I will begin with that lying film, The Fog of War, in which McNamara tried to cover up the deliberate and conscious butchery which was the nature of U.S. policy in Vietnam. It is the self-defense of a War Criminal who knew when he was committing his crimes that they were, by all standards of human decency _and_ by international laws war crimes, crimesd against humanity. There is not a thin line between the U.S. invasion of Vietnam and the policies followed there and the Final Solution in the Third Reich -- there is no line at all. When we called it a genocidal war we were not using extravagant rhetoric, we were using a technically correct term.
The Presidential campaigns of Gene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy, and George McGovern should be regarded as part of the "Cover-Up" of the nature of the U.S. invasion of Vietnam and the tactics used there. Those men knew the facts. They knew the facts were evidence of the genocidal policy being followed in Vietnam. Nevertheless they "opposed" that war in terms which drew attention away from the substance of the anti-war movement. That cannot be described as anything else but aid and comfort to the war crimes being committed in Vietnam. As such, these men were co-conspirators in the commission of genocide.
They knew that the dams in North Vietnam were being bombed, and that is recognized in international treaties as a crime against humanity.
They knew that some of the 2000 lb bombs being dropped on Hanoi were designed _not_ to go off when they landed and, therefore, to destroy the men and women in Hanoi who had to attempt to defuse those "duds." (When my daughter was in Cuba she met the last survivor of such a bomb squad.) They knew that the U.S. had not only deliberately bombed a lepraorium the French had built in North Vietnam, one clearly marked with Red Cross signs, but that the U.S. had evn bombed the column of trucks carrying staff and patients away from the site after it had become apparent that the bombings were no accident but deliberately designed to destroy medical facilities. They knew, in fact, that the bombing of North Vietnam had nothing to do with military targets but was consciously designed to kill civilians, and to kill in large numbers. Yet they continued to "criticize" the war for such reasons as "dividing the American people."
The death toll in Vietnam from this brutal attack has now passed 3 million and is still growing. "Not since the Romans salted the ground" was the title of one pamphlet published at the time. The reason the U.S. government for so long refused to honor the claims of veterans suffering from Agent Orange was that to admit those claims would in effect admit that the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam was a crime that would continue to kill and maim for decades, perhaps for generations.
And yet on this list I have seen posts which, mentioning the draft, seemed to imply that anti-war protestors were motivated by fear of the draft.
My first post on Mario Savio began with "I am sorry to hear" this of him, for he made real contributions to the movement of the '60s and had the respect and admiration of so many of us. I was sorry to hear, that is, that he was betraying the movement to which he himself had contributed so much. I presume he believed what he was saying, but that is a great pity. I am sad for him.
The anit-war movment was driven by moral outrage at the horror of the U.S. invasion. It is to trivialize that movement, to betray our history, to displace that horror and outrage as the grounds of our movement. It is, however unintentionally, to give aid and comfort to enemies of humanity.
Carrol