Some lessons from the Vietnam War

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SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1990 7 As the United States prepares for war in the Middle East, it is instructive to review the key debates which engaged and at times divided the activists who constructed the Vietnam antiwar movement.

The "Vietnam Syndrome" remains a powerful "malady" afflicting the American people. It can best be defined as the well-justified skepticism regarding sending U.S. troops to fight in foreign lands.

It is a skepticism born of the Vietnam War-era movement to "Bring the Troops Home Now!"—a movement which eventually reached majority proportions in the United States.

The American working class, especially the youth who faced the draft, and the young soldiers who were sent to die were a central motor force in the anti-Vietnam War movement.

But the debates among the various currents in the radical, socialist, and pacifist movements often played an important role in determining the political orientation of the broadly-based antiwar movement.

The McCarthy-era witchhunt atmosphere still prevailed in the United States of the early 1960s, as American troops were sent to the other side of the world to die in Vietnam.

The simple notion that U.S. citizens had the Constitutional right to speak out against a shooting war was far from established.

Members of Congress and government officials at every level often accused the early leaders of the movement not only with harboring pro-communist sympathies, but with sedition and treason.

Not a single U.S. Representative or Senator supported the demand to "Bring Our Boys Home Now!"

A few self-proclaimed "doves," in an attempt to defuse the growing movement, sometimes advocated a "negotiated settlement." At the same time they voted for the war appropriations demanded by the Democratic and Republican party presidents alike.

Others, in the anti-Vietnam War movement itself called for a "negotiated settlement"—often hoping to elect Democratic Party "peace candidates" who were amenable to talks with the Vietnamese liberation fighters.

The negotiations demand represented the majority opinion among the activists in the opening years of the war.

More often than not, the national elections signaled a decline in the antiwar movement as activists turned from mass visible protests, which involved literally millions in the streets, to electoral activity on behalf of presidential politicians like Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, who promised negotiations and perhaps peace only to vote for war expenditures after their defeat.

The U.S. government's justification for the war was that it was a fight against the spread of Communism—a war for democracy.

Hence, in the name of "democracy," the U.S. government dropped more bombs on Vietnam than in the combined wars fought by all nations since the beginning of recorded history.

In the course of the war, the United States committed almost 4 million troops, maintaining at least 500,000 at any one time from 1966 to 1972.

An additional million-and-a-half Vietnamese "puppet troops" were drafted to fight and die by the various Vietnamese against the wishes of the Vietnamese people.

Over 50,000 South Korean troops, and a few thousand troops from Australia and New Zealand, augumented the U.S. fighting forces.

The United States had total air superiority. The liberation fighters had no air force and no armor. The United States enforced a total naval blockade for the entire Despite these overwhelming military advantages, the United States was defeated by the relatively ill-equipped peasant army of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front (NLF), which consisted of some 200,000 regular and irregular troops.

The victory of this tiny force in the face of the world's most powerful army could only be explained by the virtual total support the Vietnamese fighters had from the population as a whole.

This courageous struggle, combined with a powerful U.S. antiwar movement and a demoralized U.S. conscript army whose rank-and-file soldiers began to openly dety the orders of their superiors, finally forced the withdrawal of the United States from Vietnam.

A decade after 58,000 American GIs and nearly 2 million Vietnamese were killed, the terrible truth of the war finally became known to the broad American public.

The Vietnamese had fought the war for their own liberation just as they had fought against their former French colonizers for nearly a century before the U.S. invasion. They had fought for the right to determine their own future-for the right to self-determination.

Like the earlier interventions of the British and French, U.S. intervention in the Middle East today is designed to deny the Arab people that very same right. Military and economic domination, not the character of their former ally, Saddam Hussein, motivate the U.S. warmakers, who arrogantly believe that the sending of U.S. troops gives them the right to "negotiate" the future of all nations. The new antiwar movement will reject this right and demand that the government "Bring the Troops Home Now!"-J.M.

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Socialist Action contingent at the Oct. 20 anti-Middle East war march in San Francisco, Calif.

During Vietnam War SWP was main popularizer of 'Out Now!' BY MALIK MIAH and BARRY SHEPPARD Washington's war drive in the Middle East is at the center of world politics. The U.S.led aggression against Iraq is an attack on the struggle of the Arab people as a whole to free themselves from imperialist domination. Working people everywhere need to mobilize to defeat that aggression.

