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The World in 1971

I like stories with a world events backdrop. Since I've been piecing together my Green Valley experience, I thought it might be good to put it into its context.

In 1971, Marvin Gaye was singing "What's Going On" and "Mercy, Mercy" because it was a time of sorrow and anger. Nixon was president. Vietnam was in its ugliest and most divisive stage. It had expanded to Cambodia and Laos. Lt. William Calley had been convicted of murder in our descent from war to war crimes. The anti-war movement had peaked with the killing of Kent State student protesters by the National Guard.

In 1971, John Kerry was delivering his now-famous testimony to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It's too bad that testimony has been perverted by present-day lunatics because it is a compelling statement of humanism.

We call this investigation [the Detroit hearings with discharged vets] the "Winter Soldier Investigation." The term "Winter Soldier" is a play on words of Thomas Paine in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriot and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.

We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.
 

The image of the Winter Soldier is an interesting metaphor for the dilemma facing many young people at the time. The U.S. government had made blunder after blunder pursuing phantoms in southeast Asia and didn't seem to mind paying for these mistakes with young men's lives. Combat soldiers thought they were being patriotic and idealistic till they came face-to-face with stomach-turning reality. A generation of youth who grew up in relatively prosperous and indulgent times suddenly faced a profound a ethical question -- maybe one more profound than "serving vs. evading." They had to face up to the meaning of patriotism. Does patriotism mean living at the service of your government or living up to the ideals of a nation founded as a refuge from tyranny and torture?

 Continued...

9.5.04

Notes

Vietnam War Timeline

Anti-war movement

John Kerry's remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 1971

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