VIETNAM VETERANS FOR ACADEMIC REFORM the student auxiliary at the Univ. of Kansas
Leonard Magruder - Founder/President
VVAR NEWSNOTE: Dissention in Washington over Wall prompts urgent, renewed call by K.U. student group for apology from universities for lying about Vietnam and a statement of purpose honoring those who died in Vietnam.
Last week’s newsnote announced the launching of a national movement calling on universities for a confession of moral bankruptcy and apology for having lied to students in the 60’s about Vietnam. The students then used these lies as rationalizations for not serving, and then for lying about those who did serve. Wrote B.G.Burkett, a Vietnam veteran, in a book which prompted the press release, “Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Honor and it History,” “Three and and a half million Americans, our Vietnam veterans, have been unjustly disparaged, ridiculed, and offended. I want an apology from America to every man and woman who served in Vietnam, or the indifference and disrespect heaped on Vietnam veterans living or dead, after the war.These dead men and women exist in a state of conspicuous oblivion. There names are there but nothing else.”
And now there are plans for more “nothing else” and more robbing of honor and history, at the national memorial to the dead of Vietnam in Washington in tragically misguided deference to those in academia who lied about the war.
A story out of the Associated Press yesterday was headlined “Proposed education center at Vietnam Wall aims to skirt controversy of war.” It said that a proposal by the veterans who built the wall would add a structure nearby to “educate visitors, not about the war but about the memorial itself” and is, “speeding ahead in both the House and the Senate where support is overwhelming”. It will house many of the items left at the memorial and have computers where visitors can read about the veterans whose names are on the wall.
Although the National Park Service and the National Capitol Planning Commission both strongly oppose the idea, since many veteran groups do support the idea it will probably pass even though on the immediate surface the proposal seems to have minimum merit. The computers will be a minor contribution as most visitors are only interested in relatives and friends, and know all about them already, and a better idea would be to open up the warehouse where the 62,000 items left at the Wall are held, for people to walk through and see it all. But more important, the idea is really a minor contribution unless somewhere there is also some statement as to the cause for which these men died.
The most disturbing aspect of this story is the apparent need to assure people that the cause for which these 58,000 died will not be mentioned, apparently out of deference to the largely treasonous position of the campus ‘peace’ movement. “Skirt controversy of the war”,“ not about the war”,“basic information about the war without interpreting it”. But most incredible is the statement by the Park Service, “The memorial’s purpose is to separate the issue of the sacrifices of the veterans from the U.S. policy on the war.” Was anything even remotely like this ever said about the Lincoln Memorial, the Iwo Jima Memorial, or any of the dozens of other war memorials in Washington? There were dissenters in every American war, but their position was never institutionalized, especially one as clearly sympathetic to the enemy as this one was.
There are two alternatives here and the time is long overdue to end what Burkett said, “The dead men and women exist in a state of conspicuous oblivion. Their names are there but nothing else.” Obviously they died for some purpose, but it is not mentioned. They either died in “an imperialistic, immoral war of aggression against the people of South Vietnam attempting to unify their country” the position of the campus 'peace’ movement, or they died “fighting for the freedom of the South Vietnamese against Communist aggression from North Vietnam”, the position of the government, the vast majority of the American people, and certain to be the position of those who fought and died. Or, shall we just continue to say nothing, leaving the dead in a state of conspicuous oblivion, continuing to rob them of their honor and history, as Burkett wrote, because America has become too timid to finally repudiate the outrageous lies of those who needed rationalizations for not serving, lies that have long since been exposed.
As National Coordinator for the Vietnam Symposium in l985 at Stony Brook University, NY, with 600 Vietnam vets registered, Mr. Magruder (a former professor of psychology and Director of the counseling and Research Center at the Univ of ND), said in a speech on the campus war protests: “A distinction needs to be made between the campus “peace” movement and the later public sentiment in favor of ending the war. The campus “peace” movement, which came out of the larger, more liberal universities such as Berkeley, Columbia, Yale, Wisconsin, Harvard , and Michigan, opposed the war from the beginning for ideological reasons. Its hostility to traditional American values such as patriotism, honor, and duty, was rooted in the prevailing nihilistic philosophies on campus as found in Freudianism, Behaviorism, Positivism, and Marxism. A study of 118 pieces of literature, for example, written largely by academics and distributed at major anti-war demonstrations throughout the country, clearly revealed a Marxist bias, the philosophy of the enemy. The main argument of the literature was that America was engaged in “aggression” in an “imperialist” plot to block the efforts of nationalist Vietnamese to reunify their country. The Viet Cong, the students were taught, were the real heroes.
In each of its five major offensives the North assumed there would be a popular uprising of the South Vietnamese people against Thieu and the Americans. It never happened. In fact, as a result of the first major offensive, the Tet Offensive, the people of South Vietnam rose up in revulsion and resistance against the North, with the government and the people galvanized into unity for the first time and the South Vietnamese Army almost doubling due to volunteers. In the US the facts made clear by the Tet Offensive that the war was not just a “civil war”, that the South clearly did not wish to live under Communist rule and welcomed American aid, and that it was the North Vietnamese who were engaged in “genocide” and "aggression” with the mass murders of civilians at Hue (5000), and the rocket attacks on helpless civilian populations, should have ended the arguments of the “peace” movement. It was a the moment of truth for those in the universities. They failed the test. The lying continued with renewed fury.
