losing a two-decade-long war with Afghanistan.
We do not tell our children, nor teach our students, the real truth of the atrocities we’ve conducted, from our first mass genocide of the Native Peoples of the Americas committed by our White Christian European ancestors, to currently the billions of our taxpayer dollars and tons of American bombs plus scores of fighter jets and other weapons of mass destruction being given to the Netanyahu regime in Israel to massacre tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. And for the two million Palestinians still barely alive in Gaza, we now support a horrific plan to starve them to death, their homes now nearly all reduced to rubble (92% of Gaza has been flattened, according to the UN), with virtually no access to drinking water or medicine, and nearly every hospital, every school and every university bombed to smithereens. It will take years to discover under all the rubble what the real numbers of the dead are. And this doesn’t even take into account the daily attacks on the 3+ million Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank.
We, you and I, are the backers of all this misery. Joe Biden bankrolled it. It cost him and Kamala Harris the election. Nearly a third — 29% — of the millions of people who voted for Biden in 2020 but who didn’t vote for Harris in 2024 cited their top reason as the Biden/Harris administration’s support for and funding of the war on Gaza. (This was more than those who cited the economy or immigration as their main reason). The media will not report it this way (“It’s the price of eggs!”), just as no media today on this 50th anniversary will state the simple truth that we, the mighty USA, were defeated in Vietnam by one of the poorest countries on Earth, a country which did not possess a single aircraft carrier, no destroyers, no B-52-style bombers — not even one goddamn attack helicopter! They did not have tank divisions, nor a single canister of napalm, no amphibious assault vehicles, not even one pathetic military Jeep that wasn’t a Soviet tin-can knock-off with maybe three wheels on it. They had nothing but the will of their own people to be free of the freedom-loving Americans.
They kicked the ass of a military superpower — and sent 60,000 of our young men home to us in wooden boxes (nine of them from my high school, two on my street) and hundreds of thousands more who returned without arms, legs, eyes or the mental capacity to live life to its fullest, forever affected, their souls crushed, their nightmares never-ending. All of them destroyed by a lie their own government told them about North Vietnam “attacking” us and the millions of Americans who at first believed the lie. This past November 5th showed just how easy it still is for an American president, a man who lies on an hourly basis, to get millions of his fellow citizens to fall for it.
That is why we need to make this day, April 30th, a national holiday. Usually, national holidays are used to celebrate victories and commemorate triumphs, like signing the Declaration of Independence or saving all the Indians from starving to death during winter (not true) or whatever Thanksgiving is all about. So why would we create a holiday to commemorate our defeat in Vietnam?
I think we need to do this for our children’s sake, for our grandchildren, for the sake of our future if there still is one for us. We should take just one day every year and participate in a national day of reckoning, recollection, reflection, and truth-telling, where together we actively seek forgiveness, make reparations and further our understanding of just how it happened and how easy it is for the wealthy and the political elites and the media to back such horror, and then to get the majority of the country to go along with it… at least at first. And how quickly after it’s over we decide that we never have to talk about it again. That we can learn nothing from it, and change nothing after it.
The best way to honor the loss from this tragic war is to commit to never doing it again — and that has to start by realizing we are doing it again right now. Every bomb we send to Netanhayu is proof that we didn't learn a single lesson.
I encourage every one of you — whether you’ve seen it before or have never seen it — to watch the Oscar-winning Peter Davis documentary HEARTS & MINDS tonight or this coming weekend. It is the most powerful nonfiction film I have ever seen. You can watch it with any Max subscription or on the Criterion Channel. You can rent it on Apple TV+ or Amazon Prime.
Here is a short clip from from the film, featuring Daniel Ellsberg, who revealed the true scope of the war when he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, showing how the U.S. government was lying about the war:
https://youtu.be/STySb33rkUo
Ellsberg: “The question used to be: ‘Might it be possible that we were on the wrong side in the Vietnamese War?’ But we weren’t on the wrong side. We are the wrong side.”
And we were the wrong side again in Iraq. In Afghanistan. In Gaza. How did we get here? We got here because we’ve always been here. Start in 1492 and go forward.
