"Happy Memorial Day, Mr. Kissinger"

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Wed May 30 15:36:42 PDT 2001


Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> >
>
> The victory of the Vietnamese should have been an occasion for
> celebration for the majority of Americans who had come to oppose the
> Vietnam War, but American defeat doesn't seem to have brought much
> joy to anti-war & even leftist Americans.

It did to some. On the occasion of the fall of Saigon a group Jan and I had formed in Bloomington/Normal placed an ad in the classified section of the local paper congratulating the Vietnamese people on their victory. I think many in the anti-war movement felt this way at first; what dulled it was that it had taken so long and the formal victory came well after the U.S. withdrawal. It was difficult, therefore, to _feel_ the connection of the various events. Also, of course, by the time Saigon fell the racist POW/MIA movement was underway, part of the general right-wing offensive of the '70s.

We never really got a clearcut time to celebrate our victory. And now Gordon claims that we were all just a plot of the ruling class.

Carrol



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