The American Spectator : It Was No Tea Party

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It Was No Tea Party

By Mark Tooley on 5.20.11 @ 6:09AM

Forty years ago this month, 200,000 yippies and hippies tried to shut down Washington on behalf of North Vietnam.

Media remembrances earlier this month marked Amtrak's 40th birthday, having hatched on May 1, 1971, naturally losing endless federal dollars ever since. Almost unremarked but more interesting was the 40th anniversary of the huge May Day anti-war protests in Washington, D.C. Over 200,000 yippies and hippies strove to shut down the federal government, and its war machine, by blocking key bridges and intersections. President Nixon ordered that government workers still report to work, even while he found refuge at his San Clemente home on the Pacific.

The May Day 1971 protests mark some of my earliest memories. I had just turned age 6! We lived in nearby Arlington, Virginia. And my mother always enjoyed political theater. So she drove my 2-year-old brother and me into the city to watch the protests. We were joined by my equally adventurous grandmother, who took the day off from her Navy Department job to "protect" us. My father, an Arlington policeman, was stationed near Key Bridge to impede any hippies blocking Virginia traffic.

Naturally, the four of us were trapped in the car for hours on Washington's gridlocked streets. But it was great entertainment, as we watched (from behind tightly closed car windows) thousands of very hairy, tie-died counterculturists, festooned with signage, vent their anger against the Nixon Administration, against America, against the war, and against the political and cultural status quo. May Day 1971 was one of the last great anti-war extravaganzas. Nixon was already withdrawing U.S. troops from Southeast Asia while he "Vietnamized" the war.

Across several days, D.C. police, backed by the U.S. Army, arrested over 12,000, reputedly the largest mass arrest in U.S. history. Famously, many demonstrators were incarcerated in a makeshift detention camp outside RFK Stadium. The May Day 1971 uproar almost certainly enhanced the White House's siege mentality. Within 2 months, the White House "Plumbers Unit" was formed for special illegal operations, starting with the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, and disastrously culminating with Watergate and Nixon's resignation. The May Day protest failed in its initial goal of forcing a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. But it ultimately contributed to Nixon's collapse and the subsequent implosion of U.S. support for South Vietnam, ensuring communist triumph throughout Southeast Asia.

A chief organizer for the May Day protest was Rennie Davis, one of the "Chicago Seven" tried for their role in the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention. He was helped by, among others, Michael Lerner, himself one of the "Seattle Seven," whose attempt to ensnarl Seattle freeways in an earlier anti-war protest was a model. Lerner, later a rabbi and founder of Tikkun, would develop the "politics of meaning" that captivated Hillary Clinton before her accession to the White House with her husband. According to a Time magazine report of that time, Davis sought counsel from communist North Vietnam and later recalled: "The Vietnamese were saying that now was a time to act, that it might be possible to set off a chain of events that would end the war." He appealed to fellow American peaceniks: "Unless the Government of the U.S. stops the war in Viet Nam, we will stop the Government of the U.S." He also declared: "If there are still people in this town who don't feel they are guilty, who can get up and put on their coats and ties and go to work, we are going to stop those people on the streets and find out what is in their heads."

Davis and tens of thousands of kindred spirits failed to shut down the U.S. Government but not for lack of exertion. Time likened their "preposterously ill-organized" impact on D.C. traffic to a "heavy spring rain." Maybe for some. But I vividly recall my own family's voluntary entrapment in Davis's protest for what seemed like many hours.

On Saturday, May 1, 1971, about 45,000-50,000 (according to Time) "dope freaks, troubadours of the counterculture, teenyboppers, committed soldiers of the movement, longhairs on an oblivious narcotico-political binge" gathered in West Potomac Park to await Monday morning's hoped for traffic snarl and government closure. According to the Washington Post, they were happily "making love, drinking wine, and smoking pot," having turned the area south of the Lincoln Memorial into a "smaller version of…Woodstock."

