Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War is a non-fiction book edited by Ron Carver, David Cortright, and Barbara Doherty. It was published in September 2019 by New Village Press and is distributed by New York University Press. In March 2023 a Vietnamese language edition of the book () was launched at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
The book documents the movement by U.S. GIs and veterans in opposition to the Vietnam War, and asserts that this resistance has "become an almost secret history." Through essays, oral histories, photographs, documents, poems, and pages of the GI underground press, the book refutes what it calls the "post-Vietnam myth" of antiwar protesters spitting on returning Vietnam GIs, and instead shows GIs to have been an integral part of the antiwar movement.
In an introductory essay, David Cortright, Director of Policy Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, counters the claim that the U.S. military could have won the Vietnam War had it not been undermined by politicians and the media, and he writes: "The dissent and defiance of troops played a decisive role in limiting the U.S. ability to continue the war." He adds: "It is arguable that by 1970 U.S. ground troops in Vietnam had ceased to function as an effective fighting force." The book presents evidence for this conclusion.
Synopsis The book covers the GI and veteran resistance to the Vietnam War from the very early stages of the war until the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. It has essays and contributions from members of every branch of the U.S. military, from enlisted and officer, from women and men, from those of many skin colors and walks of life, from the famous and the unknown, from highly decorated combat troops and deserters, from front line grunts and jet pilots. It includes chapters on the behind the scenes civilian supporters and on the next generation of resisters to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
The book was inspired by and draws content from the Waging Peace In Vietnam exhibit which opened in the Spring of 2018 at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, in South Bend, Indiana and at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam. The exhibit and the book draw from many sources including oral histories and photos from the book A Matter of Conscience by Willa Seidenberg and William Short, the GI Press Collection archive at the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the U.S. National Archives. They document that thousands of soldiers, sailors and pilots refused to fight, sail and fly bombing missions in Vietnam, having a profound effect on the antiwar movement, and on the war itself. The exhibit is currently touring the United States.Waging Peace in Vietnam
Early resisters
The first chapter on early resisters tells of some of the first GIs to publicly oppose the war and lets some of them tell their own stories. One essay was written by Donald W. Duncan, a highly decorated Master Sergeant in the U.S. Army Special Forces ("Green Berets") who resigned in September 1965 just a little over a year after the Gulf of Tonkin incident which led the U.S. to engage more directly in the war. Duncan, a specialist in unconventional warfare, came to recognize through his experiences in battle against Viet Cong guerrillas that they had "the support of the people" - in fact, he said, they had "an overwhelming mandate". In February 1966, Duncan appeared on the cover of Ramparts Magazine in uniform saying "The whole thing was a lie!" and "I Quit!", "The Whole Thing Was a Lie", Ramparts, Feb 1966 It mentions the Fort Hood Three, Private First Class James Johnson, Private David Samas, and Private Dennis Mora, who in 1966 became the first three soldiers to publicly refuse to go to Vietnam. They were arrested and their case became a rallying cry for a small but growing antiwar movement. And it has an essay by Howard Levy, an Army Captain and physician assigned to train Green Berets in dermatology treatments until it became clear to him that "the Army was developing ploys like this to 'win hearts and minds' in Vietnamese villages - while still burning them to the ground in search-and-destroy missions." In May 1967 he was court-martialed and spent twenty-six months in prison for refusing to carry out his assignment., "Army Captain Howard Levy Refuses to Train Green Berets During Vietnam War"
The GI press
Chapter 2 documents the history of the GI underground press. An introductory essay explains how these papers "were filled with critical news about the war, cartoons that lampooned the military leadership, updates about soldier protest, and information on where GIs could find legal help." They "criticized racism in the military and U.S. society, and analyzed the racist and imperialist nature of the Vietnam War." A recurring feature of many were contests for "Pig of the Month" or "Lifer of the Month". While conceding the actual number of GI antiwar newspapers can never be known it argues "credible estimates range from 144 to nearly 300." Many of them carried irreverent titles mocking war and the military, including A Four Year Bummer, Kill for Peace and Fun Travel Adventure (FTA) which most GIs understood to mean "Fuck the Army". It documents how the troops who created and circulated these newspapers took serious risks. Army Sergeant Skip Delano, who was stationed at Fort McClellan, Alabama after returning from Vietnam, writes about hiding from the Military Police (MP) in the trunk of a car to avoid six months in the stockade for distributing their paper Left Face. Army soldier Terry Irvin recounts how after they "tried and tried" to get approval to distribute their underground GI newspaper, the Lewis-McCord Free Press on the Fort Lewis and McChord Air Bases in Washington, they decided to circulate the U.S. Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July. They were surrounded by MPs, arrested and "charged with distributing unauthorized literature on base." Irvin describes being up for general court-martial and facing three years in Leavenworth until the press got wind of what happened. The charges were quickly dropped. These newspapers often received letters from GIs. One of these is reproduced telling of a soldier organized antiwar parade on Memorial Day at Long Binh Army Base in Vietnam; the result was eight Article 15s (a military administrative hearing) for disturbing the peace. The soldier ended his story saying, "Can You Dig That? We had a parade in Vietnam and got busted for disturbing the peace. What can I say — FTA." A black veteran writes about the impact of Muhammad Ali's "No Vietcong ever called me nigger", and says he realized he was "living this contradiction of being a black soldier in the land of another man of color and terrorizing him." He started writing to turn from the violence of the war.
