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Impeach Nixon

By Ben Chitty

Ben Chitty
East Coast Coordinator

The good you do, they say, dies with you, the evil lives on long after you're gone. So it is with Richard Nixon. Just one example, maybe not even the most important.

1971—After more than two years in office, President Nixon's quest for "peace with honor" has killed thousands of Americans mostly young) and hundreds of thousands of Indochinese (mostly civilians). The meatgrinder won't stop—whatever we do, whoever we talk to, however we act. Petitions, lobbying, vigils, marching, nonviolent civil disobedience, violent obstruction, political terrorism—nothing matters.

We find it hard to believe, hard to face, hard to sleep. We sit down in small groups and talk about it. We listen to each other and try to work out what it means, to us, to our families, to our country. We call them "rap groups" — you might say "group therapy," or "readjustment counseling," a kind of self-medication.

The Veterans Administration takes notice. March 1871, Veterans Administrator Donald Johnson writes to Charles Colson, Nixon's liaison on veteran's affairs: "Vietnam veterans tend to see their experiences as an exercise in survival rather than a defense of national values. The majority, given the opportunity in company of their peers, express both intense anger and much guilt." He recommends expanding a pilot program which provides counseling for returning veterans.

Bad timing, Nixon's been watching us on television—VVAW, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, now "his" war. In April a thousand of us camp out in Washington, defy a court order, and march to the steps of the Capitol to throw our medals back at Congress, Middle America, the Silent Majority, our fathers and mothers, families and friends, look on us and wonder, and shudder, and weep. Nixon directs the VA to suspend all readjustment programs for returning veterans.

And worse people, Charles Colson has already asked the Internal Revenue Service to revoke VVAW's tax-exempt status as a veteran's organization, and has set up the rival "Veterans for a Just Peace" (total membership maybe eight.) Assigned to direct the President effort to disrupt and subvert the Democratic opposition, he goes on to glory in the Watergate affair. (In fact, during the cover-up's early days, Nixon's concern about VVAW's threat to national security is used to justify the White House special intelligence unit's "investigation" of the McGovern campaign's tiles to violent radicals.)

Colson orders the infiltration of certain radical groups—VVAW, the Black Panther Party, other notorious subversives—to provoke violence which can then be tied to the Democratic presidential campaign. Contingency planning includes declaring a national emergency and suspending the election. July 1972, the government subpoenas much of VVAW's leadership in Tallahassee, Florida, finally indicting us for conspiracy to attack the August Republican convention in Miami. With crossbows and slingshots (All the defendants- minus the government informants exposed during the trial-are acquitted the next year in Gainesville, after about an hour's deliberation by the jury.)

VVAW is only a sideshow in that operation, but that's the operation which finally brings Nixon down. Of course Nixon doesn't resign because he conspired to subvert the Constitution, just because he lied about it. (And Colson's convicted of perjury, not treason).

Nixon lived long enough to see another imperial President subvert the Constitution and get away with it. He also lived long enough to see his spite against Vietnam vets turn into fool's gold. The same imperial President demanded a better ending to the Vietnam story, and Hollywood rewrote the script on commission. Suddenly we discovered it had not been our country, our government, our Commander-in-Chief who betrayed us; it was- the peace movement! We all felt too bad about how the peaceniks disrespected Vietnam veterans we rushed out and bought yellow ribbons for the guys and gals in the Gulf.

Now Nixon's gone, laid to rest, praised by friend and foe alike. I'm wondering if it's too late to impeach him. Call me crazy.

Ben Chitty served in the U.S. Navy 1965-9, deployed twice to Vietnam, and is Co-Coordinator of the Clarence Fitch Chapter of Vietnam Veterans against the War in the New York metropolitan area.

THE LAST WORD

"'May he rest in peace,' a (Vietnamese) Foreign Ministry spokesman said, giving (his) government's official one-sentence reaction to Nixon's death. He declined to elaborate."

-from a Reuter dispatch