Unamused by the frolic, the U.S. Park Service abruptly cancelled the merrymakers' permit at dawn Sunday morning. Preemptively, thousands of D.C. and U.S. Park Police in riot gear announced the party's end on loudspeakers and then scattered the remaining encamped demonstrators by marching into and tear gassing West Potomac Park. They were backed by thousands of U.S. Army troops and National Guardsmen. Thousands of disrupted, coughing protesters fled. Many escaped into Virginia some in their Volkswagen vans, never to return. Others fled to college campuses, especially Georgetown University. Davis complained that President Nixon had decided to "suspend the Constitution."

Undeterred, demonstrators reassembled Monday morning, targeting bridges and several key traffic circles. U.S. Army troops surrounded key monuments and federal buildings. National Guardsmen lined the bridges. Clearing the streets, D.C. police were ultimately instructed to arrest thousands of obstructing protesters in mass, dispensing with normal arrest procedure. The ultimate round-up of 12,000 inevitably included some reporters, bystanders and even counter-protesters. Davis, who was himself arrested, complained of the "good Germans" who still dutifully marched to their federal offices, despite their complicity in the war. But Time commented that the police overall "showed exemplary discipline; a less well trained, less tightly controlled force could have brought about a very different outcome: people seriously wounded or even dead." The ACLU loudly complained, while North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin commended the police for a "rather fine job."

After we finally escaped the traffic imbroglio by crossing Key Bridge, we spotted my father with other Arlington police outside the Key Bridge Marriott. My grandmother hailed her son-in-law for "protecting the country," while my more liberal mother responded with amusement.

President Nixon announced the May Day protests, which Attorney General John Mitchell had watched with binoculars from his U.S. Justice Department balcony, had been handled in a "very competent and appropriate way." In little more than a year, Nixon and Mitchell would be enmeshed in Watergate. And in less than 4 years, hundreds of thousands of Indochinese refugees would flee to America, many to the Washington, D.C. area. They were the bitter fruit of the anti-war campaign for America to abandon Indochina to tyranny and genocide. The May Day protests would help fuel a far worse disaster than the founding of chronically insolvent Amtrak on the same day.

About the Author

Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (63) | Leave a comment

Tina B| 5.20.11 @ 6:32AM

A trip down memory lane. I was 21, newly married and a closet hawk. My Dad was Polish and anti-Commie from the get-go and so was I. Not one of my SoCal contemporaries felt like I did. It was a lonely time.

God bless those Hmong who held on to life. Check out Clint Eastwoods Gran Torino, a great film about them and slice of their life today.

Thank God I was saved from Liberalism by great parents and a Florida boy I married and loved for 30 years, who taught me to think and swim against the cultural tide. And thank God, too, of course!

Alan Brooks| 5.20.11 @ 10:03PM

You all DESERVED it:
you drafted all those young men who were not culpable for the blunders of their incompetent elders- such as LBJ. The young men died and were maimed for the sins of their fathers.

You got what was coming to you and it hurts.

Negro X| 5.22.11 @ 11:05PM

Brooks,
Eat shit! I enlisted, I wasn't drafted and I didn't run to Canada like you. Speak for yourself coward.
I'd do it again too.

Occam's Tool| 5.21.11 @ 7:29PM

Great comment, Tina B!

Can't stand Tikkun. Subscribe to Commentary. Lerner is a schlemiel of the highest category.

Alan Brooks| 5.22.11 @ 12:30PM

Anyone who wants war, go fight a war yourselves-- even if to take a bullet meant for someone else.

Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 5.20.11 @ 6:53AM

In 1971 I was attending a local college and we went downtown by Dupont Circle to a bar. As we left the bar the streets were filled with hundreds of people running and tear gas was everywhere.

We weren't even sure what was happening but tried to get back to our cars to get out of the area.
At one point I observed a tank looking thing come rolling into Dupont Circle with some National Guardsmen.

Somehow we found out way back to our cars and left but it was an eerie scene for Washington.

