QandO

September 06, 2004

Operation Dewey Canyon IV
Posted by McQ

In April of 1971, John Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) held a 6 day event they called Operation Dewey Canyon III, which they billed as the “invasion of Washington DC". It was named after a military operation in Vietnam in which Army of Vietnam (ARVN) forces invaded Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail (it was the major supply and troop movement route from North Vietnam into South Vietnam and traveled mostly through Laos).

This is the beginning of my own personal operation “Dewey Canyon IV”. I'll be talking more about this as the election nears. While its 35 years ago, its very important to me. This particular article is an attempt to give readers who weren't around at the time a feeling for the era in which Kerry and VVAW operated.

Looking only at Kerry’s testimony in June of 1971, without some understanding of the era lessens its impact. It is the sum of all of the activities, events, speeches and movements which have to be looked at and understood in order to give the era context. You have to have a feel for the whole to understand how the participants in these movements were considered by many to be A) wrong and B) bent on the destruction of the military and, if they could have effected it, a revolutionary change in the government of the US.

And for a while, John Kerry was right there in the middle of the most radical of them.

Probably the best place to start is with the movement’s most well known figure. As is well known, Jane Fonda worked quite closely with John Kerry’s VVAW, helped fund it and spoke at rallies with John Kerry. But I’ll cover that later. Jane Fonda also was one of the founders of FTA (and that doesn’t stand for Fun Travel and Adventure). It stood for “F**k The Army.” It was an organization which promoted its agenda through coffee houses it supported near army bases in the US.

Jane Fonda also helped in the organization of a production group called the F.T.A. (F*** The Army). This group helped to set up coffee houses near military bases where they would perform anti-war derogatory-type sketches for the visiting soldiers. The coffee-house sketches were intended to counterpoint the U.S.O. shows, such as Bob Hope and other U.S.O. sponsored performers whose performances increased morale and gave positive support to American soldiers. Some of the F.T.A. coffee house employees would mingle with the soldiers to help them to "relax and unwind", while encouraging the soldiers to desert. Some soldiers alleged that they were promised jobs and money by the F.T.A. if they deserted.

Its hard, today, to imagine other Americans attempting to get American soldiers to desert the Army or satirizing them involved in combat in Iraq.

But they did.

Another aspect of the era was the attempt of socialists to support, infiltrate and then direct the anti-war movement.

During the 10 years of the anti-war movement from 1965-1975, the revolutionary Marxist wing of the movement, represented at that time by the Socialist Workers Party (special note - Socialist Action comes out of the SWP, identifies with the politics of the SWP from this period), went from being a small minority within a small movement to part of the leadership of a movement of millions.

Fonda, of course, was very open to this association:

On November 21, 1970 she told a University of Michigan audience of some two thousand students, "If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist." At Duke University in North Carolina she repeated what she had said in Michigan, adding "I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to communism."

As you might imagine the USSR and North Vietnam also had interest in the anti-war movement at the time and some links have been established (and admitted too) that they provided heavy support to the movement. But more important, at least to those who fought there, is this:

The Wall Street Journal (August 3, 1995) published an interview with Bui Tin who served on the General Staff of the North Vietnam Army and received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. During the interview Mr. Tin was asked if the American antiwar movement was important to Hanoi's victory. Mr. Tin responded "It was essential to our strategy" referring to the war being fought on two fronts, the Vietnam battlefield and back home in America through the antiwar movement on college campuses and in the city streets. He further stated the North Vietnamese leadership listened to the American evening news broadcasts "to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement."

Visits to Hanoi made by persons such as Jane Fonda, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and various church ministers "gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses." Mr. Tin surmised that "America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win."

Not to mention John Kerry’s trips to Paris to meet with the North Vietnamese.

The event which most exemplifies how the anti-war movement in conjunction with the media weakened the hand of the US and strengthened the hand of North Vietnam was Tet of ‘68.

Mr. Tin further advised that General Vo Nguyen Giap (Commanding General of the North Vietnam Army) said the 1968 Tet Offensive was a defeat.

The military defeat of North Vietnam after the Tet Offensive of 1968 became a political victory for North Vietnam because of anti-war demonstrations and the sensationalism of the news media. The North Vietnamese interpreted the U.S. reaction to these events as the weakening of America's resolve to win the war. The North Vietnamese believed that victory could be theirs, if they stayed their course.

