Customer Reviews

An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book has been an absolute bible to me in my study of the Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era. For anybody studying this period of history, it is of intrinsic value. It details every aspect of the antiwar movement, the cause and consequence of it and lots of other relevant material. Nearly every other modern study of this nature draws a lot from this book. Although DeBenedetti's untimely death leaves the book with a rather ragged finish, its objective analysis is perfect for any historian or student wishing to study the antiwar movement in depth.

This was required reading for a graduate course in American history.

In An American Ordeal The Antiwar Movement and the Vietnam Era, the authors chronicle the antiwar movement from 1955 to1975. The book gave a sophisticated analysis of the antiwar movement that went beyond some of the tired dichotomies of Communism versus Democracy that are ubiquitous in the historical scholarship of the period. The authors considered the complexity of the antiwar movement with its multitude of factions and how it affected the political atmosphere. The image of the antiwar factions and how the American public felt about the different foreign policies the protestors and the Administration were advocating was described in the book.

The period of 1955-1963 was discussed regarding initiatives on nuclear disarmament to slow down or eliminate the nuclear arms race. This period's primary achievement was to focus attention on the issue of atmosphere nuclear testing. After the signing of the Test Ban Treaty in1963, the nuclear disarmament element of the movement began to fade. The civil rights efforts coalesced around the rise of a youthful intellectual left that was more willing to give of themselves to advance the cause of social justice. After 1965, as the Vietnam War intensified, a large portion of these same anti-nuclear and civil rights organizations became part of the opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Ironically, President Johnson was the peace candidate of the 1964 election and became an intractable hawk on the war. This brought about disillusionment within the movement regarding the strategy of influencing policy makers and, a shift to the strategy of massive demonstrations.

The authors maintain that the Vietnam War portion of the 1955-1975 period of peace activism was the most obtuse. The period of 1965-1975 with its concurrent social issues including racial equality and violent domestic unrest was a time of wrenching discord and malaise. The authors believed a dominant theme of the period was the war policy of the Johnson and Nixon administrations versus those that were against intervention in Vietnam. The dynamics of opinion on both sides throughout the period were discussed. The authors pointed out that the desire to cling to executive power by both administrations trumped a clear delineation of policy alternatives for the war. This was the central theme of the book: The withdrawal from the war was the policy option the antiwar movement displayed and ultimate public acceptance of this policy was seen as a sign of the movement's success in that regard.

A second theme the authors extensively explained was the division within the antiwar movement. Although a dominant theme in the historical interpretation of the period, the authors saw the dichotomy of us versus them on both sides of the intervention question as simplistic and ultimately unsatisfying in the pursuit of a deep understanding. The authors viewed such a dichotomy as a reflection of the same Cold War rhetoric that led to initial U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The authors duly note that the antiwar movement did not have a single directing organization or ideology. Consequently, the movement offered varying criticisms of American society and foreign policy along with its criticism of the war. The various groups that came under the umbrella of the movement had differing levels of organization. They could be national, regional or local level organizations. Exponential growth in the movement from 1962 to 1972 contributed to the sense of haphazard direction and poor organization.

The debacle at the 1968 Democratic National Convention lead to further disillusionment with any hope of a change in policy employing the political process. The rioting tarnished an already poor public image of the movement, making it easy to paint it as functioning not as an advocate of an alternative policy, but rather as just a group of contrarian adversaries. The authors pointed to the irony of advocates of peace now doing their own bombing and aggressive attacks on the home front. These events were highly publicized and the Nixon White House exploited, and in some instances encouraged, such conflicts. The authors argue that the vast majority of antiwar protestors were peaceful in their actions but it was the most sensational and violent manifestations of protest that were burned into the nation's consciousness.

By 1972, as violent street protest waned, the antiwar faction within Congress gained momentum as did the Democratic Party. The emergence of George McGovern as the Party's presidential candidate reflected a higher level of acceptance of the argument for withdrawal from Vietnam. The antiwar activists were quite a vociferous contrast from those in the lower socioeconomic class who opposed the war. Lower class opposition thought the war was a waste of lives and money and they had little belief in any Democratic desires of the South Vietnamese. Still, they did not approve of the war protestor's actions which led to their collective reticence on disengagement.

