Would you buy a cigar from one of these well dressed polite young men and women protesting in favor of equal rights for all Americans regardless of color?
Or would you buy a cigar from this circus freak dressed like a goddamned hobo with hair down to his fuckin' ass protesting the war in Vietnam?
It has always seemed arrogant to me that the boomers claimed that they ended the war with their ridiculous protests. All they really ended up doing was looking stupid, unlike an earlier generation of protesters, who were clean-cut, wore suit and tie or nice dress, and walked hand-in-hand with similarly clad black men and women down the streets of the South to protest unjust laws. They looked like nice young people getting beat up by a buncha Southern cracker assholes, and an embarassed nation gave them what they wanted -- an end to Jim Crow. But the anti-war protesters who came after them... what the fuck does looking like a goddamned bum do except make your whole cause look stupid?
Seems to me that the protesters actually *extended* the war. By 1968 it was pretty damned obvious that the war wasn't going to get won without invading North Vietnam, and the Chinese and Soviets promised to send combat troops to North Vietnam to help them if we did that. We'd seen in Korea just how bad it could get if the Chinese sent, say, ten million troops across the border as "volunteers" to help the North Vietnamese. The Joints told LBJ that he'd basically have to put 50% of the U.S. GDP into a gigantic army and fight WWIII if that happened, and LBJ turned several shades of white and basically resigned and Nixon beat the hack Hubert Humphrey (who was basically LBJ Lite and everybody was sick of LBJ by that time). But Nixon had to run for re-election. And since he was a vile little man, he had to run for re-election on something other than his non-existent personality. So he ran for re-election on two things -- he was a law-and-order president cracking down on "those vile hippies" who obligingly showed up stoned and with hair down to their fucking ass dressed like goddamned hobos to prove his case, and he was a war president who was gonna get us outta Vietnam but "with honor", and so he had to keep the war going until 1971 so he could start pulling down troops in 1972 immediately prior to the election. Once the election was won, there wasn't any reason at all to even think about Vietnam -- Vietnam has no oil, or any other resources of interest.
In short, we got out of Vietnam because:
- We couldn't win without invading North Vietnam, and the cost of invading North Vietnam would be WWIII (turns out the Chinese and Russians were bluffing and we suspected they were bluffing, but we couldn't know,
- It was expensive as hell to stay there and it was causing economic pain, and
- Nixon didn't need the war anymore after 1972.
At least, that's how this history penguin sees it, reading up on the history...
-- Badtux the History Penguin
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ReplyDeleteHmmmmmmm. Yeah, those dirty hippies must not remember what really happened?
ReplyDeleteI wasn't there, but I'll buy that.
I don't think they affected the war one way or another.
. This did, I'll betcha
You work with what you have at the time...things change all the time. Fashion, long haired hippie freaks, head up your-ass-yuppies and the like. Time doesn't stand still...those that protest look different every generation. You'll find the old hippies protesting what is happening now...somebody has to. I wonder what the Silicon Valley types would have done for Vietnam eh? No...the dirty hippies didn't bring Nixon to his knees...the nation as a collective helped...and the time just happened to be right. The cigars should be left to Bill and Monica...and I'd take a hippie over that any day.
ReplyDeletemy thoughts at the time were something like...."fuck 'em all"
ReplyDeletethink I'll stick with it
1. Smoking is bad for your health
ReplyDelete2. Never, EVER accept a cigar from someone who does LSD, for they might lace said cigar with said drug.
3. Oooops
another huge and often neglected factor in getting out of viet nam was the breakdown of the miitary. in very much the same way as is happening now. there were race riots on army posts and aircraft carriers. there were strikes by enlisted men. the ranks of middle grade officers were thinned because the junior officers were finishing one hitch and bailing. they were running out of captains, majors, and light colonels. they were also running out of staff sergeants as the men with two hitches refused to take a third. they knew they were either due for another trip into the cuisinart, or even worse, forced to train the kids just drafted for their trip.
ReplyDeletethe command structure among flag officers was also shakey. they had spent almost a decade serving up bullshit on toast to the press corps and were wondering why nobody was paying any attention to what they were trying to say.
i think the breakdown of the military was one of the main factors in nixon's reasoning. he was one of the blame fixers when the final evaluations were done. he decided to blame it on the draftees.
after all, far too many of them were folks who dressed like hobos with hair down to their asses. . .
i've gotta disagree a tad, the dirty hippies did have an impact during the vietnam war - they did send nixon all atremble, though he said he never thought about the protests at the time... i think every little bit does help. it wasn't just hippies protesting, after all - though history likes to paint it that way. neat little boxes and all. kinda like how it was only "anarchists" breaking windows back in '99 in seattle.
ReplyDeletei would go as far to say that things could've been way worse had everyone just stayed inside and not taken to the streets. protest does do something to keep the powers that be in check - if even just a little.
civil disobedience is sometimes necessary.
ever read any of zinn's stuff?
i've long thought that an effective protest would be for everyone involved to dress in suits, etc. that would really stop more than a few people in their tracks.
Well, I don't buy cigars at all, but, if I were to, I wouldn't mind buying it from a guy dressed like a hobo. I'd be less afraid that he was using substandard tobacco in an attempt to pad his profit margins to sustain his standard of living. But, having worked in tobacco while young, I certainly don't have any desire to inhale the smoke from that product.
ReplyDeleteAs for the hippies and their protests ending the Vietnam war, they obviously didn't entirely end it. But, I'm not so sure that their protests didn't make a lot of people question why we had our military in south-east Asia in a failing attempt to maintain order there, while order at home was crumbling.
Additionally, there is always the fear of an October 1917 style revolution. This is especially true when the administration gets excessively disconnected from the majority of the people. And, there was some evidence of that happening in the late Vietnam War era. Note that I'm not saying that such a revolution would have been possible at that time; only that the fear of it was somewhat of a motivating factor.
As for how to dress during a protest, fashions and styles change over the eras. Back in the late 1960s/early 1970s, long hair was "in", even among "respectable" people. Also, it would be rather foolish to wear a multi-hundred dollar suit to a protest which could turn ugly and/or violent. It's much better to wear clothes that an additional hole or two won't affect the value of (and, in some cases.
One of the often overlooked points is that there is some evidence that the Soviets were clandestinely funding various "peace" movements in the US. I don't know of a good analysis of how much this may have helped or hurt the anti-war movement, but it's hard to believe that the Soviets would have been providing any funding unless they were fairly well convinced that it would have had a desired action.
As for "winning" the war, it was fairly obvious that the only way to have done that would have been to have overthrown North Vietnam, which very well may have prompted direct Soviet and/or Chinese participation (instead of just supplying equipment and advisors).
Such participation may not have been along the lines of the situation a generation earlier in Korea, since, by the 1960s, it was fairly obvious that the American army could stop almost any kind of a frontal assault. It may have taken the form of limited nuclear escallation (e.g., tactical battlefield nukes), chemical warfare (e.g., "yellow rain"), possibly even biological warfare. It may also have taken the form of non-battlefield attacks (e.g., naval attacks, etc.).
In any case, it was painfully obvious that, no matter what we did short of starting WW-III, the war wasn't "winnable". The amazing part isn't that South Vietnam eventually fell after the Americans pulled out; the amazing part is that they lasted as long as they did.
As K.M.Pannikar said, "War is the final act of dipolomacy."
Dave
P.S. As for cigars and Monics, well, at least Bill had good taste; she was cute! ;-)
Just a clarification, Badtux--the antiwar protesters were NOT all hippies. My parents protested the Vietnam War. Believe me, they were no hippies.
ReplyDelete