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Carter's "Pardon" Is Only Peanuts

By VVAW

One of Jimmy Carter's first acts after he took office was to issue a "full, complete and unconditional pardon" for anyone who violated the Selective Service Act between August 4, 1964 (date of the so-called "Tonkin Gulf incident" which was LBJ's excuse for massive escalation of the war) and March 28, 1973 (date of the Paris Agreements which amounted to formal recognition of the victory of the Vietnamese people.) The pardon will mainly affect 8,500 people convicted of draft offense, most of whom have already served time in prison, and 5,000 draft resisters in exile in Canada, Sweden and other countries. Yet, most of the newspaper and TV coverage of the pardon included short interviews with resisters in exile or in this country who were generally against Carter's plan. Why are these people criticizing something that's supposed to be in their interests?

The answer is simple. Carter's pardon is a fraud, a political maneuver designed to mislead and misdirect the American people. First it is an attempt to promote divisions among those who were victimized by the war, resisted it or rebelled against it, and to squash the struggle for universal and unconditional amnesty for all these people--resisters, deserters, veterans with bad discharges. Second, it is an attempt to salvage military discipline from the shambles of Vietnam. Third, it is an open bid to get the American people to forget the Vietnam War and what they learned from it. All three of these things are important steps for those who rule the US as their contention with their rivals in the Soviet Union heats up and edges toward war. They are steps to mold public opinion to their side.

Universal, unconditional amnesty has been a goal of the ant-war forces and VVAW for over five years. Carter's plan does to deliver. It does include, in addition to the resisters mentioned above, all those who didn't register for the draft during the period covered, a number estimated as high as 1 million men. This is an easy stop, however, since the government has made no serious attempt to track down and prosecute all these people. Carter's pardon did not cover deserters from the armed forces, many from working class backgrounds or Black, Chicanos or other minorities, people who often did not know before going into the service that there were ways to avoid it or understand the unjust nature of the war until they were in the middle of it.

And the pardon does not cover the largest group which needs amnesty, the over 640,000 vets with less than honorable discharges. Many of these discharges were handed out to rebellious GIs who hated and fought back against the war, the racism of the military, and military Mickey Mouse. Often they were charged with violating regulations and given a choice--court martial or accept a less than honorable discharge and get a trip home. Many took it. These vets have an even harder time finding jobs than their brothers with good papers and in all but a few cases are cut off from receiving veterans' benefits like the GI Bill. The ruling class policy toward its soldiers--Use Once and Throw Away--applies to these vets with a vengeance.

Despite all the efforts of the media and reactionary vets groups like the American Legion to whip up veterans against pardoning resisters, more and more vets are realizing that draft resisters have been up against the same system that sent them off to fight and dies to defend the profits of the rich, that now has them rotting in under-staffed, rat-infested VA hospital, facing benefit cutbacks and disability "re-evaluations," standing in unemployment lines or stuck in low-paying sweatshop jobs.

The separation of those who resisted the draft and those who fought back inside the military is also aimed at propping up military discipline. The only way that the masses of people can be made to fight and unjust and unpopular war for the ruling class is by coercion. Bucking the armed forces even more than bucking the draft is always punished--extra duty, courts-martial, stockade terms, and bad discharges.

Despite all this, resistance in the military was extremely high during Vietnam, from individual goofing off to organized refusal to obey orders or go into combat to fragging of officers. The present pardon already has the Pentagon worried about discipline. Retired general William Westmoreland who was commander of al US forces in Vietnam has been whining about how it "will weaken the country militarily and hurt our morale." Imagine his reaction when universal, unconditional amnesty is won!

To try to cool out the demand further, Carter's pardon included instructions to the Armed Forces to study some categories of discharge with an eye to "a possible ungrading by category or and expanded and accelerated review process." Leaving this question in the hands of the military, whose present system could finish reviewing all bad discharges no sooner than the year 2177 is about the same as filing it in a wastebasket, as Carter knows full well.

Co. R.D. Heinl, USMC (ret), a syndicated military analyst/columnist, laid all the cards on the table recently voicing the sentiments of the rich when he wrote, :If some general amnesty were to upgrade the above half-million discharges to minimum honorable status, the cost in vets benefits and entitlements, not due at present, would amount to roughly $10 billion over the next three years and incalculably more for the years ahead." Col Heinl further state, "Another serious risk involved in pardon for Vietnam deserters is the enforceability of any form of national conscription." In short, the rich are much more concerned about having to shell out bucks for the 640,000+ vets whose lives they've tried to destroy with bad discharges. They're just as concerned that the American people would refuse to enter the military of bring great disorder inside the military when ordered to fight, once the right to resist was recognized by universal amnesty.

The last big aim of the new president's pardon was, to cite his own works, "to heal our country after the Vietnam war' so that, while difference still remain, "we can now agree to respect these differences and to forget them." Forget them??? There's nothing Carter and the businessmen and bankers he works for would like better than to have the American people forget the Vietnam war, forget all that we learned about how, for the US, it was nothing but a rich man's war, forget that we rose up in the millions and fought against that war and helped bring it to an end.

Many of the spokesmen for the rich now say that the war in Indochina was in fact a "mistake." But that's another coverup. The Indochina war was a direct result of the capitalists' need to ever increase their profits. They sent the sons of the working class to fight their bloody battles so that they could increase their plunder and maintain political control. But they came up against two obstacles: the determination and political strength of the Indochinese people who for years had fought for their own liberation, and the growing struggle of the American people to put an end to that war. All these lessons the ruling class hopes to blot out of the peoples' memories.

Angry reaction to Carter's phony pardon hasn't been slow to appear. Exile organizations and other groups fighting for universal, unconditional amnesty have declared that they are going to continue that fight. VVAW Chapters around the country joined in this angry response (see article at top of this page), determined not to forget the lessons of Vietnam and to fight until we win universal, unconditional amnesty!