One fascinating point the authors made was that, opinion analysts had found that most Americans respond to foreign policy situations "not out of knowledge of the situation, but rather in response to cues issued by respected reference groups". These groups were political parties or religious and social groups. With the advent of the war, these
traditional groups divided and thus, public opinion on the war became ambivalent. The antiwar movement was unable to fill this vacuum because of its public image as a group of deviants who wanted to thwart authority at every opportunity.

Both Johnson and Nixon believed that the outcome of the war jeopardized their presidency. Johnson's Great Society was jeopardized by division over the war and the possibility of defeat. President Nixon thought losing the war would jeopardize U.S. leadership in the world. Consequently, the authors concluded that each of these men perceived their policy options to be very limited. Substantial popular dissent would threaten the power of their executive office and ultimately their political grasp of it. This explained both presidents deep disdain for the antiwar movement.

However, Johnson and Nixon's dislike of the movement did not prevent them from being somewhat constrained by it. Johnson did not call up the reserves out of fear of exacerbating domestic division. Nixon's plan to Vietnamize the war was a result of domestic dissent regarding the war. The authors further argued that, even President Ford's attempt to prop up Saigon as the North drove on the South, was halted by a Congress responding to public sentiment and blocking funding for such a move. The
antiwar movement was seen by the authors as contributing to this change in Congress through its efforts in electoral politics and protest.

An interesting point by the authors was that while protest encouraged eventual Congressional action, it also encouraged both leaders to overextend themselves. The Johnson Administration and military leaders made extravagant claims about the war to thwart protest. As the public became aware of these prevarications and the Tet offensive seemed to support the notion the war was not going well, further disillusionment set in. This happened in spite of the fact that the Viet Cong was eviscerated in the offensive leading to North Vietnamese Regular Army (NVA) being sent South as the war continued. The folly of misleading the American public and having them find out about it becomes abundantly clear here. The illusion may help the effort initially, but in the long run, it damages the effort more than it aids it. This is a principle of political leadership with abundant historical examples and one that is a necessary condition for effective government.

Another striking observation that was not elaborated upon satisfactorily was, opinion polls indicated the public felt the protestors were inane and responsible for prolonging the war. However, these same polls indicated that communist triumph in Vietnam was preferable to an open ended war and the war was too costly. Therefore, not only was there a schism between those for continuing the war and the movement, there seemed to be a division in the minds of the majority which added to the difficulty in leading the nation out of the morass.

Further commentary and scholarship on the reasons for the capricious nature of public support for armed conflict could be beneficial for developing leadership principles. Once the public commits to a conflict but then sees its real human cost exceeds expectations, it naturally withdraws support. Therefore, the accuracy of that initial calculation of cost is imperative because of the natural proclivity of humans to dislike even the appearance of being lied to.

The opinion ofthe political leadership and the public was a creature that evolved. An opinion that evolved as the arduous reality ofthe war literally came home in the form of war veteran reporting of it, the disclosure of the Pentagon Papers and division within President Johnson's cabinet over the war. The book further postulates that as the public
became aware of discomfort within the executive and legislative leadership over the war, public confidence in the endeavor waned. These arguments were supported by opinion polls and historical research which garnered information regarding leadership decision making on the war.

The book then states that, perhaps organized protest led to a ground swell in public opinion that infiltrated the political process. Rather than converting the public to its antiwar views, the movement pushed the political leadership to change course. An effect that was only possible because of protest. The authors hypothesized that the involvement of a multitude of social reform groups both helped and hurt the movement. The damage was manifested in the split within the movement between liberals and radicals over the war. The liberals had many of the social reform group members who had worked for Civil Rights. They advocated the same
strategy utilized in the civil rights battle; public education and the consequent influence this would have on electoral action to end the conflict.

The radical element saw the opposition to the war as part of a counter-revolution against capitalism, its focus on self-interest and, an essential part of the quest for domestic and international social justice. Thus the two factions agreed on ending the war and the need for social justice but the liberals wanted to utilize the political system in place while radicals, perhaps ironically, wanted to destroy it in order to save it. Antiwar liberals saw the war as a policy-choice issue. Antiwar radicals saw protest as a means toward revolutionary social change. The liberals wanted to de-escalate and then end U.S. military involvement. The radicals challenged intervention in order to change the distribution of power and wealth in America.

