Thinking about a different war

I’ve been thinking about the Vietnam War lately—partly because I just completed teaching a class on Asian American Literature at the University of Minnesota, and we spent some time on the Vietnam War because it was the direct cause of almost all the Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian immigration to the US during the past three decades. My class of 31 included three Vietnamese American students and seven Hmong American students, some of whom were born in refugee camps in Thailand where a large number of Hmong people still live, waiting to get home or get out, more than 30 years after the end of the war that dispossessed them of their land. I’ll write more about this—the importance of place and the land in the writing of many Asian American authors is something I was somewhat surprised but pleased to find.

But back to war. I’ve also been thinking about Vietnam because for anyone who remembers that time, especially any US person over the age of about 50, it’s difficult not to compare what is happening today in Iraq with what happened then—the wars themselves and the US reasons for being in them, as well as the public response and the Congressional action (or lack thereof) in stopping both of these insane and dangerous wars. As the job approval rating for Bush sinks below 30 percent, and the Congress elected with a crystal clear mandate last fall to end this war refuses to take up its responsibility, many who remember Vietnam are recalling how that war ended. Some say the Congress simply refused to authorize more funds, and that was it. Is that what really happened?

Not exactly, according to my research. An article published last month in US News and World Report says that Congress didn’t shut off the flow of money as long as US troops were there; but bills proposing this were proposed and voted on a number of times. These bills got significant support, though not enough to pass. There were many other efforts to curtail the war that did pass both houses, including one in 1970 that some may remember preventing Nixon from sending US troops into Cambodia. (Nixon opposed this with the same argument Bush uses today about timelines, that political leaders shouldn’t try to be “armchair generals” and “tie the hands of our commanders on the ground.” Congress in 1970 was not moved by that argument.)

Congresses in the 1960s and 1970s tried a number of different ways to intervene in the war, including various kinds of bills and several sets of hearings. They finally did stop the war, but it took almost 10 years from those first hearings. It was the growing levels of support in the Congress even for the bills that didn’t pass, that helped to convince Nixon to sign the no-troops-in-Cambodia bill, and to realize it was only a matter of time before a bill cutting off the funding would garner enough support to pass both houses. He pulled out the troops during 1972 and 1973 under an imminent threat from Congress to use its power of the purse to force him to do so.

What this article doesn’t mention, or not much, is the connection between public sentiment and Congressional backbone in defying the president. By 1970, especially after early May when the infamous bombing of Cambodia incited a virtual shutdown of college and university campuses for a number of days (and was when the Kent State shootings happened) upwards of 50% of the American public opposed the Vietnam War (I can’t find an accurate figure). There were marches and protests on a regular basis; op-ed columns rang with denunciations; war coverage brought body bags and bomb flashes into everyone’s living room while people ate dinner with Walter Cronkite and Huntley/Brinkley. Congress responded by getting tougher and tougher, and the continual demonstration in the streets and in the press of people’s opposition to the war affected Nixon directly as well, even though he pretended at the time that he was paying no attention.

Today, with so many people disapproving of Bush’s conduct of the war on Iraq, it seems we should be able to muster Congressional strength to take a stronger stand. Instead, we have a Congress that has patted itself on the back until its arm was ready to break, about having sent a bill to the President authorizing money to continue the war until stated deadlines, at which time troops were to begin being sent home. Bush, of course, vetoed that bill, upon which Congressional Democrats decided that they just had no choice but to give him what he wanted, and they threw up their hands and did.

Pundits in the press are even reiterating the completely false idea that Congress’ hands are tied by the Constitution, that without a veto-proof majority they couldn’t refuse to fund the war. Nonsense! One of their main roles in our system is to open, or keep closed, the national purse. If they have a majority to deny funding beyond deadlines they set for troop withdrawal, even if it’s not enough to override a veto, there is nothing to stop them continuing to send such bills to him, and see how many times he would continue to veto such bills while public outrage grew, which it undoubtedly would. Congressmembers are under no constitutional obligation to pass a funding bill just because the majority to override a veto isn’t there. In this, they could take some lessons from Congresses of 35 years ago. Their hands are only tied by their unwillingness to fully claim and use the power they have, which is, of course, the power given to them in the Constitution to prevent exactly what is happening—a president and an administration who want to conduct a war that the people don’t want.

I realize this posting doesn’t relate to ecopsychology in any discernible way; I hope you will return in coming weeks because the subject of Vietnam, which has been occupying my mind a lot lately, does weave into ecopsychological concerns—but first I had to get this question about Congress and its possible actions to end the war and allow the voice of the people to be heard, which does connect to the topic of this blog, Grassroots Democracy.

Comments

[heather]

Hi Betsy. It's great to see you here and your post is really good and powerful. I'm really looking forward to your thinking on this and it's really important to include the critical task in ecopsychology. EVERY issue has an ecopsy perspective... Many thanks. :)

[Betsy Barnum]

Thanks, Heather. A member of a listserve I very occasionally send something to, liked what I had written to that list, and asked me if I had a blog! Well, who knew! I used to have a blog, or be part of a blog, though it was 18 months since my last posting here! I have some time now, so I hope to sharpen up my observations of what's going on, and add some contributions here again. I do agree that the war, and almost any other topic, has its ecosychological aspects. Perhaps I can try to address some of them more diretly in an upcoming message.