There was a lot of underground culture in the area including a newspaper called The Washington Free Press. It was distributed widely at local high schools and colleges and on the street.

In one of their last issues they showed a judge masturbating over the court. Shortly thereafter the D.C. Police kicked down their doors and seized everything and I think that was the end of the Washington Free Press.

Appleby| 5.20.11 @ 7:09AM

I was in California, having just graduated from University into the Nixon Wage-Price Freeze and was far too busy trying to find a job to pay any attention to what was happening on the other end of the country. Our college (now a university) was international because it was not government owned and controlled, and our parents paid big time to send us there, so there was very little Sixties Hoo Hah on campus. We had soccer instead of football, boycotted the first Earth Day, and spent most Vietnam Teach-In Days at the beach.

In other words, then as now, we considered those hippie scum to be idiots, impediments to our main goal in life which was to get to work on the American Dream. Forty years later, not a whole lot has changed.

My 100 year old auntie has lately become much happier with life in her nursing home. When we asked her why, she said that all the people there that she did not like were now dead.

Its something to look forward to.

Al Adab| 5.20.11 @ 11:28AM

Re-read The Kumquat Statement. These were bad times not glorious ones like The Left believes. The "peace movement" killed more American soldiers than the NVA ever dreamed. How terrible for our nation that these people are now in charge. This crisis goes beyond political opposition. This is the defining moment for our future. We must oppose with all that is in us.

Occam's Tool| 5.21.11 @ 7:31PM

Correct again, Al. Liberalism has gotten one thing right in the last 100 years---supporting Civil Rights for Blacks. And many Republicans supported that too, for all the thanks they ever got. Otherwise, the Progressive Movement has been much worse than a painful Bowel Movement to America.

Ned| 5.20.11 @ 2:06PM

We are contemporaries, Appleby, although it I went to (a state) school about 1000 miles north of you (hint: school mascot, a stupid beaver). My memories coincide with yours, and my Bachelors has a 1970 date. I was roundly annoyed whenever the administration would roll over for the peace freaks and close the campus... "Hey, *I'm* PAYING for this education..."

I also remember the economic effects of the Wage-Price nonsense. Since I couldn't find a job, and had just failed my draft physical (student deferments ended 12/31/69 - my lottery number was 46!!) and therefore wouldn't be visiting the Mystic Orient, I went to grad school instead.

I still make the point, whenever Vietnam comes up, that the "protestors" weren't protesting the actual war. They were whining about having to risk their own precious necks. Once the draft ended, and the "peace" freaks were no longer at personal risk of having to participate, the protests ended quickly... May '71 being one of the last big ones, I think.

Sounds like your aunt is a hoot.

Occam's Tool| 5.21.11 @ 7:32PM

Not the Bemidji State Beavers, Ned? No, the Oregon Beavers, right?

Bill Sullivan| 5.20.11 @ 7:41AM

I was attending American University at the time and saw Rennie Davis talk about his strategy and tactics prior to the event on the quad in front of hundreds, including I'm sure plenty of law enforcement in mufti. I decided May 1 was a good day to stay off the streets.

Stormzeye| 5.21.11 @ 8:13PM

We may have met. I graduated from AU in 1968 and remember the madness of SDS, SNCC and all the other fascists on the Quad. I'm sorry to say that we were truly "The Worst Generation". Sadly, we're now being ruled by those bastards.

Maxwell| 5.20.11 @ 8:42AM

I remember the time well. I was at the University of Akron and much to busy working my way thru to be bothered. Took me seven years, from '67 to '73 and no fond memories either. For me those years were just work, sleep, and study. I guess when you cling to your Bible and guns and grunting to get thru life you have a very different outlook.

Occam's Tool| 5.22.11 @ 6:12PM

No, Maxwell---you actually learned something. Good on 'ya.

Bill| 5.20.11 @ 9:06AM

Don't forget that a lot of those protestors who got locked up in that detention center near RFK Stadium recovered large awards of damages after they sued the U.S. government for unlawfully detaining them.