While the North Vietnamese knew they’d suffered a very large loss, the American media chose to portray Tet as a defeat for the US military and the anti-war movment stepped up its activities:

From 1969 until the end of the war, over 20,000 American soldiers lost their lives in a war that the United States did not have the resolve to win. The sensationalism by the American news media and the anti-war protests following the 1968 Tet Offensive gave hope to Communist North Vietnam, strengthening their belief that their will to succeed was greater than ours. Instead of seeking a successful resolution at the Paris Peace Conference following the disastrous defeat of the 1968 Tet Offensive, they employed delay tactics as another tool to inflame U.S. politics. This delaying tactic spurned further anti-war demonstrations. Those who sensationalized their reporting of the war and those who supported anti-war demonstrations are guilty of giving our enemy hope.

In hindsight, and according to the North Vietnamese own words, it is clear that had the US and its citizens resolved to win in Vietnam, it could have and there’d be a free South Vietnam today. But just as clear is that the possibility was essentially destroyed by the media and anti-war movement after Tet of ‘68.

20,000+ additional Americans lost their lives after Tet because the reaction of the American media and the American anti-war movement helped turn a American victory of huge proportion into a “defeat” and expand the civil dissonance at home. Those 20,000 dead paid the price for the negative image the media and subsequent activities of the anti-war movement gave to prosecuting the war further. Encouraged to hold on by those developments, North Vietnam did just that.

As questioned in this account:

The country’s youth, the ones dying in the line fire, began demanding answers to Americas high profile presence in Vietnam. They wanted to know why peace talks were organized and continually failed.

Why did they continually fail? Bui Tin answered that question above.

All of this took place among radical changes in our culture. The campuses exploded. Music and musicians took up the anti-war mantra. The radical black power movement began to emerge. The will of the people as regards the war was slowly sapped by the media's treatment of the war and the anti-war movements activities.

Once the draft was introduced young people on college and university campuses all around the country began to organise protests against the war. Teach-ins and student organizations like the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) held rallies and marches, the first of which happened in Washington in April of 1965. Over the next 2 years the anti-war movement snow balled. Activists, celebrities and musicians like Abbie Hoffmann, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Jane Fonda, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, and countless others took up the Anti-war cause and waved Anti-war banners. Their speeches and their music reflected the anger and hopelessness that Americans felt over the Vietnam war. Even the GIs stationed overseas began supporting the Anti-war movement in whatever capacity they could, from wearing peace symbols to refusing to obey orders.

Perhaps the most defining event in the anti-war movement’s eyes, was Kent State. Kent State came to be symbolized as all that was wrong with America when 4 students were killed by tired and badly led National Guardsmen. What is rarely told are the events which led up to the Kent State killlings:

Saturday began quietly. Black student leaders, who had been demanding the admission next year of 5,000 more blacks to Kent State (it now has about 600), and leaders of the mounting antiwar sentiment on campus talked of joining forces. They got administrative approval to hold a rally that evening on the ten- acre Commons at the center of the campus. There, despite the presence of faculty members and student marshals, militant war protesters managed to take complete charge of a crowd of about 800, many still smarting from the conflict of the night before. They disrupted a dance in one university hall, then attacked the one-story Army ROTC building facing the Commons. They smashed windows and threw lighted railroad flares inside. The building caught fire. When firemen arrived, students threw rocks at them and cut their hoses with machetes until police interceded with tear gas.

Obviously it was a complete overreaction to fire on unarmed students, but the violence which preceeded the shootings had put tired Guardsmen on edge. That’s never mentioned in the popular literature which condemened Kent State at the time. It was all about the evil military.

With the context painted above, it is now time to look more closely at John Kerry’s part in all of this:

The Vietnam Veterans Against the War Organization received major financial support from Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda's F.T.A. coffee houses helped in recruiting soldiers and veterans for the Vietnam Veterans Against The War Organization. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War Organization membership was approximately 7,000 at it's highest. The Organization's membership number was comparatively low, when you consider that more than 2 1/2 million Americans served during the Vietnam war.

And the VVAW was embarked on an agenda every bit as radical as that of Jane Fonda.

An example of that agenda can be found here in a partial time-line on the VVAW which concentrates on the time Kerry was a leader there. You can see the time-line in its entirety here.

During this portion of the timeline, John Kerry was among the national leadership of the VVAW. The time-line takes up a month after his testimony before the Senate. Note in particular the August 1971 entry and the activities and supporters of the VVAW. Also note the quote from Kerry in the November 7th edition of the Sunday Oklahoman:

July 17, 1971 -- Following a month-long speaking tour of the Soviet Union and other countries, six VVAW and CCI members meet with PRG representatives in Paris to show support for the communist peace plan.