Remember that.
Teach our children this truth about us. About our history. Give them this knowledge and with it comes the opportunity for us to change and make different choices for our future. To be a different people. A peaceful people. The Germans did it. The Japanese, too.
Today is a tragic and solemn day. And it should be a national holiday.
Vietnam’s largest military cemetery of war dead in Quang Tri province. The lens of the camera is not wide enough to capture the vastness of this sacred place.
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Images by Steven Clevenger/Corbis via Getty Images; and HOANG DINH NAM / AFP via Getty Images
In 1963 JFK Ordered the End of Vietnam War. All Troops Out by the End of 1965 per National Security Action Memorandum Number 263. But Then He was Assassinated and We Fought the War until 1973. Makes me Question the MOTIVE for his Assassination... Who Profited from the Vietnam War? Dow, Hughes and Everyone Else in the Military Industrial Complex. Did they Have Him Killed to Prevent the Ending of the War?
Then President Johnson sent even More American Soldiers to fight the Viet Cong. Then President Nixon continued the War for another 5 years before eventually he decided to allow the South Vietnamese to fight their own war and we left. Quickly the South lost and thousands of Boat People fled South Vietnam because they thought they would be killed. As it turned out, The Domino Principle was false. Communism did not take over the world. The entire war was a waste of lives and money.
The main reason we ended the Vietnam War was the huge protest movement against the war. Lead by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin of the Yippies and The Students for a Democratic Society staged immense protest marches expressing the desire of the American People to end the war. Eventually the US government got the message... If they didn't End the War, the Majority of American Voters Would Throw them OUT of Office.
Ho Chi Minh was the heroic leader of North Vietnam. He successfully threw out the French Colonialists and The Americans. He reunited his country and Vietnamese people ruled Vietnam.
The Vietnam War inspired many anti-war protest songs. Country Joe and the Fish's "Fixing to Die Rag", Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant, The Door's "Unknown Soldier and "Where Have all the Flowers Gone" and "Big Muddy" by Pete Seeger...
Then the Draft (forcing people to go fight in wars) ended and we were at Peace for Ten Years... To This Day we Still Have an All Volunteer Army.
Many corporations profited from the War in Vietnam including Dow Chemical, Monsanto and Hughes Aircraft. The Government bought a lot of Napalm, Agent Orange and Helicopters.
President Lyndon Johnson was the main promoter of the Vietnam War. He is the one that changed from sending advisors to sending combat troops. Even after it became obvious that we could not win he continued to send more combat troops because he did not want to be the first President to lose a war. Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense at the beginning of the war and then he quit because all his experts said that we could not win.
The main reason we ended the Vietnam War was the huge protest movement against the war. Lead by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin of the Yippies and The Students for a Democratic Society staged immense protest marches expressing the desire of the American People to end the war. Eventually the US government got the message... If they didn't End the War, the Majority of American Voters Would Throw them OUT of Office.
Ho Chi Minh was the heroic leader of North Vietnam. He successfully threw out the French Colonialists and The Americans. He reunited his country and Vietnamese people ruled Vietnam.
The Vietnam War inspired many anti-war protest songs. Country Joe and the Fish's "Fixing to Die Rag", Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant, The Door's "Unknown Soldier and "Where Have all the Flowers Gone" and "Big Muddy" by Pete Seeger...
Then the Draft (forcing people to go fight in wars) ended and we were at Peace for Ten Years... To This Day we Still Have an All Volunteer Army.
Many corporations profited from the War in Vietnam including Dow Chemical, Monsanto and Hughes Aircraft. The Government bought a lot of Napalm, Agent Orange and Helicopters.
President Lyndon Johnson was the main promoter of the Vietnam War. He is the one that changed from sending advisors to sending combat troops. Even after it became obvious that we could not win he continued to send more combat troops because he did not want to be the first President to lose a war. Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense at the beginning of the war and then he quit because all his experts said that we could not win.
At one point, Barry Goldwater (The Republican Candidate for President) recommended dropping Atomic Bombs on Hanoi but he lost the Election to LBJ and we never dropped any.