Prester John| 5.20.11 @ 9:40AM

Doonesbury had a great cartoon at that time showing a bunch of long hairs being dumped into the RFK facility where one of them says to the other, "The government should fall any second now" (or words to that effect).

hardcard| 5.20.11 @ 10:17AM

those commie demonstrators are now running / ruining OUR COUNTRY !!!!!

cowgirl| 5.20.11 @ 10:17AM

As a youngster in the 70's growing up in the Bay Area I had the opportunity to watch the Red Diaper Doper Babies of Stupid City Number 1 Berkeley and Stupid City Number 2 San Francisco make utter fools out of themselves. Not much has changed, however. Go down University Avenue in Berkeley and you see the same old hippies, except their hair is gray and their jeans are too small. They are as nutty and stupid as ever living in the 1960's.

Citizen Jerry| 5.20.11 @ 10:18AM

Do you think today's Time magazine would refer to this rabble as "dope freaks, troubadours of the counterculture, teenyboppers, committed soldiers of the movement, longhairs on an oblivious narcotico-political binge"? I doubt it.

As one wag explained it back in the '70s, a hippie is a Jack who looks like a Jill and smells like a John. I still can't get that one out of my head.

Dr. X| 5.20.11 @ 10:41AM

Unfortunately this article fails to mention one very salient fact: those hippies won the culture war, and now they control every institution in American society from the academy to the media to the White House to the military.

American Spectator and like publications have become the counterculture. The hippies have engaged in a 40-year slow-motion anti-bourgeois revolution that has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They didn't do it themselves; they were, of course, unwittingly aided by the stupidity of the Establishment which self-destructed by wasting countless lives in Vietnam, and idiotically breaking into the DNC.

Those hippies have now created an anti-bourgeois Establishment that is just as, if not more, authoritarian, doctrinaire, and intolerant than the one they decried. Political correctness, reverse racism against whites, the murder of millions of fetuses, and upholding sexual perversion as noble and good while demeaning heterosexual reproduction as slavery are the fruits of the Second American Revolution that wrecked this once-great nation.

Seek| 5.20.11 @ 11:50AM

Standard neocon boilerplate. Actually, "hippies" were, and always have been, outsiders. Even the ones who "went straight" were just along for the ride during their counterculture phase. Apparently, now they are killing fetuses and mandating affirmative action -- as if there was no abortion prior to the Sixties.

Enough with the Hilton Kramer/Norman Podhoretz nonsense: Life is a lot more complicated than Normal vs. Counterculture. Most libertarians, Right and Left, in fact, have been hippies of some sort.

Bill| 5.20.11 @ 1:12PM

The true outsiders were not called "hippies" and did not call themselves that.

They were well aware that their period of refusing to don the harness of adulthood was totally transitory, and many of them had conservative attitudes.

They often referred to themselves as "freaks." Watch the movie Woodstock, portraying events that took place two years after the end, in which Arlo Guthrie looks out over the crowd and says "Lotta freaks." Arlo was a boob in a lot of ways, but he wasn't stupid.

Don't forget the "Death of Hippy" ceremony that was held at the Mecca of freakdom, San Francisco, at the end of the summer of 1967. That was the end, not the beginning. Don't think that what happened in the 1970s bears any relationship to anything freaky.

Stammon| 5.20.11 @ 2:22PM

Ah, no. You are wrong. Did you know any Hippies? They were bums with long hair. They were thieving (Steel this Book), xenophobic haters with slatternly women. I had long hair for a while back then, and tooled around New England and the San Francisco Bay area on my BMW/2 motorcycle. I was continually stunned by the lack of ethics and general filth that Hippies were. They would steal candy from a child and find some counter culture justification for their selfishness.

DONBALTIMORE| 5.20.11 @ 2:45PM

You are so right about that. I can't imagine what will happen next, where we will go from here?

