A popular piece of propaganda against the Vietnam war (above) showed the mentality of America towards the war. John Kerry is the 68th Secretary of State for the United States of America, and he shared this view of the Vietnam War. His view wasn’t groundbreaking; many people in America felt the way he did. The Vietnam war was the first war televised, so that people could see what was going on and how the soldiers were fighting. Kerry says “I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans...which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia.” In this speech to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1973, he explains that the American soldiers stationed in Vietnam committed war crimes while in Vietnam. This included raping others, cutting off body parts, blowing up bodies, shot random civilians, killed animals and other crimes that Kerry describes as having the men “...relive(d) the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.” Kerry blames America for what the soldiers felt as though they had to do, because they drafted the boys that were too young to go, and too inexperienced to know how to actually fight and deal with the details of war. Kerry continues to say that the unspeakable actions they committed weren’t the crimes themselves, “but we feel because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out....” The American Soldiers were embarrassed to have partaken in such a war. They were decorated, and given medals, but they were not welcomed back as their fathers and grandfathers were in wars before this. They found that they were not fighting a tangible enemy overseas; they were fighting an ideology, and their dehumanized enemies were people that did not know what the difference was between communism and democracy. They were men that wanted to work without interruption, and were willing to side with whatever Army was available-they just wanted to survive. Since this was the first war the public could see, “We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism...”. Kerry is standing up to Congress, saying that this war was not started by Communism, or the need for protection that Vietnam supposedly needed. He pointed out that they were attempting to make Vietnam the bad guy, “we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong”, when it was really, in fact, America that was wreaking havoc on a country and its people to fight an idea. “We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.” America wanted to seem like the heroes and the saviors that would ultimately help Vietnam realize that Communism wasn’t what they wanted-because the United States knew better than they did. They glorified the war, their soldiers and the decisions made by people in power to go in and fight a war that wasn’t ours to fight. “We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point...” America refused to accept defeat, because of the competitive spirit and Patriotism that has been treasured for so long. Kerry ends with the point that his Native American friend and soldier came to the realization that he was doing to the Vietnamese what the Americans did to him and his people, and how the Vietnam war had not been viewed the same way under the name of protecting what the Vietnamese wanted. His concluding sentence is, “And so when thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.”
No comments:
Post a Comment