'The long & winding road' from the Vietnam War to current issues

A lot of water over the dam, a mixed bag as to results and what’s transpired

If you were among the estimated half-million people who traveled to Washington, DC in mid-November of 1969 to take part in the Moratorium Against the Vietnam War; if you stood there in the public square on that Saturday afternoon elbow-to-elbow, moving ever-so-slowly due to the large numbers; then you probably thought the momentum of this cause had shifted in your direction.

With so many people gathered together in a common cause, how could the winds of change—or more accurately, a shift in public policy concerning the war—not turn in your direction. After all, only a year-and-a-half earlier Lyndon Johnson had put a halt to the troop build-up, extended the olive branch to the North Vietnamese government with an offer of peace talks, and announced his intention to leave the Presidency at the end of his term—all of it done in a dramatic television address to the nation.

It seemed that more-and-more mainstream Americans—those residing in the so-called heartland who had supported this ‘fight against Communist expansion”—were becoming disillusioned with the war. Hell, even Walter Cronkite, the trusted and venerated anchor of the CBS Evening News, had begun asking pointed questions about its conduct and rationale.

Surely, this show of strength, plus the general trend of public opinion, would convince the new President, Richard Nixon, to reverse course. Or, failing that, bring more Americans to this side of the debate.

As we know, Nixon had other ideas on how to conduct the war and the divide between ‘hawks’ and ‘doves’, as it was characterized in those days, became even deeper. Nixon’s speech prior to the Moratorium on the ‘Silent Majority’ struck a sympathetic chord as did his vice president, Spiro Agnew’s stringent attack of the liberal press and intellectuals, note to mention the protesting college students.

The road forward was (to borrow a lyric from the Beatles song) “long and winding.”

In retrospect, which is where I spend more and more time these days, at least when it comes to commentary, there is much to consider between then and now. A lot of water over the dam, a mixed bag as to results and what’s transpired.

I have no appetite for relitigating the Vietnam War. I’ll leave that for the historians who specialize in this chapter of our nation’s past. But the war, along with the corresponding debate over its purpose and merits, occurred during my ‘coming of age.’

What happened on the larger stage and in my little corner of the world impacted who I was and what I became. Or put another way, the war, with all of its ramifications and offshoots, helped shape my thoughts and viewpoints—back then, through the ensuing years, and still today.

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All of this came to mind with the news that President Trump had decided to drop some bombs on three sites in Iran where underground nuclear research and testing facilities are reportedly located. This, we’ve been told, was done with the goal of eliminating or severely curtailing Iran’s uranium enrichment program that would, if allowed to continue, give them the capability to produce a nuclear bomb.

It's been a longtime matter of concern, shared by previous American presidents and many world leaders.

Israel’s decision to preemptively bomb these and other military sites, with the same goal in mind, brought the matter to a head—at least in the Administration’s mind.

Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, in her statement, mentioned her interest in learning what plans or strategy the President and his advisors have for “the day after.” As the Senator noted, there’s little doubt the American military will be dominant in this sort of bombing attack or any similar follow-up. But, speaking from her own experience of serving the nation as a CIA officer in Iraq after that war, what happens next can be an entirely different matter.

Will the United States get drawn into a protracted conflict, albeit less dramatic than a bombing raid, or a messy involvement if the current regime collapses? Also of interest is its impact on the rest of the Middle East and let’s not forget about Gaza where refugees are reportedly on the verge of starvation.

All of this is beyond my purview.

But, as I remember, after that large gathering in Washington, D.C., in what turned out to be the high tide of this type of peace protest, the momentum did not go our way. Nixon widened the war in late April of 1970 by invading Cambodia, the ensuing protests were highlighted by the shooting deaths of four students by National Guardsmen at Kent State University, there was the later invasion of American forces in Laos, and the majority of American voters have their verdict with the overwhelming defeat of George McGovern in the 1972 election.

Meanwhile, a goodly number of college kids, while still opposed to the war and being anti-Establishment in their stances, thought getting high on drugs and listening to rock music was an effective way to bring about a better world.

But I believe the ‘long and winding road’ had its accomplishments, steps of progress, and that attitudes were changed of a myriad of issues. Still, that said, other people had other views and championed differing causes. The cautionary tale is that what seems ‘a success’ might not be and what seems ‘a lost cause’ has the possibility of a Phoenix rising from the ashes. And maybe a reminder that in a democratic republic, such as ours, we need to work it out in an agreeable fashion and find an ethical outcome.

So here we are with the large-scale deportations of immigrants underway, including those with legal status getting swept up in the dragnet, the imprisonment of others, the matter of due process, armed troops in Los Angels to deal with protests, the sudden elimination of large swatch of federal agencies, the possible politicization of our armed forces, proposed cuts to food assistance and health care, efforts to curtail the media in its reporting, and much more.

Some of these matters are legitimate debates about public policy, and I’ll acknowledge that what I feel are vital issues of concern might not be shared by others. Yet there’s also this matter of Constitutional rights and the preservation of democratic norms.

That was a concern during the height of our Vietnam War passions. It’s returned to the forefront. Also, the debate on our engagement in Vietnam, how it evolved and ended, did not disappear with our troop departure; rather it has served to inform similar, subsequent decisions on military involvement since then. Whether we learned the lessons or not, or in the best manner, is another consideration.

In a recent comment I wrote that “The tools of persuasion and civil discourse will certainly be tested in these contentious times, with the path of the nation's future and our posterity at stake. And maybe those tools will be of little use in what lies ahead, but we’ll see if they can work their magic. Not sure if we're at a fork in the road where the direction we take makes all the difference, but it seems close. Who we are, who we've been, who we can be, who we want to be, and who we should be are being debated and perhaps decided.”

And what’s decided “will make all the difference in the world.”

Steve Horton is a mid-Michigan commentator.

hortonnotebook@gmail.com