[Vision2020] “His View: My West Coast journey as a Vietnam War protester”

[Nicholas Gier]

Thanks, Tom, for posting this.  Attached is the long version.  Here is one
paragraph that I want to share here.

On October 11, 2017, Trump did not stand nor did he stop talking to Sean
Hannity during a bugle call at a hangar for the Pennsylvania Air National
Guard in Harrisburg. Totally clueless as to military protocol, Trump
thought that the music was for them: “What a nice sound that is. Are they
playing that for you or for me”? Trump turned to the audience and said:
“They’re playing that in honor of [Hannity’s] ratings.”

Can we possibly survive this idiot?

nfg

On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 3:54 AM, Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com> wrote:

> Courtesy of today’s (October 12, 2017) *Moscow-Pullman Daily News* with
> thanks to Nick Gier.
>
> — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
>
> His View: My West Coast journey as a Vietnam War protester
>
> As I watched Ken Burns' and Lynn Novick's "Vietnam War," a flood of
> memories came over me. Although I flinched and occasionally cried during
> the film, I stuck with each episode from beginning to end.
>
> In the summer of 1964, I was working for the U.S. Forest Service on the
> Olympic Peninsula. As my crew got off work on Aug. 5, we turned on the
> radio. An announcer reported that President Lyndon Johnson had ordered the
> bombing of North Vietnam. We all cheered and shouted, as close as I can
> remember, "Get those dirty Commies!"
>
> Thanks to the publication of "The Pentagon Papers," we now know that the
> pretext for the bombing was a lie. Johnson claimed that the destroyer USS
> Maddox had been attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats, when in fact
> the Maddox was in an offensive, not defensive position. It was gathering
> intelligence for South Vietnamese raids on North Vietnamese islands.
>
> I returned to Oregon State University that fall, and by the spring of
> 1965, in a dramatic about-face, I was being called a "Commie lover." Along
> with my adviser in religious studies, we founded the Student-Faculty
> Committee to End the War in Vietnam. We organized on-campus protests, and
> we also went out to picket at regional military facilities.
>
> During that time, a State Department representative visited campus to
> defend the Johnson administration's prosecution of the war. After his talk,
> I stood up and protested the carpet bombing by B-52 Stratofortresses. I was
> near tears when I also pointed out the immorality of using napalm, which
> causes huge fire storms when dropped.
>
> The Burns/Novick series gave us more details about the 9-year-old girl Kim
> Phuc, who was badly burned by napalm while fleeing Trang Bang. South
> Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut won a Pulitzer Prize for an iconic image
> that symbolized the atrocities of the Vietnam War.
>
> Phuc is now a Canadian citizen and peace activist, and the film's
> unnarrated image of her holding her infant with her horribly scarred back
> turned to us is just as heart-wrenching as Ut's prize-winning photo.
>
> In the spring of 1966, I was called up for a physical, even though I had a
> student deferment. Along with a busload of other OSU students, we were
> driven to an induction center in Portland. As far as I could tell, I passed
> the exam, and upon returning to Corvallis, I was seriously considering
> moving to Canada.
>
> Soon thereafter I received a 1-Y classification, which meant that I was
> "qualified for military service only in time of national emergency." Some
> friends told me, without verification, that 1-Ys were being given to war
> protestors to avoid dissension in the ranks. I chose not to follow up on
> this.
>
> In 1967, I started my studies at Claremont Graduate University in
> California. I followed the war, but my main focus was on my classes. That
> changed with the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970. Once again, I took
> the lead (I was president of the Graduate Student Council), and about one
> hundred students joined me in a sit-in at campus administration offices.
>
> When I came to Moscow in 1972, I was occupied with a new job, a new wife,
> a mortgage and, soon, a baby daughter. My last anti-war effort came in
> campaigning for Sen. George McGovern, a veteran bomber pilot, and one of
> the most honorable men to ever run for the presidency.
>
> A President McGovern could not have done much to mitigate the disaster for
> the South Vietnamese that years of lies had made inevitable. He would,
> however, have served a full term, and he would have facilitated a national
> healing far better than a corrupt and disgraced President Richard Nixon.
>
> — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
>
> Thanks for the memories, Nick.
>
> *“Ohio” *by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
> http://www.TomandRodna.com/Songs/Ohio.mp3
>
> (sing along . . . )
>
> “Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
> We're finally on our own
> This summer I hear the drumming
> Four dead in Ohio
>
> Gotta get down to it
> Soldiers are cutting us down
> Should have been done long ago
> What if you knew her
> And found her dead on the ground
> How can you run when you know?
>
> Gotta get down to it
> Soldiers are cutting us down
> Should have been done long ago
> What if you knew her
> And found her dead on the ground
> How can you run when you know?
>
> Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
> We're finally on our own
> This summer I hear the drumming
> Four dead in Ohio”
>
> Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .
>
> "Moscow Cares"
> http://www.MoscowCares.com <http://www.moscowcares.com/>
>
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
>
>
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-- 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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