Vietnam vs. Afghanistan...

Vietnam War Hearings

Madison, Wisconsin

30-31 July 1965

What follows is the testimony of Louise Smalley,  a housewife at the hearings -

After hearing about the hearings, I felt it my duty to speak out my concerns. I have four children and am a housewife. I have never done anything political, other than voting, and I am not particularly interested in politics, but I do read the papers and I am confused by the news. I talk to people and I don’t like what I hear.

If this war is so unpredictable and goes on for six  years, seven years, decades, my children can be drawn into this horror.

I have read and heard about some of the atrocities and it is unbearable for me to know that our boys are taught and made to use napalm and phosphorous bombs.

I try to teach my children the value of individual human worth and I don’t want this destroyed by my country.

I do not have a solution to the war, but I do want a solution and I want you to find it.

The War at Home

(Vietnam)

1979

This statement is significant for several reasons:

Since 1965, mothers have gone from thinking that war is a ‘horror’ and that they don’t want their children to be made to participate in it to a minimum age for recruitment into the army of 17*, with parental consent, and 18 without.** (Regular Army/Army Reserve Enlistment: Must be at least 17 years old... Page 2, 2011-2012 Pocket Recruiter Guide, issued by the US Army. Available for viewing here.)

We now have military recruiting in public schools. ROTC, (Reserve Officer Training Corp), has returned to our institutions of higher education. (ROTC returned to Harvard after the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’) We now recruit enlistees from foreign countries. 

In other words, the American military recruit just about anybody with a pulse, regardless of their age. Even if they are child soldiers , which the United Nations called “An affront to humanity.” 

Forty-six years after the initial escalation of the Vietnam war, the 17 year olds signing up for the military in 2011 are not hindered by parents who don’t want their children involved in the ‘horror’ of war and who don’t mind the government ‘destroying’ their teachings of the “value of individual human worth.” (If the recruits' parents have even taught them of the value of the lives of people who do share their politics, color, ethnicity or religion.)

We have fallen from a moral nation to an immoral nation that kills people over natural resources and bizarre political beliefs. An immoral nation that continues to recruit 17 and 18 year olds to kill people because war profiteers in our country will lose money if we stop.  A nation that gladly signs over their children, the cream of our current generation, to kill others - an atrocity - for money to go to college.

What does this say about us, as a nation? That we value natural resources and forcing people to believe and behave like us over the lives of our children? That war mongers and war profiteers are more important than all lives in conflict areas - including American?

In 1965, Mrs. Smalley believed the Vietnam War could go on for 6-7 years or decades. 

It is difficult to peg how long the Vietnam War lasted. American intervention in Vietnam started very early in the 1960’s; some say as early as 1954. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was issued in August of 1967.  American involvement in the Vietnam was ended in 1973 by the Paris Peace Accords. The war continued until the fall of South Vietnam in April of 1975. By that time, although we maintained a presence in Vietnam, (like we do in Iraq, despite the fact that war is ‘over’.), we were not - officially - involved.

It was six years - 1967 to 1973 - from the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to the Paris Peace Accords. We were clearly involved in ground combat in Vietnam before then. The 1/7th Air Cavalry was ordered to Vietnam in 1966 and stayed there until 1971. This meant the Vietnam War was, arguably, 7 years long.

A seven year war was unacceptable to Mrs. Smalley. A ten year war in Afghanistan is, apparently, acceptable to parents who sign their children up, or allow their children to sign up, to kill Afghanis for money to go to college.

Mrs. Smalley didn’t have a solution to the Vietnam War and she wanted the government to find it. 

It took the US government and the government of North Vietnam until 1973 to find a “solution” to the war in Vietnam. And then it wasn’t a real solution, it was a way to withdraw Americans from ground combat and aerial operations. (See references to the Paris Peace Accords, above. The Accords, supposedly, brought 'peace with honor')

The US government has not gotten any better at solving conflicts since 1973 - over 30 years ago. In fact, it has gotten worse. 


Apparently, there is widespread acceptance - among republicans and democrats - in Washington of the ‘long war.’ A war in which we will engage our ‘enemies’, (whether, in fact, they are our ‘enemies’), on multiple fronts, in multiple countries, with no plans to prevail and, most certainly, no exit strategy from any of these conflicts. A war where the military industrial complex is getting rich feeding our children into the meat grinders in Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, Iraq.

Perhaps an incursion into Afghanistan was necessary after 9/11. I know it wasn’t, but let’s look at what has happened in the ensuing 10 years...

We went to Afghanistan to ‘get’ Osama Bin Laden. Except we weren’t very good at it. It took us ten years and billions of dollars. Ten years. And then we found him living openly in Pakistan. After Bin Laden was captured, instead of bringing him to justice, giving him the due process guaranteed by the US Constitution,*** we killed him and, supposedly, dumped his body in the ocean.

Despite the fact our stated reason for going into Afghanistan was to find Bin Laden, we have made no plans to withdraw from Afghanistan since his capture and death. In fact, we are making preparations to spend billions of dollars more to continue the ‘long war’ in Afghanistan. 


This leads me to believe that the focus, after 9/11, shifted from finding Bin Laden to something else. Who knows what the focus of the US government shifted to - because they have articulated no strategic goal and have no exit strategy.

Mrs. Smalley would be appalled at the length of our war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Appalled at the use of child soldiers. She would, also, be asking the government to find a ‘solution’ to getting us out of the war in Afghanistan. Fat chance.

Things have changed, dramatically, since Mrs. Smalley testified before the hearings on the Vietnam war in Madison, WI in 1967. They have gotten markedly worse.

And there is no end in sight.

*Unbelievably, the British recruit children as young as 16 into their military. This is barbaric.

**The age for the draft, (conscription), during Vietnam varied. In 1951, the Universal Military Training and Service Act reduced the age for the draft to 18 1/2 years. The Military Selective Service Act of 1967 further lowered the age for registration for the draft, and induction into the army, to 18. Subsequently, during the Vietnam War, a child had to be either 18 1/2 or 18 to be drafted, depending upon whether they were drafted before or after 1967.

***Some say it would have been impossible to bring Bin Laden to justice. I say, “bullshit.” 

In 1960, the Israelis, arguably, committed what was, essentially, an act of war against Argentina when they inserted covert Mossad operators into the country who captured Adolf Eichmann, questioned him extensively and then spirited him out of the country.

They took Eichmann back to Israel, where he received due process - a fair trial - and was convicted. Then they executed Eichmann, cremated him and dumped his ashes in the Mediterranean Sea with the full knowledge of the citizens of Israel and the world.

Eichmann was responsible for carrying out Reinhard Heydrich’s “final solution to the Jewish problem” formulated by Nazi Germany at the Wannsee Conference in 1942. Eichmann is directly responsible for the murder of 6 million Jews and 5 million others in the Holocaust. Compared to Eichmann, Bin Laden is an amateur. 

The Israelis captured Eichmann in a matter of months after locating him. Without killing thousands of citizens of Argentina and spending billions of dollars. Was the Mossad more capable in the 1960 than the CIA is today? I’d say they are.

If the Israelis could try a monster like Eichmann; 68 years later why couldn't the US government try a lesser monster, Osama Bin Laden?