That is because the intellectual aspect of that conflict remains unresolved. The people who sold that war are still selling wars and the profiteering is worse than ever. Dr. Chomsky has described the role of "pundits" and the US media in US society as "manufacturers of consent" to the elites' agenda. The arguments which were valid against the US invasion of Vietnam are also valid against "our" invasions of Iraq, Somalia, Granada, Panama, and Haiti (and for that matter the same argument applies against GATT, NAFTA, the World Bank and IMF, and MFN status for China), so it remains at the top of the media agenda to dismiss and erase and black out these arguments and the people who make them. There will be no honest discussion of these issues in newspapers or high school history books as long as the conflict remains current.
You discussed profiteers and the roll of the press in controlling what is news. I understand war profiteering very well. They are the huge corporations who make substantial profits from the sale of war materiel, and their influence in foreign affairs often has more to do with their own profits than the national interest. Is this the way you see it?
Get a sociology textbook and look up the subculture known as the "power elite." They, by definition, are the people who run the world. They use corporations and government to effect their wishes. The power elite use war profiteering but their program is much more extensive than that. They also do agriculture profiteering and health care profiteering, for example.
However, I am not sure about "manufacturers of consent" in the media. It is difficult for me to imagine them actively suppressing news.
That is only because you have been immersed in the most powerful stream of propaganda ever directed at any human population for your entire life. One of the "necessary illusions" of that propaganda is that the commercial news media serve the public interest by reporting the most important stories and attempting objectivity. It's a lie. Media corporations serve the agenda of the power elite.To understand the role of media, consider disappearances of people who were once accessible voices for change. When was the last time you saw Carl Sagan, or Ralph Nader, or Jaques Cousteau on television? The boundaries of acceptable discussion are contracting and they're outside them now. Did you know Nader ran for US President in 1992? That was the most effective media blackout I ever saw; even the so-called "alternative" press ignored him. Did you know Larry Agran was ahead of Harkin going into the Dem Primary in '92? He was erased from the field by the New York Times and the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour (which controlled the publicity for the New Hampshire Primary) so that Jerry Brown would be alone on "the left" in that race.
I can understand them passing over news stories in favor of news if the power elite doesn't understand the significance of the story.
No. They actively suppress stories that do not serve their investors' interest. There is a culture in journalism about "what is news" and the main thing is that the determinant of what is news is what will please the publisher and his investors. That is how the decision is made. Any editor who has been on the job for six months knows that he had better toe the line. What usually happens is they internalize the publisher's tastes as their own. Talk to any experienced journalist. They don't believe human rights or US interference in foreign elections, to give two examples, are stories. That's straight from the money men who would prefer the public not become alarmed about those things.
I can also understand passing over a story that the media does not believe will attract interest (i.e. money). Could those be the motivations for the news media's suppression of stories?
No. Journalists are keenly aware of what kind of stories will get them ahead. They know that if they don't please the investors their careers will not advance. That is the motivation.
We believed in a good cause: to stop an immoral war.
To state that in the past tense is to accept the bad guys' propaganda, and once you do that you can never understand the history past or current. Question your assumption that Vietnam was different or isolated from the other struggles for social justice.
Many of the movement's contributions are valuable to our nation's history in the following years, and deserve to be publicly acknowledged. Until now, the nation's coming to terms with the Vietnam War has largely been accomplished by ignoring the antiwar movement.
Question that assumption too. This history has *not* been ignored, it has been actively and energetically suppressed, at the behest of industrial giants who stand to lose billions or trillions of dollars should US imperialism be halted. Consider the fast rise to prominence of Rush Limbaugh. That was no accident nor grassroots "backlash"; it's been orchestrated by the American Enterprise Institute, Hoover Institute, and National Association of Manufacturers. Limbaugh is now the most widely syndicated columnist and most widely placed radio commentator. It's not possible to get to that position on your own; the power elite must *install* people like Rush Limbaugh and George Will.
I think your comment challenging my assumption that Vietnam was different or isolated from other international activities currently going on is quite interesting. If I am mistaken, it indicates that a study of the Vietnam antiwar movement is even more relevant because it can be directly related to current events, and underscores the notion that vigilance and activism are important activities for the American public. Do you agree?
