Dear friends, This is my response to a petition requesting that I provide a brief summary of your engagement during or afterwards with the war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, including leadership or public advocacy positions. In this summary, my intention was to add my name to the many, many others who deeply wish for our country to not whitewash the history of our involvement in Vietnam, but to tell it fairly and in a balanced way so that, not only will we be able, now, after all these years, to honor our returning Vietnam veterans and offer them the love and deep gratitude they deserve for having put themselves in harms way, in danger of losing their lives, and enduring the extraordinary hardships and frequently unspeakable traumas of war. However, we must not fail to tell the story as it truly was. This nation was split in two by the controversy that enveloped us with many of those who opposed the war and those who supported it still unable to sit at a dinner table together without one group leaving in anger should the conversation turn to this topic. There are those who served and those who went to jail rather than fight in a war they felt was unjust and premised on a lie. There are those who came home broken in body and spirit, and those who left their native land rather than fight, and possibly kill those, or help kill those, who they were convinced were not the enemy. On both sides, opposing decisions were made with the best of intentions, with reference to what was seen as a patriotic duty, and with honor: an honor we need to bestow on both those who served, and paid a price, and those who refused to serve, and paid their price. We need to heal this divide in our country by something akin to a truth and reconciliation process or the wound from the Vietnam War will continue to infect, divide us, and incapacitate us in terms of our urgent need to find a way to move forward and work together, with open hearts, in the interests of all of our citizens. We are at a crossroads, and I truly believe that the way we handle the telling of our nations history of involvement in the Vietnam War will be critical in terms of bringing us together, or further splitting us apart. In is in the interests of helping to do the former that I responded to the petition below, in the way that I did. It is my hope that you who can, who were there and who participated in writing our nations history at this critical juncture in our history, will write what is in your heart and add your voice to those of us who want to find ways to bring our nation together, not by rewriting history through the creation of a new tissue of lies, but with an honest, generous, understanding hand reaching out to one another across the history of this great historical divide. After youve read what Ive written, please read the petition at ipetitions/petition/vpcc and join this effort as you can. Along with Mary Travers and Noel Paul Stookey, I spent almost a decade devoted to efforts to stop the war: organizing, singing and speaking at demonstrations and marches focused on ending the war between the US and Vietnam. In 1969, joining with Cora Weiss, I co-organized the March on Washington to end the war in Vietnam which was attended by 500,000 participants and is widely credited with playing a central role in solidifying the grass roots sentiment to end the war. Additionally, I organized events at Shea Stadium and Madison Square Garden that included dozens of other artists who also were committed to ending the war. Along with my partners in the trio Peter, Paul and Mary I addressed the war in our music and in conversations, mainly with college students, after concerts every single night we performed. My song, The Great Mandela was one of many that the trio sang during this anti-war era as well as Where Have All The Flowers Gone, Blowing In the Wind. The trio also campaigned for Senator Eugene McCarthy who was our anti-war candidate for president in 1968. We wrote Genes campaign song,If You Love Your Country and traveled with Senator McCarthy to make campaign appearances. The above represents only a fraction of our my, and the trios, efforts in what was a prolonged, painful and very difficult effort, under the scrutiny of the Nixons Enemy List and other governmental efforts to discredit us and others who espoused an anti-war commitment. However, in my view, the right and moral perspective prevailed at last by virtue of grass roots efforts as opposed to top-down decision-making, and those of us who opposed the war were successful and, in the light of history, completely vindicated. Particularly the last 5 years of the war were conducted via a tissue of lies to the American public as has been revealed in the film The Fog of War that focuses on Robert McNamara, the trial of General Westmoreland, and books such as Neil Sheehans A Bright Shining Lie not to mention the extraordinary revelations of the Pentagon Papers. In the past 10 years, through John McCauliffs Fund for Reconciliation and Development I visited Vietnam three times in the context of examining the legacy of the poison, Dioxin - a component chemical of Agent Orange that was dropped on portions of Vietnam to defoliate those regions - that has left a multi-generational legacy of severely disabled children. What I saw and experienced in these trips reconfirmed to me the great mistake and shame of Americas pursuit of the war in Vietnam. I am convinced that, until we come to terms with what we have done to injure others either by mistaken policies, however well intended, or by policies guided by blind and selfish national interest or domination of other parts of the world for economic or military reasons, we will be a divided nation and continue to open and enlarge these corrosive, self inflicted wounds. A balanced and restorative justice perspective on the telling of our nations history in Vietnam would be a huge step towards our healing from these wounds. However, a continuation of the lies and self-aggrandizement that characterizes the American psyche to proclaim that if we did it, it was right by definition will only serve to deepen the moral vacuum that afflicts our nation with the legacy of deceit and guilt regarding atrocities against others committed and unacknowledged. We will go forward with other Vietnams, other Iraqs, other Guantanamos, other 17th and 19th Wards in New Orleans, other millions of Fracking wells, and an unending inability to address the genocidal policies of our country vis-a-vis our First Nations and the lingering and recurrent eruption of racism in our criminal justice system, and continue to harm our own and others and pretend, like a hit-and-run driver, that such injury never occurred and that we need not take responsibility for it. The telling of a balanced history of our engagement in the War In Vietnam could be a precedent of great importance. It could be a first and most important step for us to take in doing all we can to start to heal ourselves in regard to the history of our nations injuries to others or the bleakest of futures awaits us. Truth, forgiveness and reconciliation with, and for, ourselves and others will be the pathway towards truly confirming us as a great nation in our time, one that celebrates when we do great and wonderful things (and these we do in abundance). But we must also address our nations failures to follow a moral path, when we betray our principles and then seek to hide from the truth. Loving and serving our country, at this point in history, means acknowledging the good fortune that is ours, giving back to our bountiful nation as each one of us can but, simultaneously, gathering our collective courage to identify our mistakes and misdeeds, express our deep contrition when appropriate, ask for forgiveness, make our amends, and thereby heal ourselves by reversing our sociopathic inclinations that have become, in recent years, ever more destructive to our hearts, our honor and our humanity.
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 06:45:11 +0000