Good Morning.
I watched the movie The Post over the weekend. It's the true story of Katharine Graham, owner of The Washington Post, who was forced to make a difficult choice during the Vietnam era about whether to publish the disturbing details of The Pentagon Papers. Graham enjoyed friendships with several government officials who planned and carried out the war, including Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and had to decide whether to protect those relationships or print the truth for the public. Meryl Streep gives a superb performance as a woman who struggles with her decision, and Tom Hanks is top-notch as Ben Bradlee, the newspaper's editor, who is much more certain about what should be done with the documents.
Vietnam was a terrible ordeal for every American over the age of eighteen at the time. I knew people who felt compelled to support the war without question, including those who served with distinction, even some who were killed or wounded. I also knew people who thought the war was unjustifiable, that the cost in human life was immoral, and that the billions of dollars required to pay for it should be spent on humanitarian efforts or basic services at home.
"Make love, not war," the signs read, as young adults, many of them highly intelligent and from responsible parents, left their homes or college dorms to demonstrate, whether they were sober, stoned, or singing the folk music that captured the frustration of the time. Some of them drove around the country in VW vans and lived in communes, much to the dismay of the over-forty public. Others figured out how to get exempted from military service, hid out from draft boards through underground networks, and if all else failed, fled to Canada. They were called a variety of unflattering names by those who objected to their appearance, lifestyle, or anti-war views while the obviously more enlightened sat around in their suburban havens, sipping on cocktails so the evening news with footage of bombings and body bags wouldn't be as hard to swallow.
The churches also got into the discussion with some of them calling for an end to the hostilities and many from their congregations angry about being told what to think, even when the war involved the burning of innocent civilians with napalm and the trashing of a country's natural habitat with Agent Orange that also poisoned any human who came in contact with it. The hawks were more upset when the anti-war crowd occupied a city park with some pretty trees and a little grass. The demonstrations connected to the 1968 Democratic convention and plenty of other venues were bloody and violent with the protesters determined to be heard even if it meant being painfully, even brutally, restrained by authorities. The war in Vietnam dragged on for several more years after the 1968 presidential election and was ultimately lost after fifty-eight thousand American lives were sacrificed and scores of others came home with physical and mental injuries that would mess them up for the rest of their lives.
The movie drives home in no uncertain terms that government officials, including several presidents, knew almost from the get-go that the war could not be won by the United States and proceeded with it anyway, ignoring the horrific loss of life that brought so much suffering to so many people. Only a handful of officeholders spoke up during that time, one of them being South Dakota Senator George McGovern who was nominated by his party for the presidency in 1972 and defeated in every state but Massachusetts by Richard Nixon who eventually had to resign in ignominy.
In September of 2005, my husband and I spent a long, difficult hour looking up the names of the people we knew on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington and watching dozens of other visitors do the same thing. I couldn't begin to identify with what he was feeling as someone who had been on a ship in the midst of the conflict for three years, especially since I'd long ago decided the war was a mistake, but I have always been grateful that we were there together on that day even though it
was gut-wrenching for him that men he knew had died and for me that anyone had to die at all.
Please get The Post if you haven't seen it and watch it, even at this time of year, in the quiet of your home. It's an important film, especially in the current political climate when a disregard for the truth again seems to be the order of the day.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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