We did drop an astonishing amount of traditional bombs, Napalm (jellied gasoline) and Agent Orange (a defoliant). That killed about two million Vietnamese people. Since they were fighting in defense of their own country they were able to outlast the Americans because they were Very interested in winning. The American public became opposed to the war in such numbers that eventually Richard Nixon ended the war. At one point, Nixon was so afraid of the protesters that he encircled the White House with Buses parked end to end so that people could not jump over the fence and attack. One protest march walked from the Lincoln Memorial in DC to the Pentagon in Virginia and encircled it. The plan was to hold hands, sing and chant until the Pentagon levitated into the air vibrated and collapsed into a pile of rubble. This march was documented in the Norman Mailer book "Armies of the Night".
Many thanks to all who protested the war as we saved countless lives. Including my own.
At Kent State University in Ohio 4 Students were murdered by the National Guard during an anti-war demonstration. This caused widespread outrage among the people of the USA. After all, when a species starts killing it's children extinction is not far away. Why these 4 deaths caused more of a backlash than the thousands of soldiers dying in Vietnam is a mystery. Maybe it's because of the Freedom of Speech guarantee of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The Night before the murder students burned down the ROTC building. (Reserve Officers Training Corps) That arson was used as the excuse for the National Guard to arm it's men with real bullets. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young wrote a great song documenting the murder called "Ohio."
At UC Santa Barbara students burned down the Bank of America building. That building was selected because the BofA was making a profit off the war.
The revolutionary organization "The Weathermen" blew up over 100 buildings in an attempt to "Bring the War Home". The Idea was that if the horrors of war were happening in the USA, the public would quickly grow tired of the war and ask our leaders to end it. Eventually, that is exactly what happened. "The Weathermen" selected organizations that were enabling the war for bombing targets. No people were ever hurt by the bombings only buildings. Including the US Capitol building in Washington DC.
Muhammed Ali refused to go to war and was arrested and convicted of draft dodging. At the time he was the most famous man in the world. He was a boxer. He said: "No Vietnamese ever called me nigger". Martin Luther King also opposed the war. So did Dr Benjamin Spock the author of the book "Baby and Child Care" which was the most popular book about how to raise children among the parents of the Baby Boom generation. Jane Fonda went to North Vietnam to visit the Army there and took many famous photographs that were printed in the newspapers worldwide. She was protesting Against the war and using her Fame as a Hollywood Movie Star to get attention to her views. Those photographs enraged people in favor of the war.
The draft had a tendency to select people who were poor. Anyone who was attending college got a student deferment. That meant that people who were too poor to afford going to college were drafted while students were excused from the war. Practically speaking, soldiers had a tendency to be Black, Hispanic or Native American. Rich people could also get a doctor to write a letter stating that their patient had medical reasons that made serving in the military impossible. For Example: Donald Trump was excused from service due to "Bone Spurs"... a medical condition that made it impossible for him to march... It's very likely that this medical condition was totally phony and was just an excuse... A friend of mine got a deferment for having surf bumps on his feet. He couldn't wear Army Boots...
William F Buckley was TOTALLY WRONG about the Vietnam War. He had a popular TV talk show where he would debate liberals. He was supposed to be a brilliant conservative thinker however, he was actually clueless about the war. At the time his show was on TV there were only 3 TV networks and his show was watched by millions of Americans. His opinions influenced the thinking of many "Right-Wing" Republicans. He was sort of like Rush Limbaugh or Fox TV News. A voice of the government. He believed that people should simply do what they are told. He was a skilled debater and could make seemingly believable arguments. Then these concepts were
repeated by millions of Americans... He put words in the mouth of parents that were worried that their children were running away to live in Hippie Communes and smoking Marijuana... Could it be that William F Buckley was a paid stooge of corporations that were making a profit on the war?
Walter Cronkite spoke up against the war. He was a TV News Anchorman and one of the most beloved people in America. He was regarded as a trustworthy father figure. When he came out against the war it was a sign that the people of the USA had had enough. He influenced public opinion greatly.