JimP| 5.20.11 @ 10:56AM

Those were the good old days. I recall Hanoi Jane telling everyone that if we only knew what communism really was that we'd get down on our knees and pray to become commies. A couple of years later she was hawking workout videos to the tune of hundreds of millions (in addition to her already accrued wealth). It was all donated to the CPUSA, I'm sure. Also, a few months after the big shutdown Nixon ended the draft and POOF that ended the war protests. Except of course for the truly hard core commies who decided to enlist in government work to destroy America via the Democratic party.

Bill| 5.20.11 @ 1:31PM

Before the end of the draft in 1973, all those revolutionaries decided to go to graduate school instead of bringing the war back home after four people got shot to death at Kent State in 1970.

It happened overnight; it was kind of funny. One day they were talking about violent revolution and the next day you could hear the crickets chirping.

Bill| 5.20.11 @ 1:35PM

The events of May, 1971, were just a reflexive spasm of a long-dead snake that had had its head cut off.

Bill| 5.20.11 @ 1:36PM

A bunch of kids throwing garbage cans into D.C. traffic.

Al Adab| 5.20.11 @ 2:53PM

It took Kent State to end it then. They had to realize it was no game. What will it take now to end this tyranny?

Oldefarte| 5.20.11 @ 10:57AM

As one who was in college when this excrement was occurring, the disgusting bile within my stomach from same is now/once again regurgitating from my bodily system over this. These pieces of human filth/crap that disguise themselves as rational to the ignorant masses have resurfaced [thanks to the liberals and the Kennedys] once again, second generation wise. As stated, these worthless hippies that fail to produce anything in life [while being complete takers of governmental welfare etc] continue their useless lives of proclaiming freedom to do/say anything they wish, unrestricted by the laws/rules of mankind or society. THIS is exactly WHY I as a born, raised, and educated Catholic continue to defy my religion in completely and thoroughly supporting ABORTION!!!!!!!

Al Adab| 5.20.11 @ 11:19AM

Our problem is, the people in charge of this administration think these were the great days of America. They want to recreate the halcyon days of street protests and riots. They believe America was wrong then and remains wrong today. They remain more concerned about what our enemies think of us, than how to help our friends. It is a terrible mistake that we placed them in charge of our policy machinery. We will reap he whirlwind for that error.

Dustoff| 5.20.11 @ 1:21PM

I was on my way to the US Army then off to Nam.
Yes I joined.

Not all of us were stupid long haired hippies. Yet my hair was pretty long, well for a little while. (-:

Oldefarte| 5.20.11 @ 1:57PM

We all thank you for your service to us!!!!!

Occam's Tool| 5.21.11 @ 7:34PM

Thanks!

DONBALTIMORE| 5.20.11 @ 2:56PM

All of this can be attributed to the infestation and influence of Communism. General MacArthur was right, McCarthy was right, and we have not deloused the house.

gary siebel| 5.20.11 @ 11:57PM

So that's what it looked like to a 6 year old. Note that they didn't smash your windows. You missed some great party years. Of course, you were too young to know it wasn't just about Vietnam; society needed to shed an old skin that was binding it too tightly. Sometimes progress involves protest.

Vietnam is one of those rare wars where both sides won. I say this because both sides achieved their objectives. The Vietnamese wanted the foreigners out, and the Americans wanted the Vietnamese to become capitalists. Their victory was immediate; ours takes a little longer but it clearly succeeding.

Some day the Vietnames may seek a treaty with us, so as to counterbalance China. One of the reasons so many Vietnames have a fondness for Americans is because of our culture, which is a lot more fun than that of the Chinese, and was made a lot more fun largely because of those troublemakers in 1971. But America won the war with them too. The troublemakers then are now all about expensive houses in Marin and Berkeley.