That's right. Vietnam was different only in the number of people who became involved. And that was only because more people were personally affected. Since then, US foreign policy has taken that factor into better account, and they minimize the number of personnel involved. They use proxy armies, spies, or very small numbers of troops.
I want to know why you joined the antiwar movement. "Joined" the antiwar movement... I think that is a very strange term. We didn't have to enlist or enroll or anything. If the antiwar movement wasn't "joined," one merely "became" a part of it. Do you agree? How did it happen for you?
I looked out my dormitory window and watched state troopers on horseback charge into a peaceful demonstration for the re-legalization of cannabis. They chased down women and the school paper's photographer, held them on the ground, and kicked and beat them, and smashed the camera. Of all the kids detained, only members of the campus Food Co-op were arrested, though they had nothing to do with organizing the demo. No account of the incident, with hundreds of witnesses, ever appeared in print. That was when I realized the Chomsky-Herman Propaganda Model was reality. I didn't find out its name until almost two decades later.I have met many other social justice activists since then. Every one of them has a story of how the reality was made personal for them. It's clear that the propaganda stream in which we live is too powerful for people to escape by being presented with factual arguments alone. Something really offensive has to happen in front of your face for you to break free of it. Perhaps the movement against the Vietnam war grew so big because it happened in so many faces: everybody lost a friend or relative there, or had a career ruined by it.
I suppose you were studying Thoreau and civil disobedience around the same time. Did your studies influence your thinking in any way?
No. Thoreau was presented as a lunatic, and civil disobedience as suicidal. The phrase "social justice" was never uttered in any classroom I was ever in.
Do you think the madness started earlier, perhaps with the civil rights marches? With the JFK assassination?
The madness has always been with us. It didn't even begin with the Crusades or Columbus' invasion of the Carribean. It goes back before recorded human history begins.
And the demonstrations... did they seem more innocent and peaceful in the beginning? When did they get nastier? After Chicago in '68? After the Cambodian Invasion in '70?
They got nastier in the 80s and 90s, with the resurgence of COINTELPRO and FBI collaboration with Wise Use assassins and arsonists, and the slavers of El Salvador, Guatamala, and Haiti. You need to stop reading the Washington Post and find out what's really happening!
Now I'm thinking about Abbie Hoffman's "second American revolution." How did you feel about people who wanted to overthrow the government?
I thought they were childish fools.
Now I'm thinking about the Pentagon Papers and the role of the free press. How did you feel when the Papers were published? Maybe betrayed by those in power?
I didn't know what they contained for decades. They were spun down pretty well at the time.
Did you consider becoming a CO? Going to Canada? Do you know of anyone who did?
I escaped the draft by becoming eligible a few weeks after it ended. When registration resumed, I did not register.I know a war tax resister. She files but does not pay, lives on a very low income, and cannot have a bank account.
In conclusion, I was also wondering if you would like to share some of your views about how you would like to see. How do you think a free press should be discouraged from suppressing the news?
First, it would be great if there were a "free press." But there is not. If you start your analysis by assuming that nonsense, you will never reach any understanding of what is going on. There is only a commercial, cprporate press in the US, and an insignificant dissident press. See if you can find _Multinational Monitor_ or _Z_ at a newsstand.
How would you restrict our government's unsavory activities? What kind of public oversight do you think is necessary?
The "mainstream" press will never be a check on the elites, because it's theirs. Perhaps Internet will challenge the mass press eventually, at least among the political class.The most powerful mechanism of political corruption in the USA, in my opinion, is campaign financing. Nothing will change until there is public financing, full disclosure, equal time on radio and TV for all candidates. Politicians will never allow reforms like opening the black budgets, public input on defense procurement, or stopping the lobbyists, until they are forced to go to the electorate instead of the lobbyists. So we have to start at the root of the problem.
The second most powerful mechanism of political corruption in the USA is the "revolving door" between government and industry. Gov't employees should be barred from taking a job with a corporation they bought from or regulated for at least 10 years. The current rule is three years for the military and one year civilian, and even that is not enforced.