Interview 2
April 27, 2000

Professor Cheryl Greenberg,  History Department, Trinity College

I'm not sure if the following question involved you.  To what extent were you involved in antiwar protest?

You’re very polite.  No, it doesn’t involve me.  I remember wearing a black armband to school in seventh grade, which was the thing to do in protest.   I also remember MIA bracelets, which was a silver bracelet that said the name of an MIA on it and that was to remember them, keep their memory alive.  I did not have one but I do remember them.  Something about the war, that was antiwar.  Needless to say I was but didn’t have the faintest idea why. 

Which do you believe was a greater issue of tension in the antiwar community? The sending of U.S. troops to Vietnam or U.S. aggression against Vietnam? 

Well, it’s a complicated question.  The people who were antiwar because they thought the war was wrong, which was the core, I think opposed American involvement in Vietnam, period.  Not just sending troops but the bombings.  I think thought that that was the central core.  The antiwar protests were huge and I think in large measure because people didn’t want to go.  In that sense, probably the majority of protesters were concerned about the draft and having to go themselves, not concerned about American involvement.  Obviously, if you didn’t have involvement, you wouldn’t have to go.  On the other hand, it is stuff like the Christmas bombings, that Nixon did, the bombings of Cambodia, which was a neutral country... that got people crazy.  That of course wasn’t about the draft; it was about American involvement at all.  Obviously, the more we get involved the more people fight.  It is hard to separate it.  I think the core of people thought it was inappropriate for America to be involved, period, because of the anti-imperialistic sense that this was a war for independence and that kind of stuff.  I think that a large number of protesters turned out primarily because there was a threat that they would have to go.

How were foreign leaders such as Ho Chi Minh viewed by the majority of protesters, and the American public in general?

I think again there was a split.  There were people in the antiwar movement who just thought we should just stay out of it.  They were no fan of Ho Chi Minh, a Communist, bad guy.  No one was under any delusions that he was a good democratic leader or anything like that.  I think they thought it was not our business, it was a French colony, they through the French out, and we step in as the imperial power, that’s inappropriate.  This is a war of independence, it is a civil war, let them sort it out.   I do think there was another group though; I do not know how to assess which group was bigger.  There was a substantial group that was not only antiwar because we shouldn’t be involved, but antiwar because they thought we were on the wrong side and were supporters of Ho Chi Minh.  This was the Jane Fonda faction.  Not that Jane led it but she was a visible one who went.  There were folks who went to North Vietnam and supported the North Vietnamese cause as opposed to just simply saying let them sort it out.  I think they were big fans of Ho Chi Minh in part because the Southern government was so corrupt and terrible that it was hard not to advocate their overthrow, and in part because I think they had some real sympathy for the West.  Ho Chi Minh was perceived as a Nationalist, a freedom fighter, a leftist, a socialist.  There was a group that said lets stay out of it and another group that said we actually like the North Vietnamese and Ho Chi Minh. 

How did the majority of protesters view U.S. leaders such as President Johnson and Nixon?

With great disdain, obviously.  Johnson ends up getting into trouble.  The protests don’t start until partway through Johnson’s career, so he gets away with a lot in the early years when people weren’t really fully paying attention.  By the end he is of course fully involved and therefore discredited by the war.  Nixon is so unreal; it’s bad news as far as the protesters are concerned.  There is actually this pitiful scene when they’re protesting in front of the Pentagon and Nixon actually goes out to talk to them.  It’s pitiful, he’s a poor old guy that can’t stand that people don’t like him and he’s a corrupt evil guy to begin with, it’s a kind of pitiful scene.  Anyway, nobody liked Nixon.  None of the protesters liked Nixon.  They were not fans of Johnson either.  He was a sellout, a warmonger.  I think they’re special ire was saved for Nixon.  In part because Johnson was good on other stuff like civil rights, and in part because it was earlier, and in part because Johnson was a democrat, whereas Nixon had none of those things going for him.  Nixon of course also did things like the secret bombing.  He says he has a plan, gets elected, and then his plan is no plan.  He stalls on the peace talks.  Once Congress money pulls money for troops he bombs.  He does these secret bombings, secret of course only from us.  They’re not secret from the people we’re bombing.  There are all sorts of ways he tries to get around public opinion when it finally does shift that makes things even worse for him, in terms of public opinion. 