It was the Right Wing generals that lost the military aspect of that war through military incompetence. We should have driven straight west from Khe Sanh with maximum force immediately, bulldozing a trench and two mile wide free fire xone all the way through Laos, if necessary, but they didn't do it when they had the chance. The generals preferred method, was that of attrition and remote bombing them back to the stone age, but without nukes (the remote bombing philosophy is even more popular today), but attrition is a bad plan against Asian philosophies of war, and remote bombing wasn't quite so remote as it is today (see John McCain). B-52's armed with non-nikes can still be highly effective -- see the 1st US/Afghan War, but nuking Vietnam was out of the question. They wouldn't be quite so eagerly capitalistic or as friendly toward us toady if we had nuked them.

The attrition method meant the draft, which meant protests (see Abe Lincoln), which eventually became all sorts of things lumped together. The military failed under Johnson; the window to create a barricade between North and South, just like Korea, was lost by the time Nixon was president.

Nixon and Clinton actually had the same problem, which allowed the enemy to thrive: they were distracted by their internal political opponents -- the left wing for Nixon and the right wing for Clinton. Nixon could still have driven west but his political cost was too high after Tet. Johnson never had the stomach for it in the first place. He was an accidental president, because some right winger had shot Kennedy.

The Bruce| 5.21.11 @ 6:05AM

"Vietnam is one of those rare wars where both sides won. I say this because both sides achieved their objectives. The Vietnamese wanted the foreigners out, and the Americans wanted the Vietnamese to become capitalists."

Sure, it's rare in that most of what you've described never happened:

"The (North) Vietnamese wanted the foreigners out" -- yep that happened

"...and the Americans wanted the Vietnamese to become capitalists." -- I guess that happened, too. I suppose I must disregard that the entire peninsula went Communist, and that Pol Pot slaughtered millions in neighboring Cambodia to "promote" communism. Wow, that sure sounds like success.

Deborah D| 5.23.11 @ 5:01AM

"some right winger had shot Kennedy" -- that might have been the media spin, but, as you and I know, Oswald was a Communist. That's left winger. Let's not rewrite history.

Bill| 5.23.11 @ 9:07AM

Neither the Vietnamese nor the members of SEATO would agree that "both sides won" the Vietman War. It was universally agreed in the United States that when the NVA tanks breached the gates of the U.S. Embassy, that was a moment of defeat, and it remained a moment of defeat. The U.S. expressed its dislike as the outcome of the Vietnam War by imposing economic sanctions against Vietnam that hurt them for a long time.

Bill| 5.23.11 @ 9:14AM

And it wasn't right-wing generals who lost the Vietnam War through incompetence. Those generals would have been great fighting the war they had spent their lives training to fight, a war against the USSR in Eastern Europe. Our armed forces failed to learn the lessons of the First Indochina War, to learn counterinsurgency warfare. That was obvious to the people who became the platoon leaders, such folks as Schwartzkopf, Powell, Petraeus, and many many others, who rebuilt the army after Vietnam.

The Vietnam War was lost by the politicians, particularly Lyndon Johnson, a New Dealer whose politics were decidedly left-wing, who insisted on micromanaging the conduct of the war, and his stooge the Secretary of Defense, MacNamara, a Kennedy Democrat.

Replica Handbags&wallet;| 5.21.11 @ 1:10AM

I’ve just joined here and wanted to say hi to all of you! I really hope to give something back to this board.

Michael L. Hauschild| 5.21.11 @ 8:32AM

I was drafted in 1969 and once overseas I “extended” to get the early out, this let me come home in January 1971 without serving stateside. One of the last things I did was drive over a '"tank" mine in a jeep; we did not set it off. Supposedly the road had been “swept” earlier that morning. A Viet Nemeses truck about five hundred yards behind us had enough weigh to detonate the charge. To this day I can “feel” the pressure wave and can close my eyes and see that rear axle spinning through in the air.
So, I have good news and I have bad news about 1971; the good news is that there is a God; the bad news is that he has a sense of humor. That was the same year I met my first wife. She had a flower painted on her cheek, I remember that flower as well.

Occam's Tool| 5.21.11 @ 7:35PM

No, you can't be that old, Michael. Thank goodness you survived....

