Refusing to fight in unjust wars also counts as greatness
By
Mitchell Zimmerman
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But
it takes nothing from those who served in the so-called “good war” — or who were
sacrificed in more recent and more dubious wars — to observe that resisting an
unjust war can also make a generation “great.” Those who were born around the
end of World War II, among whom I number myself, and came of age in the 1960s
did something rare in the annals of nations: we rejected our own country’s “patriotic”
call to fight, kill and die in an unjust war.
Our
generation recognized that the war in Vietnam was a barbaric crusade, a war against
the people of Vietnam, and we declined to join the parade.
Our
generation was not unpatriotic. But we were revolted by the images we saw each
day on television and in the newspapers, visions of burning Vietnamese villages,
children scarred by napalm, and bullet-ridden bodies of babies, small children,
women and old men.
We
came to understand that the excuses for the mass
murder were lies. America was neither defending itself in Vietnam — confirmed
by the fact that communism did not wash over our shores after the war was lost
— nor were we defending freedom or democracy by killing millions of civilians
to preserve a succession of unpopular client regimes in South Vietnam.
My
generation saw the evil of the war, and determined to refuse, avoid, evade or escape
“service” in that war however we could.
By the end of the war, those members of our generation who had not succeeded in avoiding conscription — those in the dissolving U.S. military forces — also organized themselves against the war.
They met in anti-war coffeehouses
near military bases; they published hundreds of GI-written
anti-war newspapers; they led peace demonstrations both in-country and at
military bases in the U.S.; and they were often jailed for refusing to fight.
Their opposition was critical to ending the war.
Many of our generation did participate in a fight for freedom — not with guns or bombs and not overseas, but here in the United States, confronting violent adversaries with peaceful determination in the civil rights movement. Our freedom movement was a struggle for voting rights and human dignity, a fight against racism, segregation and white supremacy.
That nonviolent movement ultimately brought
down the South’s legal apartheid system and revived American democracy. And our
movement triggered a resurgence of the women’s movement and inspired other
movements for social justice.
America needs to acknowledge that different generations are called to greatness in different ways. The critical challenge taken up by today’s younger generations is that of climate change, which threatens the entire human race.
May we live to celebrate
their greatness in a future in which we have avoided the worst effects of climate
change and have equitably protected those most likely to be victims of catastrophic
global heating!
As
we pay homage to the sacrifices of those who fought with guns, let us not glorify
war itself nor see greatness most of all in violent, military approaches to the
problems within and among nations. The generations of Americans who strove for
justice through peaceful means are as worthy of memorialization and honor as the
greatest of warriors.
Mitchell Zimmerman
Los Angeles Review of Books on my novel: "Gripping and harrowing . . . Mississippi Reckoning punches the reader in the guts with intersecting stories of terrible violence arising from the sickness of white supremacy."
Pulitzer Prize winning historian Eric Foner: “Rooted in history, this riveting novel strikingly illuminates our tortured racial past—and its legacy in the present.” Kirkus: "Riveting." Ark Dem-Gazette: "Powerful."