The "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" was fake. It was used as a reason for our involvement in Vietnam's Civil War. It was an event that did not happen.
The Chicago Riots at the Democratic Convention: Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin of the YIPPIES! (Youth International Party) asked for a million protesters to assemble in a park in Chicago during the Convention. The Police attacked the protesters with billy clubs and the riot was televised. Chanting "The Whole World is Watching" protesters fought with police. Later there was a trial of "The Chicago 7" and they were all convicted of inciting a riot. Later on appeal they were all found
innocent and the Judge (Julius Hoffmann) of the first trial was convicted of obstruction of justice. One of the people of trial (Bobby Seal) was bound and gagged so he would not talk during the trial. A Great song (Chicago) by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young documents these events. It was also covered in Abbie Hoffman's Books "Woodstock Nation" and "Revolution for the Hell of It". Another great book of his was called "Steal This Book" a guide to how to live as a revolutionary in America by getting everything for free so a person did not have to work at a job for money.
The Anti-War movement caused President Lyndon Johnson to decide to Not run for re-election. He was discouraged by constantly being blamed for the USA losing the war. Often protesters encircled the White House and chanted "Hey, Hey, LBJ. How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?" this constant noise disrupted his sleep and he decided to go home to Texas instead of running for a Second Term. When he go home he drank himself to death. It took years but he eventually died.
University of California at Berkeley was an early start of the anti-war protest movement. Mario Savio and Mark Rudd spoke at free speech rallies on campus and organized blockades of the nearby Oakland Army Recruiting facility. The rock band Country Joe and the Fish got their start playing at rallies. Joe McDonald's parents were pro-communist sympathizers and named him after "Country" Joe Stalin. "The Fish" was a referral to the Mao Tse Tung quote: "A revolutionary swims
thru the people like a fish swims thru the sea." They are most famous for the "Fixing to Die Rag" song shown in the movie "Woodstock."
The invention of Television helped end the Vietnam War. For the first time people saw the horrors of war every day in their own homes. Reporters on location showed pictures of the war and the human suffering caused by bombing, napalm and agent orange. Pictures of burning civilians made even
the most Brainwashed of Conservatives Question Authority. TV revealed the lies of the government about how we were supposedly "winning" the war and that there was a "light at the end of the tunnel" and how it would all be over soon. Johnson and Nixon had a more and more difficult job of selling the War to Americans whose children were dying. Awakening Was Happening Nationwide.
I participated in "The Moratorium" anti-Vietnam War protest march in San Francisco. We had protest marches that day in every city in the USA. At my high school we chartered a bus and many students rode from Los Gatos, California to San Francisco. The march ended at the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park.There was a vast sea of people and The Beatles song "Come Together" was playing on the public address system when I walked over the hill leading to the field. I felt a feeling of "Oneness" with the crowd. It's emotionally valid to be in favor of good and opposed to evil. The Vietnam War was pure evil. We cut school to participate in this protest march but the principal of our High School did not assign any punishment for our missing class. He told us to figure out for ourselves the meaning of not getting assigned detention. (he was proud of us for risking punishment in support of
our beliefs.)
Many thanks to all who protested the war as we saved countless lives. Including my own.
At Kent State University in Ohio 4 Students were murdered by the National Guard during an anti-war demonstration. This caused widespread outrage among the people of the USA. After all, when a species starts killing it's children extinction is not far away. Why these 4 deaths caused more of a backlash than the thousands of soldiers dying in Vietnam is a mystery. Maybe it's because of the Freedom of Speech guarantee of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The Night before the murder students burned down the ROTC building. (Reserve Officers Training Corps) That arson was used as the excuse for the National Guard to arm it's men with real bullets. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young wrote a great song documenting the murder called "Ohio."
At UC Santa Barbara students burned down the Bank of America building. That building was selected because the BofA was making a profit off the war.
The revolutionary organization "The Weathermen" blew up over 100 buildings in an attempt to "Bring the War Home". The Idea was that if the horrors of war were happening in the USA, the public would quickly grow tired of the war and ask our leaders to end it. Eventually, that is exactly what happened. "The Weathermen" selected organizations that were enabling the war for bombing targets. No people were ever hurt by the bombings only buildings. Including the US Capitol building in Washington DC.