Naru Hodo| 5.21.11 @ 10:49AM

Media remembrances earlier this month marked Amtrak's 40th birthday, having hatched on May 1, 1971, naturally losing endless federal dollars ever sense.
In what sense has that been the case ever since?

Dee See| 5.21.11 @ 11:44AM

---AH for the days of Stanford Research/Tavistock Institute/RIIA/CFR
'grassroots' liberation.

From 1968 ------to 2011

Forget 'pop' culture --think sugar daddy
EUGENICS op and you'll be MUCH,
MUCH closer to your NON-Red Chinese manufactured light bulb moment.

Michele San Pietro| 5.21.11 @ 3:08PM

That hippy march was really a disgrace. I just can't stand those who bite the hand that feeds.

johnt| 5.21.11 @ 8:24PM

I am amused that no one has ever mentioned the reinforced Marine rifle battalion that was sitting 25 miles south of D.C. waiting for the "Go" code. They were there once before, after MLK was shot and after the National Guard was pushed all over the streets; they wore no insignia but they took a LOT of prisoners.

Bill| 5.23.11 @ 9:28AM

I"m amused that you don't remember the photo on the front of the New York Times Magazine, showing the G.I. standing on the steps of the Capital Building next the M-60 loaded with a belt of ammo and sitting on its bipod the week the Days of Rage occurred.

Dee See| 5.21.11 @ 10:27PM

"Culture, or art, is about adoration.
Pornography however is all about lust for possession."
D H Lawrence
letters 1919

AGAIN, in America and across most
of the disintegrating western world we
have to face the withering truth that we
haven't had a culture since, perhaps, before
the First World War.

When you wake up to the programming
op of the 'hidden masters' the jig really
is up------for them.

mzk1| 5.22.11 @ 5:50AM

As someone who grew up expecting to be drafted into the Viet Nam War, I am still ashamed at our betrayal of the South VietNamese.

Oh, and as a Jew, Lerner is a traitor to the US and that is all I care about. His religion is Leftism, and the rest is made up.

Occam's Tool| 5.22.11 @ 6:13PM

mzk1---Fantastically on target. I despise Tikkun.

mzk1| 5.22.11 @ 6:00AM

"It was the Right Wing generals that lost the military aspect of that war through military incompetence. "

Except the the VietNamese themselves admitted thay could not have won militarily.

If you helped "end the war", you have blood on your hands. I cannot put it simpler.

mzk1| 5.22.11 @ 6:01AM

All I can say, OF, is that it is this sort of thinking that gave us Hitler and Lenin.

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whoiscaller| 5.22.11 @ 8:42AM

Media remembrances earlier this month marked Amtrak's 40th birthday, having hatched on May 1, 1971, naturally losing endless federal dollars ever sense.

overcomer| 5.22.11 @ 8:11PM

History shows that our military involvement in Vietnam was a monumental policy blunder fed by the delusion called the "domino theory" whereby, presumably, communism would take over the world. It certainly didn't say much for our faith in democracy. One way or another our military was going to leave Vietnam. I regret it couldn't have been sooner.

overcomer| 5.22.11 @ 8:11PM

Bill| 5.23.11 @ 9:18AM

The Vietnam War was more an expression of the sentiment of George McKennan, who came up with the doctrine of "containment," the thesis that communism must be stopped anywhere it starts to crop. Containment, in its turn, was a logical development of the historical lessons learned from Stalin's imperalism in Eastern Europe after World War II.

The "domino theory," by the way, turned out to be largely true, at least during the decade immediately following the end of the Vietnam War. Just ask the Cambodians.

Bill| 5.23.11 @ 9:22AM

George Kennan, not George McKennan. Sorry. The guy who wrote the Long Telegram.

Richard Baker| 5.24.11 @ 9:32PM

I grew up in Northern Virginia during this time. We knew they were in DC by the stench which came Southward from the tear gas and body odor. CS, the cologne of the Revolution!