The book observed that wars encourage conformity and conservatism but Vietnam was different because of the liberalization of popular culture; a challenge to the status quo and conventional beliefs. However, what some individuals see as healthy liberalism grounded in the nation's founding father's example of it, others saw as disintegration and moral decadence. This reader believes that the lack of a clear moral imperative for the war in the sense that our nation's soil was not attacked as it was in World War Two, contributed mightily to public ambivalence about the war. As George Washington pondered the Revolutionary War, he said "I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of Patriotism ..... But a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by the prospect of Interest or some reward." The willingness of the public to "conform" to the war effort must be linked to a collective interest in its outcome with a clear connection to a victory resulting in positive change in the nation's collective condition. This is not meant to denigrate or contradict the author's argument regarding the effect of cultural liberalization. It is meant to augment it.

The authors noted that the antiwar movement argued that their dissent was the highest form of patriotism. The antiwar movement displayed before the American public the choice of defeat with dignity for the decade of 1965-1975. They called for the nation with the most powerful military in the world to accept failure and thus antagonized much of the public. The historical parallels to the contemporary Iraq conflict are troubling. The authors conclude by saying the antiwar movement was the largest domestic assembly of opposition to armed conflict ever assembled in history. The political significance of the movement was to relentlessly display the choice of ending U.S. involvement in the conflict and made the war the issue of the day for foreign policy and national identity.

This reader believes that dissent ultimately aids the search for truth more than it confuses or obfuscates it. If a policy cannot withstand the rigors of honest disagreement, its validity and moral imperative probably does not exist. If the proponents of a policy seek suppression of dissent, a suspicion of the intellectual honesty of their argument grows in a functional democracy. A successful search for truth can ultimately end in change. However, this process can be agonizingly slow. The search for the truth that the Vietnam War was going to entail much more effort than originally perceived was aided by antiwar dissent and made into a political policy reality in 1975.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history, counter-culture history.

This was required reading for a graduate course in American history.

In An American Ordeal The Antiwar Movement and the Vietnam Era, the authors chronicle the antiwar movement from 1955 to1975. The book gave a sophisticated analysis of the antiwar movement that went beyond some of the tired dichotomies of Communism versus Democracy that are ubiquitous in the historical scholarship of the period. The authors considered the complexity of the antiwar movement with its multitude of factions and how it affected the political atmosphere. The image of the antiwar factions and how the American public felt about the different foreign policies the protestors and the Administration were advocating was described in the book.

The period of 1955-1963 was discussed regarding initiatives on nuclear disarmament to slow down or eliminate the nuclear arms race. This period's primary achievement was to focus attention on the issue of atmosphere nuclear testing. After the signing of the Test Ban Treaty in1963, the nuclear disarmament element of the movement began to fade. The civil rights efforts coalesced around the rise of a youthful intellectual left that was more willing to give of themselves to advance the cause of social justice. After 1965, as the Vietnam War intensified, a large portion of these same anti-nuclear and civil rights organizations became part of the opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Ironically, President Johnson was the peace candidate of the 1964 election and became an intractable hawk on the war. This brought about disillusionment within the movement regarding the strategy of influencing policy makers and, a shift to the strategy of massive demonstrations.

The authors maintain that the Vietnam War portion of the 1955-1975 period of peace activism was the most obtuse. The period of 1965-1975 with its concurrent social issues including racial equality and violent domestic unrest was a time of wrenching discord and malaise. The authors believed a dominant theme of the period was the war policy of the Johnson and Nixon administrations versus those that were against intervention in Vietnam. The dynamics of opinion on both sides throughout the period were discussed. The authors pointed out that the desire to cling to executive power by both administrations trumped a clear delineation of policy alternatives for the war. This was the central theme of the book: The withdrawal from the war was the policy option the antiwar movement displayed and ultimate public acceptance of this policy was seen as a sign of the movement's success in that regard.

