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Nixon and VVAW

By Horace Coleman

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear: 1967-74.

The time of VVAW's founding by Vietnam combat veterans. Of presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon's "secret plan to end the war" (Vietnamization? Invading Cambodia? Massive bombing?).

Whatever the plan was, it didn't work. America's longest conflict ended in an unsatisfactory "peace with honor," unfulfilled objectives, and smoldering bitterness that blazes away 30 years later.

There were turkey shoots at My Lai and Kent State and Tiger Force excesses. Decades later, an investigative team from the Toledo Blade won a Pulitzer Prize for telling that story. And all the while VVAW soldiered on, still anti stupid wars and pro using — and treating — our troops and veterans well.

These were the days, my friend, of the skulking and creeping of members of CREEP (the Committee to Reelect the President) and of FBI investigations into VVAW. Of Dewey Canyon operations I and II — and VVAW's Dewey Canyon III and Winter Soldier Investigation and John Kerry's Senate testimony. Of hundreds of pages of dossiers about VVAW that produced few arrests or trials and no convictions.

VVAW's very existence frustrated Nixon. VVAW was the real thing, controversial but undeniable people who'd been there, done that, fought and bled. Faced with complicated and unpleasant situations, some lie and deny: "If I didn't do it or see it, it didn't happen." Those who committed or covered up atrocities dishonored and endangered their fellow warriors in a vicious war.

In his memoir "About Face," Colonel David Hackworth wrote several things that should be remembered and reconsidered:

The Cambodian exercise was the straw that broke the camel's back for me about the war in Vietnam and the direction America was heading. Militarily the operation was correct ... But what was wrong with it, besides the fact that it came five years too late (five years in which our army lost the lion's share of its great NCOs and stud officers, and the American people lost their stomach for the conflict), was that the way it was done violated all the principles the United States of America, the country I loved and soldiered for, was built on. Cambodia was a neutral country. Our incursion, at this time in the war, with no prior notice to the fledgling Lon Nol government or even to our ambassador to Cambodia, was not, to my mind, any different from the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor. In my estimation the exercise was an immoral, ill-thought-out venture, and one that would prove to be both an expensive tactical donnybrook and an irreparable strategic defeat.

The colonel also has a few choice words about My Lai and Nixon:

... My Lai reflected strategic bankruptcy of moral fiber in the Army's senior officer corps, a direct result of rampant careerism. To me, all this was bad enough. But then, when the Army actually had the balls to stand in the door and convict Calley for murder, to have Richard Nixon come along and for purely political ends interfere with military justice and essentially nullify the result was too much for me. The kid was guilty as hell. Having judged him as so, the Army had to start addressing its own inadequacies, to find out how it could have allowed such a "leader" to get through the system in the first place. But Nixon's action was an out — as good as excusing the Army from even beginning that self-examination. Fundamentally, it was the worst thing since My Lai itself.

In a 1971 interview with ABC's Saigon correspondent Howard Tuckner, Hackworth said, "I just have seen the American nation spend so much of its wonderful, great young men in this country. I have seen our national wealth being drained away. I see the nation being split apart and almost being split asunder because of this war, and I am wondering to what end it is all to lead to."

VVAW saw Nixon's and the war's flaws before the colonel did. Nixon left office in disgrace caused by his own acts. We're still here.