Muhammed Ali refused to go to war and was arrested and convicted of draft dodging. At the time he was the most famous man in the world. He was a boxer. He said: "No Vietnamese ever called me nigger". Martin Luther King also opposed the war. So did Dr Benjamin Spock the author of the book "Baby and Child Care" which was the most popular book about how to raise children among the parents of the Baby Boom generation. Jane Fonda went to North Vietnam to visit the Army there and took many famous photographs that were printed in the newspapers worldwide. She was protesting Against the war and using her Fame as a Hollywood Movie Star to get attention to her views. Those photographs enraged people in favor of the war.
The draft had a tendency to select people who were poor. Anyone who was attending college got a student deferment. That meant that people who were too poor to afford going to college were drafted while students were excused from the war. Practically speaking, soldiers had a tendency to be Black, Hispanic or Native American. Rich people could also get a doctor to write a letter stating that their patient had medical reasons that made serving in the military impossible. For Example: Donald Trump was excused from service due to "Bone Spurs"... a medical condition that made it impossible for him to march... It's very likely that this medical condition was totally phony and was just an excuse... A friend of mine got a deferment for having surf bumps on his feet. He couldn't wear Army Boots...
William F Buckley was TOTALLY WRONG about the Vietnam War. He had a popular TV talk show where he would debate liberals. He was supposed to be a brilliant conservative thinker however, he was actually clueless about the war. At the time his show was on TV there were only 3 TV networks and his show was watched by millions of Americans. His opinions influenced the thinking of many "Right-Wing" Republicans. He was sort of like Rush Limbaugh or Fox TV News. A voice of the government. He believed that people should simply do what they are told. He was a skilled debater and could make seemingly believable arguments. Then these concepts were
repeated by millions of Americans... He put words in the mouth of parents that were worried that their children were running away to live in Hippie Communes and smoking Marijuana... Could it be that William F Buckley was a paid stooge of corporations that were making a profit on the war?
Walter Cronkite spoke up against the war. He was a TV News Anchorman and one of the most beloved people in America. He was regarded as a trustworthy father figure. When he came out against the war it was a sign that the people of the USA had had enough. He influenced public opinion greatly.
The "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" was fake. It was used as a reason for our involvement in Vietnam's Civil War. It was an event that did not happen.
The Chicago Riots at the Democratic Convention: Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin of the YIPPIES! (Youth International Party) asked for a million protesters to assemble in a park in Chicago during the Convention. The Police attacked the protesters with billy clubs and the riot was televised. Chanting "The Whole World is Watching" protesters fought with police. Later there was a trial of "The Chicago 7" and they were all convicted of inciting a riot. Later on appeal they were all found
innocent and the Judge (Julius Hoffmann) of the first trial was convicted of obstruction of justice. One of the people of trial (Bobby Seal) was bound and gagged so he would not talk during the trial. A Great song (Chicago) by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young documents these events. It was also covered in Abbie Hoffman's Books "Woodstock Nation" and "Revolution for the Hell of It". Another great book of his was called "Steal This Book" a guide to how to live as a revolutionary in America by getting everything for free so a person did not have to work at a job for money.
The Anti-War movement caused President Lyndon Johnson to decide to Not run for re-election. He was discouraged by constantly being blamed for the USA losing the war. Often protesters encircled the White House and chanted "Hey, Hey, LBJ. How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?" this constant noise disrupted his sleep and he decided to go home to Texas instead of running for a Second Term. When he go home he drank himself to death. It took years but he eventually died.
University of California at Berkeley was an early start of the anti-war protest movement. Mario Savio and Mark Rudd spoke at free speech rallies on campus and organized blockades of the nearby Oakland Army Recruiting facility. The rock band Country Joe and the Fish got their start playing at rallies. Joe McDonald's parents were pro-communist sympathizers and named him after "Country" Joe Stalin. "The Fish" was a referral to the Mao Tse Tung quote: "A revolutionary swims
thru the people like a fish swims thru the sea." They are most famous for the "Fixing to Die Rag" song shown in the movie "Woodstock."