And to its everlasting shame the “peace” movement responded to any hint of victory by American forces at Tet with panic, fearing that their own country might win the war. Polls at the time showed that 51% of those in the “peace” movement favored a victory by the Communists. As David Horowitz, an editor at the time of the radical anti-war movement journal Ramparts later acknowledged, “ Let me make this perfectly clear. Those of us who inspired and then led the antiwar movement did not want just to stop the killing, we wanted the Communists to win.” At no time did the majority of Americans view our objective in South Vietnam as "immoral”, “imperialistic”, or an act of “aggression”. They recognized those arguments as having come from the enemy. The majority of Americans apparently agreed that the true issue was the historically proven totalitarian thrust of Communism.
Later public sentiment in favor of ending the war was based on practical, not “moral” grounds, and held the peace movement in contempt for its clear sympathy for Hanoi. Feeling that the polarization in the US caused by the “peace” movement was prolonging the bloodshed by contributing to Hanoi’s intractability with regard to a peace settlement, and fearing that further polarization would severely damage the country, the American majority began to seek a new strategy. Viewing as clearly immoral the call of the “peace” movement for precipitous withdrawal, the cowardly cry of Out Now! - (before I get drafted) and abandonment of South Vietnam, they settled for President Nixon’s plan for Vietnamization and ‘Peace with Honor’. American forces, having definitively defeated the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese on the battlefield, (though never given credit for this) were then withdrawn, and for two years the South Vietnamese Army, (with l,100,000 soldiers) continued to hold its own against repeated attacks by the North. In the end, however, they collapsed when vindictive anti-war sympathizers in Congress, in an unparalleled act of betrayal of an ally, cut off their ammunition, plunging South Vietnam into the dark night of Communist horror after 30 years of struggle against the North and the loss of 250,000 soldiers.”
Said Mr. Magruder in summary today, “There are now simply no facts that the former war protestors can point to that vindicate their position. The better documented histories of the last decade, and especially the numerous exposes and confessions written by former leaders of North Vietnam, have totally destroyed the arguments of the 60’s radicals. Yet in spite of these facts, they still continue on campus to urge the nation to ignore the correct historical conclusions. To admit to having been wrong in their view of the war would mean not only to face enormous guilt for having supported tyranny and genocide, but even more important, disproof of their ideological (usually Marxist) or philosophical assumptions. They must of psychological necessity cling to the position that they were right, that those who fought were wrong and that there is nothing more to discuss, leaving the veterans to suffer because of their lies.
The battle to end this cowardice, this hypocrisy, this tissue of lies, begins today, on a new battlefield - the universities.
If there is to be any addition to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, it must finally include something along these lines: “These men gave their lives in a struggle for freedom for the South Vietnamese against Communist aggression from North Vietnam.” These men are crying out from their graves to be finally recognized as American soldiers who willingly (two thirds werevolunteers) served their country in a just cause, a battle for freedom, and not the “dupes” of an “immoral” cause as those who did not serve tried to label them. To continue not saying anything is national cowardice, to even mention the anti-war position would be a national disgrace.
Magruder44@aol.com
Dear Mr. Magruder,
I have not only read all of the materials you were so kind to forward, I have posted them within a special forum created for a club, which has an internet site, to which USMC combat veterans belong.
Membership to that club is restricted to ONLY those Marines and FMF Corpsmen who have been in combat.
There has been a furor over a post originally made of your actions leading Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform just a few days ago within the club website. Nearly all of the members believe in doing something about these radical protesters and the rebirth of this type of movement. There is tremendous anger and a feeling among them of violation as a result of these leftist radicals "using" both physical monuments to veterans and their own interpretations of what deceased veterans would [protest] the current administration doing in it's anti-terrorist actions.
The membership is aware there will be a march/rally/protest in Washington, D.C., 1/18-1/19/03 I believe. It is the desire of most of the membership to engage these leftists for two reasons; to attempt to demonstrate to the public and to the media that Vietnam Veterans are nearly unanimous in their support of bringing terrorists, threatening anti-American Dictatorial regimes, and extremist muslim states to their knees, and if necessary, eliminated. They believe our active duty military should have their actions and honor validated publicly, unlike the ignominious and utter failures at home to protect their own actions and honor when they were in Vietnam. Secondly, they are adament to not allow these leftists to defile, rally around, misrepresent, or dishonor in any way physical military monuments they consider sacred, such as The Wall, the Iwo Jima Memorial [now known as the United States Marines War Memorial], Arlington National Cemetery, etc., they would use for their own agenda. These men also resent the radicals' use of their dead comrades, speaking "through" them as though they would be against current anti-terrorist actions.
I am attempting to be the fulcrum of logistical efforts to make a substantial and sufficient presence in Washington to accomplish the veteran's objectives above. Time is very short, of course, and I do not know how successful we can be to get this sufficient turnout there. The radicals have a jump on us, obviously. Unless the actions of the United States is totally devistating, I would expect other actions by the leftists after January.
What groups, numbers, organizations, et al are you aware of that are planning to be there in January, and do you know the exact route and itinerary of the radical movement?
Any information you may tip me would be most appreciated.
Respectfully,
Joel Charles Kernodle