FACES AND PLACES: (02/09/03)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Hijacking the anti-war movement

In his December 29 letter to The Ukrainian Weekly, Steven Lann takes me to task for suggesting that many anti-war protesters of the 1960s once worshipped "at the altars of Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse Tung." He writes that "many respected and religious, political, community leaders and ordinary citizens" opposed the war and it was unfair to lump them with the "acts and statements by some extremists in opposition to the Vietnam War."

Let me begin by disavowing any effort to smear respected, religious, political and community leaders who opposed the Vietnam War out of a sincere conviction that it was wrong. I, too, eventually opposed the Vietnam War, not because it was wrong but because it was unwinable as conducted by the White House at the time. The conflict was micro-mismanaged by a group of arrogant politicians in Washington, who ignored the advice of the military for an all-out campaign and opted, instead, for what came to be called "graduated pressure" on the Viet Cong.

In his book "Dereliction of Duty," Prof. H.R. McMaster, an officer and a graduate of West Point, writes: "When the situation in Vietnam seemed to demand military action, [President Lyndon B.] Johnson did not turn to his military advisers to determine how to solve the problem. He turned instead to his civilian advisers to determine how to postpone a decision. The relationship between the president and the secretary of defense [Robert McNamara] led to the curious situation in which the nation went to war without the benefit of effective military advice from the organization having the statutory responsibility to be the nation's 'principal military advisers.'" The real "lesson" of Vietnam is that if you're going to war, you must plan on winning.

For me, the Vietnam War was a just war, part of America's policy of Communist containment, similar in kind and goal to the Korean War, which ultimately prevented a Communist takeover of South Korea.

Although there were some respected community leaders opposed to the war, Martin Luther King among others, they were not in charge of the demonstrations. Nor did they invent the vitriolic rhetoric associated with the anti-war movement which was hijacked by the so-called "New Left." Those of us who lived through this period know that "respected community leaders" were often manipulated - "useful idiots" Lenin would call them - to further a hidden agenda orchestrated, as recently opened Soviet files confirm, by the Soviets.

Did the New Left worship at the altars of Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Mihn and Mao Tse Tsung? Absolutely. "From about 1965 to the early `70s, Hanoi was a prized pilgrimage spot for starry-eyed American radicals, from Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda to Mary McCarthy and Susan Sontag," according to Roger Kimball in "The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America." ... He writes: "...they all felt, as Hayden put it, that 'here we begin to understand the possibilities for a socialism of the heart.'"

Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest, also went to Hanoi and described his experience: "like stepping out upon the threshold of a new planet, and then reporting back to those whose lives and history and future had wedded them to earth ... it was as though ... a new creation was in its first stages. History being woven by a people who refused to die." Father Berrigan met with American POWs and described them as well-treated. "How well they look, how ruddy, how clean-cut, how unkillably American," enthused the Rev. Berrigan. Ms. Fonda parked her rump on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun and pretended to shoot down American planes. She, too, met with American POWs, who secretly passed messages to her during a handshake; she turned all of the messages over to the camp commandant. The POWs were later beaten for trusting Jane.

Havana was another ideological oasis for anti-war pilgrims such as Mr. Hayden, Mark Rudd and other Americans committed to a Communist victory in Vietnam.

Wrapping themselves in Viet Cong flags, anti-war demonstrators made it clear whose side they were on. They bombed the Pentagon and science laboratories, destroyed draft board files, took over university campuses, shot policemen and rioted in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention. Howling extremists hijacked a movement that may have begun as honest dissent by respected citizens but culminated in a victory for the evil empire.

Today, they're back - different people, but the same shrill anti-American rail. Thousands of protesters marched in Washington, on January 18 in a demonstration organized by a group that calls itself International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), an organization with close ties to the Workers World Party, a Marxist-Leninist cabal. WWP officers who spoke at the rally included: Brian Becker, an unabashed Sovietophile who condemned "American imperialism"; Larry Holmes, who spoke on behalf of America's many "political prisoners"; and Sara Flounder, who denounced George W. Bush for his "racist arrogance." Recalling the 1960s, speaker after speaker condemned the U.S. with old Soviet bombast: "revolution," "struggle," "oppressed people," and "imperialism" peppered their rhetoric.

Prof. Stephen Zunes of the University of San Francisco, describes the WWP as "one of the most obnoxious groups of the Far Left. They are able to out-organize every body else." They're energetic and resourceful leaving less authoritarian groups with a dilemma: participate or be left out.

"Not in Our Name" is another group that has joined the anti-war fray. They recently ran a full-page ad in The New York Times which stated: "We too watched with shock the horrific events of September 11, 2001. We too mourned the thousands of innocent dead and shook our heads at the terrible carnage - even as we recalled similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City and a generation ago, Vietnam." Using a common Marxist ploy, they would want us to believe that what America did in Iraq to force Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, Panama to get rid of a drug lord, and Vietnam to stem the tide of Communist imperialism was somehow morally equivalent to the attack on the World Trade Center. Signing this abomination were such tinsel town twits as Danny Glover, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen and Sandy Duncan, as well as such religious leaders as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

I understand that there are moderate Americans who honestly believe that attacking Iraq at this time is a mistake and I respect their opinion. Unfortunately, their views have been lost in the sloganeering din that dominates today's anti-war movement.

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: mbkuropas@compuserve.com.

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