The invention of Television helped end the Vietnam War. For the first time people saw the horrors of war every day in their own homes. Reporters on location showed pictures of the war and the human suffering caused by bombing, napalm and agent orange. Pictures of burning civilians made even
the most Brainwashed of Conservatives Question Authority. TV revealed the lies of the government about how we were supposedly "winning" the war and that there was a "light at the end of the tunnel" and how it would all be over soon. Johnson and Nixon had a more and more difficult job of selling the War to Americans whose children were dying. Awakening Was Happening Nationwide.
I participated in "The Moratorium" anti-Vietnam War protest march in San Francisco. We had protest marches that day in every city in the USA. At my high school we chartered a bus and many students rode from Los Gatos, California to San Francisco. The march ended at the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park.There was a vast sea of people and The Beatles song "Come Together" was playing on the public address system when I walked over the hill leading to the field. I felt a feeling of "Oneness" with the crowd. It's emotionally valid to be in favor of good and opposed to evil. The Vietnam War was pure evil. We cut school to participate in this protest march but the principal of our High School did not assign any punishment for our missing class. He told us to figure out for ourselves the meaning of not getting assigned detention. (he was proud of us for risking punishment in support of
our beliefs.)
I participated in a Candlelight March down Main Street in Los Gatos with my parents. I also collected signatures on an Anti-War petition from passers-by in front of the Post Office in Los Gatos. One man who was in favor of the war gave my father a book for me. "You can Trust the Communists" was the title and it's contents explained the justification for the war.
The Movie "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming" documents in a humorous way the PANIC Attack of the USA about Global Communism and the threat to our way of life. ALSO, "Doctor Strangelove" ridiculed the Pro War people... Both movies are worth watching. "Team America: World Police" is a more recent mockery.
Ironically, during the 1960s most Americans were in favor of the war because they believed in obedience. The concept was that if the government told them to do something that people should simply do what they are told. During the late 1960s there was a global awakening and people started
to think for themselves and question authority.
I protested against the war in Vietnam not only because it was pure evil but also to save my own life. I turned 18 in 1972 and registered for the draft but was NOT asked to go to war. I missed the war by exactly ONE year. Thanks to Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, John Lennon and the millions of other people who protested the war. "All We are Saying, is Give Peace a Chance" ...
.jpg "Do The Math - Peace Saves Money - meme pie chart")
Why Today April 30th Should Be a National Holiday
It’s called “The Vietnam War” — but the Vietnamese call it, more accurately, “The American War.” Because it was the Americans who invaded Vietnam eleven years earlier to kill and dominate its people.
In those 11 years, we slaughtered two million Vietnamese and perhaps another two million southeast Asians in Cambodia and Laos and beyond. Nearly 4 million murdered by the United States! (For context, that’s about two-thirds the number of Jews that the Germans killed in the Holocaust during World War II.)
Unlike the Germans, we, collectively as a nation, have never paid for these crimes against humanity. We have never admitted our guilt in this genocide, never apologized, never shown a speck of remorse, never made any reparations (and no, I don’t count the Nike factories).
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And we have continued our policy of invasion and funding and arming genocide to this day. We funded and armed the slaughters in Central America well into the 1980s. We armed the Iraqis in their war with Iran. Then we spent over two decades bombing and eventually invading Iraq and slaughtering their people — while also losing a two-decade-long war with Afghanistan.
We do not tell our children, nor teach our students, the real truth of the atrocities we’ve conducted, from our first mass genocide of the Native Peoples of the Americas committed by our White Christian European ancestors, to currently the billions of our taxpayer dollars and tons of American bombs plus scores of fighter jets and other weapons of mass destruction being given to the Netanyahu regime in Israel to massacre tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. And for the two million Palestinians still barely alive in Gaza, we now support a horrific plan to starve them to death, their homes now nearly all reduced to rubble (92% of Gaza has been flattened, according to the UN), with virtually no access to drinking water or medicine, and nearly every hospital, every school and every university bombed to smithereens. It will take years to discover under all the rubble what the real numbers of the dead are. And this doesn’t even take into account the daily attacks on the 3+ million Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank.