A second theme the authors extensively explained was the division within the antiwar movement. Although a dominant theme in the historical interpretation of the period, the authors saw the dichotomy of us versus them on both sides of the intervention question as simplistic and ultimately unsatisfying in the pursuit of a deep understanding. The authors viewed such a dichotomy as a reflection of the same Cold War rhetoric that led to initial U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The authors duly note that the antiwar movement did not have a single directing organization or ideology. Consequently, the movement offered varying criticisms of American society and foreign policy along with its criticism of the war. The various groups that came under the umbrella of the movement had differing levels of organization. They could be national, regional or local level organizations. Exponential growth in the movement from 1962 to 1972 contributed to the sense of haphazard direction and poor organization.

The debacle at the 1968 Democratic National Convention lead to further disillusionment with any hope of a change in policy employing the political process. The rioting tarnished an already poor public image of the movement, making it easy to paint it as functioning not as an advocate of an alternative policy, but rather as just a group of contrarian adversaries. The authors pointed to the irony of advocates of peace now doing their own bombing and aggressive attacks on the home front. These events were highly publicized and the Nixon White House exploited, and in some instances encouraged, such conflicts. The authors argue that the vast majority of antiwar protestors were peaceful in their actions but it was the most sensational and violent manifestations of protest that were burned into the nation's consciousness.

By 1972, as violent street protest waned, the antiwar faction within Congress gained momentum as did the Democratic Party. The emergence of George McGovern as the Party's presidential candidate reflected a higher level of acceptance of the argument for withdrawal from Vietnam. The antiwar activists were quite a vociferous contrast from those in the lower socioeconomic class who opposed the war. Lower class opposition thought the war was a waste of lives and money and they had little belief in any Democratic desires of the South Vietnamese. Still, they did not approve of the war protestor's actions which led to their collective reticence on disengagement.

One fascinating point the authors made was that, opinion analysts had found that most Americans respond to foreign policy situations "not out of knowledge of the situation, but rather in response to cues issued by respected reference groups". These groups were political parties or religious and social groups. With the advent of the war, these
traditional groups divided and thus, public opinion on the war became ambivalent. The antiwar movement was unable to fill this vacuum because of its public image as a group of deviants who wanted to thwart authority at every opportunity.

Both Johnson and Nixon believed that the outcome of the war jeopardized their presidency. Johnson's Great Society was jeopardized by division over the war and the possibility of defeat. President Nixon thought losing the war would jeopardize U.S. leadership in the world. Consequently, the authors concluded that each of these men perceived their policy options to be very limited. Substantial popular dissent would threaten the power of their executive office and ultimately their political grasp of it. This explained both presidents deep disdain for the antiwar movement.

However, Johnson and Nixon's dislike of the movement did not prevent them from being somewhat constrained by it. Johnson did not call up the reserves out of fear of exacerbating domestic division. Nixon's plan to Vietnamize the war was a result of domestic dissent regarding the war. The authors further argued that, even President Ford's attempt to prop up Saigon as the North drove on the South, was halted by a Congress responding to public sentiment and blocking funding for such a move. The
antiwar movement was seen by the authors as contributing to this change in Congress through its efforts in electoral politics and protest.

An interesting point by the authors was that while protest encouraged eventual Congressional action, it also encouraged both leaders to overextend themselves. The Johnson Administration and military leaders made extravagant claims about the war to thwart protest. As the public became aware of these prevarications and the Tet offensive seemed to support the notion the war was not going well, further disillusionment set in. This happened in spite of the fact that the Viet Cong was eviscerated in the offensive leading to North Vietnamese Regular Army (NVA) being sent South as the war continued. The folly of misleading the American public and having them find out about it becomes abundantly clear here. The illusion may help the effort initially, but in the long run, it damages the effort more than it aids it. This is a principle of political leadership with abundant historical examples and one that is a necessary condition for effective government.

Another striking observation that was not elaborated upon satisfactorily was, opinion polls indicated the public felt the protestors were inane and responsible for prolonging the war. However, these same polls indicated that communist triumph in Vietnam was preferable to an open ended war and the war was too costly. Therefore, not only was there a schism between those for continuing the war and the movement, there seemed to be a division in the minds of the majority which added to the difficulty in leading the nation out of the morass.