It is encouraging that more and more Americans are rejecting Bush's war preparations. Although the shooting has not yet begun, thousands of U.S. citizens, including active duty GIs, have demonstrated against the government's war moves. It is against the interests of U.S. working people to send their sons and daughters to die to maintain imperialist domination of the Persian Gulf region and its vast oil reserves.

In the Arab East sizable protests in support of Iraq have taken place, particularly by Palestinians. These protests have even occurred in countries whose governments have provided Washington a figleaf for its aggression.

The acid test today of all groups claiming to be socialist is how they respond to the U.S. war drive. In a war between an imperialist country and an oppressed nation, working people must unconditionally defend the oppressed nation, whatever its leadership. This is an ABC of Leninism, and is why Socialist Action backs Iraq in its conflict with the U.S.-led reactionary alliance.

Whatever differences we have with Saddam Hussein's capitalist regime, in such a standoff against imperialism, we defend Iraq. Only through the defeat of the imperialist aggression can the workers and farmers of Iraq move toward becoming strong enough to install their own revolutionary government. An imperialist victory would be a severe setback for them and the Arab people as a whole.

Those political battle.

SWP's political retreat

Socialist Action's principled stance on the side of Iraq in this conflict is based on our Leninist tradition of unconditional solidarity with the oppressed, which many of us first learned in the Socialist Workers Party (SIP), an organization that has been in political decline since the early 1980s.

In the first few weeks following the U.S. military buildup, The Militant, a newspaper reflecting the views of the SWP leadership, took basically the same stance as Socialist Action. Articles explained Iraq's historic claim to Kuwait, the artificial nature of Kuwait's creation by the British, and why the Arab masses applauded when Iraq overthrew the Kuwaiti Emirate.

Like Socialist Action, The Militant recognized the progressive aspect of the Iraqi overthrow of the imperialist puppet regime of the Emirate, and why imperialism, especially U.S. and British imperialism, which share in the domination of the Gulf, saw the Iraqi move as a direct challenge to their interests. Both organizations did this without giving any political support to the capitalist military dictatorship in Iraq or to its methods.

Thus we were surprised to see a reversal in the SWP line. This reversal became crystal SOCIALIST ACTION clear in an introduction to a new pamphlet, "U.S. Hands off the Mideast! Cuba Speaks Out at the United Nations," by SWP leader Mary Alice Waters. Waters uncritically endorses the mistaken policy followed by the government of Cuba in Iraq's conflict with imperialism.

While Cuba, in the United Nations Security Council, has condemned and exposed Washington's war aims in the Middle East, its representative voted with the U.S. to condemn Iraq and call for the withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait and the restoration of the "legitimate government" of the reactionary Emirate.

Cuba's representative to the U.N., Ricardo Alarcón, explained this vote as based on the "principles of noninterference." Alarcón told the Aug. 6 U.N. session:

"To Cuba, the principles of noninterference in the internal affairs of states—no matter what the reason [our emphasis]-of the non-use of force in international relations, of the peaceful settlement of disputes between states, and of respect for the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of all. nations are essential principles of our international order.

"It is in defense of those principles that we have expressed our disapproval and condemnation of the entry of Iraqi forces into the territory of Kuwait a few days ago and that we have declared that state of affairs must be ended with the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwaiti territory and the full restoration of Kuwait's sovereignty."

Waters simply reports the Cuban position without comment, with the clear message that it is completely correct. Thus the SWP, like the Cuban leadership, has endorsed the very position that Washington is using to justify its war drive: that Iraq must withdraw from Kuwait and the "legitimate government" be restored.

This turns everything on its head. There is nothing progressive at all in calling for the return of the reactionary Emirate to power. Nor is there anything progressive in now demanding that Iraq relinquish its historic claim to Kuwait. Most important, the actual real danger we face is a U.S. war against Iraq, and the main question is, which side are NOVEMBER 1990 you on?

It is one thing for the Cuban leadership to adopt such an anti-Marxist stand—and quite another for the SWP to do so. The Cubans are under the threat of imperialist attack, and do not want to appear to justify the use of force in international relations. More important, they have yet to grasp the lessons of the nature of the worldwide class struggle in the epoch of imperialism, lessons we call Leninism. But for the SWP, this is a major retreat from those lessons.

It is not that Leninists are bloodthirsty or desire war and class conflict. But we look at the world realistically. The class conflict is a fact. The struggle of the oppressed nations to free themselves from imperialist oppression is a fact. The question is, which side do you take in these conflicts?