We, you and I, are the backers of all this misery. Joe Biden bankrolled it. It cost him and Kamala Harris the election. Nearly a third — 29% — of the millions of people who voted for Biden in 2020 but who didn’t vote for Harris in 2024 cited their top reason as the Biden/Harris administration’s support for and funding of the war on Gaza. (This was more than those who cited the economy or immigration as their main reason). The media will not report it this way (“It’s the price of eggs!”), just as no media today on this 50th anniversary will state the simple truth that we, the mighty USA, were defeated in Vietnam by one of the poorest countries on Earth, a country which did not possess a single aircraft carrier, no destroyers, no B-52-style bombers — not even one goddamn attack helicopter! They did not have tank divisions, nor a single canister of napalm, no amphibious assault vehicles, not even one pathetic military Jeep that wasn’t a Soviet tin-can knock-off with maybe three wheels on it. They had nothing but the will of their own people to be free of the freedom-loving Americans.
They kicked the ass of a military superpower — and sent 60,000 of our young men home to us in wooden boxes (nine of them from my high school, two on my street) and hundreds of thousands more who returned without arms, legs, eyes or the mental capacity to live life to its fullest, forever affected, their souls crushed, their nightmares never-ending. All of them destroyed by a lie their own government told them about North Vietnam “attacking” us and the millions of Americans who at first believed the lie. This past November 5th showed just how easy it still is for an American president, a man who lies on an hourly basis, to get millions of his fellow citizens to fall for it.
That is why we need to make this day, April 30th, a national holiday. Usually, national holidays are used to celebrate victories and commemorate triumphs, like signing the Declaration of Independence or saving all the Indians from starving to death during winter (not true) or whatever Thanksgiving is all about. So why would we create a holiday to commemorate our defeat in Vietnam?
I think we need to do this for our children’s sake, for our grandchildren, for the sake of our future if there still is one for us. We should take just one day every year and participate in a national day of reckoning, recollection, reflection, and truth-telling, where together we actively seek forgiveness, make reparations and further our understanding of just how it happened and how easy it is for the wealthy and the political elites and the media to back such horror, and then to get the majority of the country to go along with it… at least at first. And how quickly after it’s over we decide that we never have to talk about it again. That we can learn nothing from it, and change nothing after it.
The best way to honor the loss from this tragic war is to commit to never doing it again — and that has to start by realizing we are doing it again right now. Every bomb we send to Netanhayu is proof that we didn't learn a single lesson.
I encourage every one of you — whether you’ve seen it before or have never seen it — to watch the Oscar-winning Peter Davis documentary HEARTS & MINDS tonight or this coming weekend. It is the most powerful nonfiction film I have ever seen. You can watch it with any Max subscription or on the Criterion Channel. You can rent it on Apple TV+ or Amazon Prime.
Here is a short clip from from the film, featuring Daniel Ellsberg, who revealed the true scope of the war when he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, showing how the U.S. government was lying about the war:
https://youtu.be/STySb33rkUo
Ellsberg: “The question used to be: ‘Might it be possible that we were on the wrong side in the Vietnamese War?’ But we weren’t on the wrong side. We are the wrong side.”
And we were the wrong side again in Iraq. In Afghanistan. In Gaza. How did we get here? We got here because we’ve always been here. Start in 1492 and go forward.
Remember that.
Teach our children this truth about us. About our history. Give them this knowledge and with it comes the opportunity for us to change and make different choices for our future. To be a different people. A peaceful people. The Germans did it. The Japanese, too.
Today is a tragic and solemn day. And it should be a national holiday.
Vietnam’s largest military cemetery of war dead in Quang Tri province. The lens of the camera is not wide enough to capture the vastness of this sacred place.
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Images by Steven Clevenger/Corbis via Getty Images; and HOANG DINH NAM / AFP via Getty Images
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