How the Vietnam War was stopped

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Then came the Berkeley, Calif., teach-in of May 21-22, 1965. In the course of 36 continuous hours, 30,000 attended.

The first big march and rally in the San Francisco Bay Area took place on April 15, 1967. About 75,000 people marched up Market Street to Kezar Stadium. It was a broad coalition, including many young Blacks who marched behind a banner, "The NLF-Viet Cong never called us Nigger!"

Seven thousand unionists marched, many of them behind their union banners-especially those of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union. Very little official union endorsement or support had developed at that time, however. Union leaders were generally solidly behind AFL-CIO President George Meany, who was "All the way with LBJ."

The war escalates The year 1968 opened with a major setback for the U.S. military in Vietnam-the Tet Offensive. On Jan. 31, the lunar New Year holiday known as "Tet" the National Liberation Front launched a counterattack the length and breadth of South Vietnam. The NLF occupied the U.S. Embassy in Saigon for one day.

For a few days the NLF held almost every major city in South Vietnam. Their success, which came as a complete surprise to the U.S. military, showed that the population was behind the NLF. The U.S. Army held only its own bases.

The United States responded with massive carpet bombings of the cities. Thousands of civilians died. Over 500,000 were made homeless by B-52s from Guam. Vietnam, a beautiful country, once the "rice bowl" of Asia, was turned into a wasteland of bomb craters.

The Tet offensive and the U.S. military's savage, inhuman response, was fully recorded by the press and TV. It convinced additional Americans that the war was morally indefensible and unwinnable.

This was the turning point for the antiwar movement, which grew rapidly and became more and more an international movement.

In 1968 the demonstrations were not concentrated in two or three cities but took place all over the United States. Several hundred thousand marched. There was a march to the Pentagon of 100,000 people, led by Vietnam veterans. Over 600 demonstr tors were arrested.*.Time magazine's cover featured a photo of.a banner, "Bring Our Boys Home Now!" This magazine went all over the world-including to Vietnam, to the Gls fighting the "dirty war."

The GIs saw that the movement was not against them. It wanted them home, where they also wanted to be.

The U.S. Army became more and more demoralized. It was reported that GIs were questioning authority, refusing to follow orders to advance if they considered the situation dangerous.

In 1969 came the huge marches and rallies. Life magazine called the Nov. 15 marches "a display without historical parallel, the largest expression of dissent ever seen in this country."

Vietnam veterans and active-duty soldiers participated. There had been widely publicized cases of GIs refusing to go to Vietnam, such as the Fort Hood Three and the Fort Jackson Eight.

Just before the Nov. 15 marches, the story of the massacre at My Lai in South Vietnam broke in the newspapers. Eighteen months earlier, on March 16, 1968, My Lai had been occupied by American troops.

There had been no resistance. None of the villagers bore arms. Still, their homes were destroyed and the villagers—men, women, and children-were lined up and machine-gunned. In total, 799 people died. Buried under the bodies of the dead, 132 villagers lived to tell the story..

This event, probably one of many, was covered up for one-and-one-half years. The American people were revolted.

The "unwinnable war" continued. Now it could be seen openly as a genocidal war to destroy the rural population, considered the base of the Viet Cong. It became necessary "to reduce the population, as one American general put it.

The infamous "body count" became the index of how the war was going. Some Americans, not even radicals, found themselves rooting for the Viet Cong-a strange turn of events.

Larry Rottman, a Vietnam vet, expressed this sentiment in a poem:

"Ask what kind of war it is/Where you can be pinned down/All day in a muddy rice paddy/While your buddies are being shot/And a close-support Phantom Jet/Who has napalmed the enemy/Wraps itself around a tree and explodes/And you cheer inside?"

The campuses explode The power of the antiwar movement was based on the indignation of millions who had learned the truth about "the dirty war" in Vietnam.

When on April 29, 1970, the United States invaded Cambodia, the antiwar coalition immediately called for a demonstration on May 9—only one week away.

The campuses exploded. In one most unlikely place, Kent State, Ohio, there was an antiwar rally. It was fired on by the National Guard and four students were killed. Within a few days 350 universities were on strike.

On May 9, 1970, with one week's preparation, 100,000 marched on the White House.

Walter Reuther, UAW president, finally sent a telegram to Nixon condemning the Cambodia invasion and the shooting down of students.

At Jackson State College in Mississippi, a Black school, the National Guard killed two students charged with "rioting."

But the war continued and demonstrations continued. The biggest of all occurred on April 24, 1971. In San Francisco an estimated 250,000 to 350,000 participated. In New York there were over one-half million. A Harris Poll showed 60 percent of Americans in favor of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam.

Then came the Pentagon Papers. Nixon was reelected after he promised he would negotiate and withdraw troops. But he broke off negotiations and rained 100,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam in 10 days. It was an act of vengeance. In the middle of the bombing he went to Moscow to negotiate a trade agreement and was received with honors.

Yesterday and today

The combined heroic resistance of the Vietnamese and the tenacious struggle against the war by the American antiwar movement finally forced the United States to pull out. In 1973 the pullouts began.

On Jan. 27, 1973, a cease fire was signed. These were the Paris Accords. Vietnam again remained divided, but that wouldn't last long. The war resumed. But without U.S. troops, the new U.S. puppet, Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, lost all of Vietnam to the North Vietnamese armies-and the war was over.

Yes, this movement altered the course of history. It demonstrated that working people in this country could effectively change the foreign policy of this government if mobilized on a correct "Out Now" basis.

Today, as the U.S. government rains down napalm bombs once again-this time on the people of Central America-a new antiwar movement is emerging. What we did in the 1960s and '70s will be done again.

But this time, I believe, the movement will be compelled to develop on a much higher political plane. Today, for example, the unions are in on the ground floor in this developing antiwar movement. In the case of the San Francisco Spring Mobilization, the unions are in the leadership of the movement.

And out of it must come something that did not come out of the antiwar movement of the 1960s and '70s, and that is a political organization that represents the American working class—a labor party.

The next big step the labor and antiwar movements must take is the formation of a labor party that would oppose the war and actually begin the fight against the political system dominated by both the Republican and Democratic parties.

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"Millions learned the truth about the 'dirty war' in Vletnam."

WITHDRA bringour BoYs HOME