GI coffeehouses
This chapter explores the history of GI Coffeehouses, which were small cafes and political centers created mainly by civilian antiwar activists near military bases as a method of supporting antiwar and anti-military sentiment among GIs. The first one was established in January 1968 outside Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina and the last closed in 1974. Fort Jackson was one of the Army's central training centers for soldiers heading to Vietnam and the UFO coffeehouse there is described as "an instant hit" by David Parsons in an introductory essay. Parsons, the author of a book on the GI Coffeehouse movement, goes on to say the UFO was "[d]ecorated with rock-and-roll posters" and "quickly became a popular gathering spot for local GIs — and a target of significant hostility from military officials, city authorities, and outraged citizens". Hostility was visited on all these centers, many of which were in pro-military towns adjacent to military bases. "Without exception," the introduction continues, "every GI coffeehouse in the network was subjected to attacks from a variety of sources — investigated by the FBI and congressional committees, infiltrated by law enforcement, harassed by military authorities, and, in a number of startling cases, violently terrorized by local vigilantes." Several civilian organizers tell their stories here including Jane Fonda who describes being smuggled into Fort Carson by active duty servicemen in the trunk of a car. Overall, a picture is painted of a GI coffeehouse network that "played a central role in some of the GI movement's most significant actions".
Petitioning and marching
The next two chapters include essays, photos and stories about many of the protest methods used by antiwar GIs. There was the November 9, 1969 full page ad in The New York Times calling for a large mobilization against the war on November 15, 1969, in Washington, DC. It was signed by 1,365 active-duty military personnel, including 142 from Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas a generally pro-war town where there was a particularly active chapter of GIs for Peace. A copy of this petition made its way to the troops in Vietnam and Dave Blalock writes about its impact on his Army unit where they decided to wear black armbands on the 15th. He says, "we're all wearing black armbands. It was like 100 percent of the enlisted men, everybody's wearing a black armband, including some of the war doctors and the helicopter pilots." In 1970 the Reservists Committee to Stop the War collected "more than 2,200 signatures of Reservists and National Guardsmen" on a petition calling for the immediate U.S. withdrawal from the war. And on October 9, 1971, when six men from the Army's Firebase Pace in Vietnam refused to go out on patrol and were threatened with court-martial, "[s]ixty-five out of one hundred men in B Company signed a petition in a show of solidarity."
Navy Nurse Susan Schnall tells of her creative method for distributing antiwar material: "A pilot friend and I rented a single-engine plane, filled it with thousands of leaflets, and dropped them over Bay Area military bases: Treasure Island, Yerba Buena Island, Oak Knoll, the Presidio, and the deck of the USS Ranger at Alameda Naval Air Station." They were organizing for a GI and Veterans March for Peace on October 12, 1968, and when the day arrived she marched in her uniform along with five hundred other active duty military personnel (a two-page photo captures this event). David Cline was a combat infantryman in Vietnam who was wounded twice and awarded Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. He writes about being wounded and finding a book in the hospital called The New Legions where Donald Duncan (see above) talked about his experience in Vietnam and why he resigned from the military. Cline felt Duncan was basically saying "we're fighting on the wrong side" and said "it made a lot of sense to me because that's what I saw." Cline went on to join the GI movement, smuggle underground newspapers onto Fort Hood, become a national coordinator of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and president of Veterans For Peace. Several photos highlight actions by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In the fall of 1970 "they marched through New Jersey in a mock 'search-and-destroy' exercise called Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal) to show Americans the terror inflicted on civilians in Vietnam by U.S. troops." And on April 23, 1971 "[e]ight hundred U.S. veterans individually tossed their medals and ribbons onto the steps of the [U.S.] Capitol [in Washington, DC] to denounce the war and proclaim their shame at having been decorated for serving in a war they believed was unjust."
Exposing war crimes