July 20, 1971 -- Leaders of the VVAW hold a staff meeting. They agree to use the designations favored by North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and the Vietcong (Provisional Revolutionary Government) for future press releases, decide to remove all American flags from VVAW offices, and discuss how best to handle Al Hubbard's planned trip to Hanoi.

July 24, 1971 -- The Daily World features a photograph of John Kerry speaking in support of the Provisional Revolutionary Government (Vietcong) Seven Point Plan.

August, 1971 -- The FBI opens a full investigation of the VVAW to "determine the extent of control over VVAW by subversive groups and/or violence-prone elements in the antiwar movement," noting that "sources had provided information that VVAW was stockpiling weapons, VVAW had been in contact with North Vietnam officials in Paris, France, VVAW was receiving funds from former CPUSA members and VVAW was aiding and financing U.S. military deserters. Additionally, information had been received that some individual chapters throughout the country had been infiltrated by the youth groups of the CPUSA and the SWP [Socialist Workers Party]." Source: FBI Memorandum to Senate Select Committee, 12/2/75, pp. 2-3; Hearings, Vol. 6, Exhibit 72.

August, 1971 -- VVAW Executive Committee member Joe Urgo travels with other antiwar leaders to North Vietnam, where he meets with Prime Minister Pham Van Dong and others. According to FBI records, (see PDF file) Urgo makes the following proposals to the communist leaders: 1) that the VVAW make tapes to be broadcast over Radio Hanoi to get U.S. troops to stop fighting, and 2) to send a VVAW delegation to Hanoi in the near future.

Late August, 1971 -- Kerry and Hubbard meet with leftist millionaires in East Hampton to promote the VVAW and show film clips of atrocity claims from the Winter Soldier Investigation. According to the New York Times, a request for funds had the attendees "scrambling for pens and checkbooks."

Early November, 1971 -- According to FBI records, (see PDF file) Al Hubbard meets with the North Vietnamese and Vietcong delegations in Paris. Hubbard's trip comes in response to an invitation to "VVAW, Communist Party (CP) USA, and left wing group in Paris, name unrecalled," and is financed by the Communist Party USA.

November 7, 1971 -- John Kerry tells the Sunday Oklahoman that the political power structure within the United States can and must change if the nation is to avoid violent efforts to seize power, saying, "If it (the government) doesn't change we are asking for trouble. If it is not done, those who are talking about seizing it will have every right to go after it." [see page 251 of Section 10 of the VVAW FBI files]

November 12 - 15, 1971 -- the VVAW leadership meets in Kansas City. Fearing surveillance by authorities, the group relocates the meeting to another building. They debate, then vote down a plan to assassinate several pro-war U.S. Senators. Despite John Kerry's claim to have left the VVAW before this event, several witnesses, meeting minutes and FBI records eventually place Kerry at the Kansas City meeting.

November 15, 1971 -- After trying unsuccessfully to have Al Hubbard removed from the group's leadership, John Kerry resigns from the Executive Committee of the VVAW for personal reasons. Kerry will continue to represent the organization in interviews and public appearances for several months.

So you have an organization, in which John Kerry is a leader (up too Nov. 15th of ‘71) speaking in favor of the enemy’s 7 point plan, in contact with the North Vietnamese delegation in Paris, traveling to North Vietnam and meeting with NV leaders, talking about the (justified in their minds) violent overthrow of the American government and the assassination of key congressmen who oppose their point of view.

As is obvious, vets of that era had to live and work in an atmosphere poisoned by the likes of Jane Fonda and John Kerry. It is the era which fuels the rage many veterans feel when they think of what John Kerry said and that in which John Kerry was involved.

Because of the events described and the activities of the protesters, morale in the military was at an all-time low. Serving became a stigma. Members of the military were made to feel ashamed. And in the civilian world, police officers who we respectfully call “first responders” and hero’s today were routinely referred to as Pigs back then.

58,000 died in Vietnam for essentially nothing because America’s antiwar movement convinced America it couldn’t win.

To this day, I believe they were wrong..

In late 1974, Communist forces had overran Saigon. Within a few short months most of Indochina would fall into Communist hands. The Domino Theory finally stopped at the border of Thailand. Millions in the countries taken over died. Millions fled. And hundreds of thousands were sent to reeducation camps, from which they never returned.

In the end, the protesters demand, as shown in this picture, came true.

Its now time for the ‘70s radical turned politician to face his past and those he, in my opinion, wronged with his words and activities. Not only here, but in Vietnam.

He’s now talking about “keeping faith” with those in the military? Excuse me if I’m more than a little leery

As one vet is quoted as saying, “defeating John Kerry would be the parade we never got.”

I couldn’t agree more.

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