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VVAW-WSO Objectives

By VVAW

Vietnam Veterans Against the War/
Winter Soldier Organization
Objectives

1. To demand an immediate cessation of fighting and the withdrawal of all American troops, planes, and military and economic aid from Southeast Asia. We cannot allow one more human being to be killed in Southeast Asia. We support as a basis for the cessation of these hostilities the various peace proposals of the People of Southeast Asia or such future plans as they develop based upon their right of self-determination and actual control of their own destinies.

2. To demand the immediate termination of all other operations by the United States Government, its agencies, and American business interests that are designed to suppress the rightful struggles for liberation and self-determination of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This includes the maintenance of dictatorial governments, economic domination, and the theft of the natural resources of other countries. The United States should make reparations in a program acceptable to the Indochinese for all of the damage done by the United States.

3. To demand that all active-duty servicemen and women, reservists and national guardsmen be afforded the same rights that are guaranteed by the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights that are presently denied by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. We are appalled that our active-duty GIs are treated as less than first class citizens. We endorse the efforts of our active-duty sisters and brothers in their struggle to democratize the military.

4. To support all military personnel refusing to serve against their consciences in wars at home and abroad. We demand that Congress enact legislation for the immediate repatriation of those brothers and sisters who are in prison or in self-exile by reason of their refusal to serve in the military. It must also involve an end to all repression and a freeing of all political prisoners.

5. To demand there be no distinctions as to the types of discharges and that a single type of discharge be issued, and that this be retroactive. We also demand all veterans receive all rights and benefits under the VA; and that compensation for disabilities be based solely upon the degree of disability for veterans and their families, without regard to sex, race, rank or length of service.

6. To make clear that the United States has never undertaken an extensive, open investigation of American war crimes in Indochina. In its war in Indochina, the principles of Nuremberg have been violated. As active-duty and former GIs, we recognize the responsibility and guilt of the individual soldier to refrain from committing war crimes. We also recognize that the responsibility and guilt of war crimes committed in the name of America lies with our policy makers at all levels.

7. Resolved to fight racism, to show Americans that our society is permeated by racism, which manipulates whites into viewing non-whites as inferior or less than human. This racism pushes Third World People through inferior schools to inferior jobs and into combat arms. Thus Third World People are sent off to die in disproportionately high numbers as we kill Asians indiscriminately. We also demand the US military recognize its complicity in America's domestic and international racism.

8. Resolved to fight sexism, to show that sexism plays a major part in promoting war. We must show Americans our society is permeated by sexism, which forces an inferior status upon women, reducing them to subservient sexual objects, and which robs both men and women of their natural growth. This institutionalized sexism channels women into unfulfilling, lower paying jobs which are servile in nature and purpose; it exploits their bodies for sex and profit; and it degrades and dehumanizes them by a double standard of morality wholly dependent on the myth of male supremacy. This sexism is exploited by the military, officially defining servicewomen as subordinate and thoroughly subjugating them to servile work and the role of sexual object. We resolve to fight sexism within our society, within our own organization and within ourselves.

9. To support the democratic right of Americans to unionize and strike to protect their income and safeguard their employment. We consider all legislation designed to suppress these rights, including mandatory arbitration, to be illegal and not in the interests of the American working people. We also demand full employment for all Americans, including free educational and vocational training for all who need or want it. We refuse to participate in the efforts being made to separate us from other working people, making veterans enemies by giving us the charade of employment priority. We condemn this as a method of encouraging enlistment by the false promise of employment after service. We also condemn the use of active-duty GIs, reservists and national guardsmen as strikebreakers.

10. To dedicate ourselves to these principles and objectives which directly relate to the imperialist suppression of the People of the World by the United States government. We understand this war is imperialist in origin and affirm that the membership of VVAW/WSO is not only concerned with ending this war, but with changing the domestic, social, political and economic institutions that have caused and perpetuated its continuance.