Speech Against Vietnam, Essay Example

On this day, October 15^th, 1969, Vietnam Moratorium Day, I am honored to be here , and delighted to see you all here in support of peace and in protest of this war. I come to this central zone of higher education today to address a critical issue that could impact the entire world.  As Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out in his 1967 speech on the Vietnam war, ay in the successful resolution of the problem. While all parties involved night  have justifiable reason to be skeptical of the U.S. Government, history has shown that “conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides”.

For one to truly understand the impact that war has on a nation of people, specifically the impact it has on the soldiers themselves, their families and the communities they seek to protect, we must look to wars of the past. John Huston, one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century, caught much flack from the U.S. Government due to the extreme realism he depicted in his war documentaries. The Battle of San Pietro is one of his most acclaimed documentary films. San Pietro, located sixty miles from Naples, is one of the locations during World War II. The film was shot by Jules Buck and released in the U.S. In 1945. Huston and his crew followed the U.S. Army’s 143rd Regiment of the 36th Division. Huston’s documentary closely filmed  infantrymen on the battle front as they engaged in war and struggled their way up the hillsides to reach San Pietro. The filming staff  was in close proximity to war as these cameramen were in just as much danger as the soldiers they followed. The explosions, the bullets flying near by and ricocheting off walls all put the filling staff at risk as they fought to bring the reality of war to the public. This was a reality based on close-up scenes of dead soldiers wrapped in mattresses and body bags. The U.S. Army wanted to prevent the release of Huston’s film because they felt it would reduce morale regarding World War II. This is the same type of reality we face today during the Vietnam War, a reality that if we are not honest in embracing, there may never be a resolution. Eventually, the U.S. Army took on the routine of sharing the videos with soldiers for training purposes, to psychologically prepare them for the horrors of war.

Because it showed dead G.I.s wrapped in mattress covers and troops in other unflattering positions, some officers tried to prevent soldiers in training from seeing it, for fear of damaging morale. General George Marshall came to Huston and the film’s defense, stating that because of the film’s gritty realism, it would make a good training film. The depiction of death would inspire soldiers to take their training more seriously but it also brings audiences closer to the intense reality of war, which the U.S. Government felt would quickly lead to opposition to the war. Huston quickly became unpopular with the U.S. Army, partly for his film but also for affirming his gritty take on war was indeed an anti-war film. The main premise of his films was that while some wars must be waged, they don’t come without a severe price.

What Huston’s experience reveals is that the U.S. government is only able to acknowledge the harsh reality of war so long as it feeds into their war hungry agenda. Huston shows real war, the war we as a national community deal with on a daily basis, does not happen without a price. The price is steep. As of today, Americans killed in the Vietnam war have reached over 36,000 troops . While this number is significantly less than the Vietnamese losses, the American losses have exceeded Korean War deaths.  On average, 242 troops are being killed every seven days.  These deaths  cause substantial tragedy and anguish for hundreds of homes all over the country. The worst lie perpetuated about the Vietnam war is the notion that somehow events transpiring from the war have something to do with current events, when the desire to re-colonize the Vietnam region and get it back under western control has been a major focus of the U.S. Government since long before the war ever officially started.

Conflicts between the U.S. Government and the Vietnamese started when nine years after 1945, the U.S. Government denied people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years, the U.S. government aggressively supported the French in their efforts to try and recolonize Vietnam. By the end of the war, the U.S. was covering nearly 80 percent of French war costs. Near the end of this war, when the French were close to being defeated, the French started to regret their recklessness and underestimation of the Vietnamese. They regretted their attempt to recolonize the region, but the U.S.  did not express regret. Instead we further encouraged the French to continue the effort through providing significant military supplies. This form of hypocritical action perpetuated by the U.S. Government and its subsequent institutions is no new trend.

My familiarity with the U.S. Government and their political interactions with the Black Panther Party and black community has already established a firm understanding in my mind of how and why U.S. Presence in Vietnam is growing in impact by the day. The most challenging but highly necessary task is to speak for those who have been disenfranchised or isolated from their rights and the ability to defend themselves within dialogues concerning the war. I speak specifically of the Vietnamese who are at a disadvantage in these dialogues when it comes to having their views and concerns voiced. We as a nation, including those who have been actively involved in profiting from this war and those that have sat idly by have destroyed aspects of value and importance for the nation building of the U.S. Government.  their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land, their crops, and other resources required for upheaval and institution building. We have taken part in the collapse of the Buddhist Church of the Vietnamese region, corrupted their nations social resources in the integrity of its children and women.

The most challenging but highly necessary task is to speak for those who have been disenfranchised or isolated from their rights and the ability to defend themselves within dialogues concerning the war. I speak specifically of the Vietnamese who are at a disadvantage in these dialogues when it comes to having their views and concerns voiced. The Vietnamese  must view Americans as odd liberators. When the Vietnamese people claimed independence in 1954, or to be more exact in 1945, following a combined French and Japanese occupation but preceding the communist revolution in China; even under the leadership of U.S. Friendly Ho Chi Minh, and even after the country quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own freedom documents, The U.S. Government still chose not to recognize Vietnam as independence. Instead, The. U.S. Supported the French and their efforts to recolonize Vietnam, clearly taking a political or ideological position over one of global justice and uniformity.

Huston’s graphic films on the impact of war, the U.S and their behavior towards the Vietnamese in the past, and its likeness to the many unjust atrocities it has imposed on its people; all of these are significant factors that show the way of war is not the way towards peace, but it’s definitely a part of the U.S. agenda.  It is now our chance as a nation to decide whether we want to go with our hearts and what we know is right and just, or continue following along the same path of ideologically based international policy, actions grounded in rhetoric instead of value and substance. It’s time to wake up and acknowledge the many manipulative tools the U.S. Government has put into place to keep and illogical international policy agenda floating. The majority of money lacking from the education system in the country can be found in the bloated military budget, which is treated more as a bottomless pit of urgent national security needs than an actual budgetary expenditure. The true impact of our efforts can only be known when we start actively trying to produce change. Before we can hold our government accountable, we must first hold ourselves accountable.