Toward an honest commemoration of the American War in Vietnam

The Full Disclosure campaign is a Veterans For Peace effort to speak truth to power and keep alive the antiwar perspective on the American war in Viet Nam — which is being commemorated during this decade with a series of 50th anniversary events. Full Disclosure represents a clear alternative to the Pentagon’s current efforts to sanitize and mythologize that war, and to thereby legitimize further unnecessary and destructive wars.

September 2 Ho Chi Minh dies of a heart attack at age 79. He is succeeded by Lê Duẩn, who publicly reads part of the last will of Ho Chi Minh urging the North Vietnamese to fight on “until the last Yankee has gone.”

September 5 The U.S. Army brings murder charges against Lt. William Calley concerning the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai on March 16,1968.

Fort Knox coffee house is closed by police and the landlord refuses rent on advice of county attorney.

September 12 MPs raid a church in Honolulu, Hawai’i, capturing 12 of 23 anti-war GIs who have taken sanctuary there for 38 days. The other GIs escape.

Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., the Pentagon issues “Guidelines for Handling Dissident and Protest Activities Among Members of the Armed Forces.”

September 14 Several hundred prisoners at California’s Camp Pendleton brig break out of their barracks, setting fires and leaving the prison in shambles before being suppressed by MPs wielding tear gas.

September 16 President Nixon orders the withdrawal of 35,000 soldiers from VietNam and a reduction in draft calls.

September 25 Senator Charles Goodell (R-NY) proposes legislation requiring the withdrawal of U.S. troops and barring use of Congressional funds for maintaining U.S. military personnel by the end of 1970.

“All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory . . . . Memory is haunted, not just by ghostly others but by the horrors we have done, seen, and condoned, or by the unspeakable things from which we have profited.”