The horrible experiences of this century prove that the cause of modern war is the drive by the various imperialist powers—the METNAMT MEI United States, Germany, Japan, Britain, France and so on—to dominate and exploit the vast majority of humanity, and the struggle between these imperialist powers over the spoils.

There can be no peace until capitalism in its decadent and final phase, imperialism, is overthrown. This is the only road to world peace. These imperialist powers can only be overthrown by the combined struggle of the world's toilers and oppressed nations, led by the working class, against the handful of very rich families that dominate the imperialist countries.

The idea, contained in Alarcón's speech to the Security Council-that there can be a new world order based on noninterference in the internal affairs of one nation by another, or of the peaceful settlement of disputes between states, and the respect for the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of all nations, while imperialism exists—is a utopia. In this case it led the Cuban leadership to give partial political backing to Washington's war drive, however much Cuba sincerely opposes and exposes it.

For the SWP to adopt this idea represents a major retreat from Leninism, towards a bourgeois-pacifist position.

In the anti-Vietnam war movement of the 1960s and '70s, the SWP played a key role in explaining that the movement should focus its demands around the call for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces. The demand that most clearly expressed this was "Out Now!"

The SWP explained that demands such as the call for the U.S. to "negotiate" with the Vietnamese implied that Washington had the "right" to negotiate the future of Vietnam.

The SWP showed how the "negotiations" demand actually played into the hands of the warmakers by ceding them that right. The SWP stuck to this position even when it was in a small minority within the broader movement on this question.

"Out Now" expressed the unconditional opposition to imperialism that is the hallmark of Leninism's realistic view of the modern world. With the SWP retreating from Leninism, it should come as no surprise that it has rapidly altered its political stance in the new anti-Mideast war movement as well.

Cleveland, Chicago votes

Prior to the Oct. 20 antiwar demonstrations, which the SWP endorsed although it did little to build, in at least two cities SWP representatives sought to undermine the clear and principled demands of the antiwar coalitions.

At a "town meeting" to discuss the war threat in Cleveland on Sept. 22, David Marshall, an SWP candidate for public office, said the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was a setback for the people of the Middle East. Two weeks later another SWP member offered a "compromise" motion to add the slogan "For a Peaceful, Diplomatic Solution to the Gulf Crisis" to a leaflet for the Oct. 20 action. (Others at the meeting wanted even worse positions, calling for the United Nations to take over the anti-Iraq war effort.)

The SWP-sponsored motion won. Before that vote, the main slogans for the Oct. 20 demonstration in Cleveland were: "No U.S War In the Middle East!" and "Bring U.S Troops Home Now!" How easy it was for the SWP, once it began to lose its Leninist bearings, to come out for a "diplomatic" solution—i.e., for "negotiations!"

In Chicago on Oct. 8, SWP representatives changed their stance from an earlier meeting where they agreed with the central demand of the demonstration being "U.S Out Now." Now they voted to add this sentence: "Iraq's Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait was rightly condemned by the international community, but no show of U.S. force will bring political and economic security to the Middle East."

If ever there was a muddle-headed sentence from a Leninist point of view this is it. First, it attacks Iraq for overthrowing the imperialist puppet regime. Then it refers to this world dominated by the rapacious imperialist powers as the "international community."

It implicitly gives backing to the misnamed United Nations, which is dominated by these same imperialist powers, where the vote to condemn Iraq took place. To take the cake, it meekly points out that no U.S. "show of force" will "bring political and economic security to the Mideast." Indeed!

Not only will the United States not bring political and economic security to the Middle East, it will not pave the streets with gold, nor do many other good things. It will bring war, destruction, imperialist domination and exploitation to the Middle East. It will bring hunger, and oppression and backwardness.

It will preserve the rule of its puppet feudal Emirs. If it succeeds in crushing Iraq, it will strengthen Israeli domination of the Palestinians. Those are the kind of things imperialism "brings."

Finally, Waters' uncritical support of Cuba's defense of current territorial boundaries "no matter what the reason" opens the door to recognition of not only the Kuwaiti Emirs but the Israeli state, which has been "recognized" by the "international community" as an independent nation since 1948 (Kuwait only since 1961).

The Palestinians demand a democratic and secular Palestine—i.e., the overthrow of the Israeli state.

The logic of the new SWP position of defending current territorial boundaries would be to defend the boundaries of Israel. This would put them into conflict with the Palestinians. It would mean they would condemn any Arab country which was able to push back the borders of Israel in any future Israeli-Arab war. We hope that the SWP leadership does not take this logic to its conclusion, but backs off.

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B CAROLINE LUND