Further commentary and scholarship on the reasons for the capricious nature of public support for armed conflict could be beneficial for developing leadership principles. Once the public commits to a conflict but then sees its real human cost exceeds expectations, it naturally withdraws support. Therefore, the accuracy of that initial calculation of cost is imperative because of the natural proclivity of humans to dislike even the appearance of being lied to.

The opinion ofthe political leadership and the public was a creature that evolved. An opinion that evolved as the arduous reality ofthe war literally came home in the form of war veteran reporting of it, the disclosure of the Pentagon Papers and division within President Johnson's cabinet over the war. The book further postulates that as the public
became aware of discomfort within the executive and legislative leadership over the war, public confidence in the endeavor waned. These arguments were supported by opinion polls and historical research which garnered information regarding leadership decision making on the war.

The book then states that, perhaps organized protest led to a ground swell in public opinion that infiltrated the political process. Rather than converting the public to its antiwar views, the movement pushed the political leadership to change course. An effect that was only possible because of protest. The authors hypothesized that the involvement of a multitude of social reform groups both helped and hurt the movement. The damage was manifested in the split within the movement between liberals and radicals over the war. The liberals had many of the social reform group members who had worked for Civil Rights. They advocated the same
strategy utilized in the civil rights battle; public education and the consequent influence this would have on electoral action to end the conflict.

The radical element saw the opposition to the war as part of a counter-revolution against capitalism, its focus on self-interest and, an essential part of the quest for domestic and international social justice. Thus the two factions agreed on ending the war and the need for social justice but the liberals wanted to utilize the political system in place while radicals, perhaps ironically, wanted to destroy it in order to save it. Antiwar liberals saw the war as a policy-choice issue. Antiwar radicals saw protest as a means toward revolutionary social change. The liberals wanted to de-escalate and then end U.S. military involvement. The radicals challenged intervention in order to change the distribution of power and wealth in America.

The book observed that wars encourage conformity and conservatism but Vietnam was different because of the liberalization of popular culture; a challenge to the status quo and conventional beliefs. However, what some individuals see as healthy liberalism grounded in the nation's founding father's example of it, others saw as disintegration and moral decadence. This reader believes that the lack of a clear moral imperative for the war in the sense that our nation's soil was not attacked as it was in World War Two, contributed mightily to public ambivalence about the war. As George Washington pondered the Revolutionary War, he said "I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of Patriotism ..... But a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by the prospect of Interest or some reward." The willingness of the public to "conform" to the war effort must be linked to a collective interest in its outcome with a clear connection to a victory resulting in positive change in the nation's collective condition. This is not meant to denigrate or contradict the author's argument regarding the effect of cultural liberalization. It is meant to augment it.

The authors noted that the antiwar movement argued that their dissent was the highest form of patriotism. The antiwar movement displayed before the American public the choice of defeat with dignity for the decade of 1965-1975. They called for the nation with the most powerful military in the world to accept failure and thus antagonized much of the public. The historical parallels to the contemporary Iraq conflict are troubling. The authors conclude by saying the antiwar movement was the largest domestic assembly of opposition to armed conflict ever assembled in history. The political significance of the movement was to relentlessly display the choice of ending U.S. involvement in the conflict and made the war the issue of the day for foreign policy and national identity.

This reader believes that dissent ultimately aids the search for truth more than it confuses or obfuscates it. If a policy cannot withstand the rigors of honest disagreement, its validity and moral imperative probably does not exist. If the proponents of a policy seek suppression of dissent, a suspicion of the intellectual honesty of their argument grows in a functional democracy. A successful search for truth can ultimately end in change. However, this process can be agonizingly slow. The search for the truth that the Vietnam War was going to entail much more effort than originally perceived was aided by antiwar dissent and made into a political policy reality in 1975.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history, counter-culture history.

For a book on this subject, you could do volumes on some of the major topics this book covers. For example: how the Johnson and Nixon Administrations tried to convince Americans to support the war, what the Students on College Campuses did to protest the War and the Draft, the bombings in Cambodia, and so on.
At 495 pages, the book covers all that it does in quick synopsis like form, but you still get to understand a bit of what the people in that era was thinking and feeling during the most unpopular war in U.S. history (even though the Iraq War might eclipse that someday if it continues for the next few years.)
A quality read, worth the price to purchase.