In your opinion, how significant was the role of the media in portraying the first televised war?

Clearly it was pivotal.  I think there are two factors that made the antiwar protest so large.  One as I said before is that the draft reached all the way up.   By the end of the draft, even a student deferment didn’t help you.  So, people who ordinarily just let other people go get shot up were suddenly in danger of going to war.   I think that swelled the ranks of protesters.   The other thing that helped not just the protesters but helped turn general public opinion against the war is the media.  I just don’t think there is any question about that.   It was certainly no more bloody than World War II or World War I, but we didn’t have television in World War II and World War I to show us this stuff.  When you see this stuff on TV every single night, you sit down to dinner and turn on the TV and there are body counts.  And there are bodies being pulled up.  You see them walking through the forest and getting their legs blown off with landmines.  It was unbelievable.  And of course the Tet Offensive, which failed ultimately as a military move, which was to throw the American out by attacking the embassies and stuff like that.  It failed but they win because it was allover the media.   Americans see the embassy overrun by North Vietnamese and they see that suddenly there is this invasion and attack when Nixon said it was all solved, we’re ok, everything’s under control.   I think people said oh my God, we’re really not going to be able to win this, even though we won that piece, public opinion shifted as a result of it and I think it’s all because it was televised. 

Did policy makers, older generations of Americans, or student protesters perceive the Communist threat as a real threat?

First of all, I don’t think they protestors who saw Communism as a threat in that way.  Second of all, I think there were protestors who were anti-Soviet or anti-Chinese or pro Cold War, but they did not necessarily see Vietnam as a location for fighting out the Cold War.  They could say this is a war of national liberation; it’s not about that.  Some people didn’t care if it was about that or not because they were not sympathetic to the Cold War or didn’t think it was a real issue.  Even those who were protesting thought it wasn’t a place to fight the Cold War.  

Although you have touched upon this question already, how did the My Lai Massacre and the Tet Offensive, often referred to as the “turning point” of the war, affect America’s perceptions and attitudes towards the Vietnam War?

I’ll skip the Tet Offensive because you don’t need it twice.  My Lai was so unbelievable.  Now all this stuff has come out about Korea and how Americans shot at unarmed civilians and massacred them, under orders.  The thing about My Lai I think is exactly the same.  The Tet Offensive was stunning to everybody because we thought things were under control and the North Vietnamese proved they weren’t.  The My Lai massacre was stunning for a completely different reason.  People who supported the war thought that we were on the side of good, and here was a guy who massacred babies.  I don’t even know how I can articulate...it was the first time that Americans knew that Americans participated in this kind of genocidal slaughter.  Everyone understood the claim that you can’t tell one from the other and they’re all wearing pajamas, and you can’t tell who they are until they throw a hand grenade.  Certainly that was true.  The Vietcong operated by getting people who looked like civilians to attack.  In that sense it was true but the massacre was a massacre.  It was cold-blooded slaughter.  It put the line to any claim that we there for any moral reason and I think it felt to many people like the last betrayal of government goodness.  It was a total betrayal of everything America said it stood for.  It’s not that America is the only one that commits these sort of things but we like to say we don’t and we think that we don’t.  We always think that we’re the good guys.  After My Lai I think no one ever believes that we were good anymore.  I just think there is a moral shift that goes on between thinking that you are always moral, which is wrong but at least ennobling, to thinking oh my God, we can commit genocide.  It is an unbelievable sense of betrayal by the government.  It was a terrible moment...not that it was the first time it happened, but the first time Americans had to face the fact that we were as barbaric as everybody else and that we had war aims that we could not even contend were moral or ethical anymore.