Winter Soldier
February 2, 2025 6:59 AM Subscribe
Winter Soldier is a 1972 American documentary film, chronicling the Winter Soldier Investigation, which took place in Detroit, Michigan, from January 31 to February 2, 1971. The film documents the accounts of American soldiers who returned from the War in Vietnam and participated in this war crimes hearing.*
Closing Statement
Closing Statement
Whatever it was that was in these men, that allowed them to do the things they did, is in all of us. We start taking it in, if by no other process, at least by osmosis, from the day we are born in this country. The men did not become racists when they entered the service. They grew up with it. It was taught to them and it was taught to them in our schools. The idea that the United States has a God-given right to go into any country and take out its raw materials at an advantage to ourselves is not something that they learned in Vietnam. They learned it in our schools. They learned it from their mothers, fathers, their sisters and their brothers, their uncles. They learned it from all of us. We did a terrible thing to a lot of men in Vietnam and we're still doing it. I don't know who the ultimate victim in Vietnam will be. Will it be those who went from the United States to fight in it or the Vietnamese that tried to resist? I do know this, having met and talked with many Vietnamese who have gone through worse hardships than anyone in this room who has been here these three days, that they, at least, do not seem to have lost their humanity in the process. But I fear that many of us, if we don't shorten up and get the message out, we will have lost our humanity beyond redemption.
Like most US wars, predicated on - at best - a deranged extrapolation that if Vietnam went communist, the dominos would fall, thus we need to burn the village to save it, damn the cost in blood and treasure.
posted by lalochezia at 8:46 AM on February 2 [4 favorites]
posted by lalochezia at 8:46 AM on February 2 [4 favorites]
Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll
Age 21. Age 20. Age 19. Age 18.
Children.
I talk to Vietnam veterans every working day. They are old men now. They are hoping for in-home living assistance. They are hoping for disability benefits for Agent Orange exposure. They are hoping for dental care.
Sometimes their voices carry the echoes of helicopters. Of gunfire and screaming. None of them seem to have made it all the way home.
A few of them are paranoid and abusive. Still seething with rage at what we did to them.
I pity them all.
posted by Lemkin at 9:10 AM on February 2 [8 favorites]
Age 21. Age 20. Age 19. Age 18.
Children.
I talk to Vietnam veterans every working day. They are old men now. They are hoping for in-home living assistance. They are hoping for disability benefits for Agent Orange exposure. They are hoping for dental care.
Sometimes their voices carry the echoes of helicopters. Of gunfire and screaming. None of them seem to have made it all the way home.
A few of them are paranoid and abusive. Still seething with rage at what we did to them.
I pity them all.
posted by Lemkin at 9:10 AM on February 2 [8 favorites]
One thing I regret not being able to ask Dr Ellsberg in person is how he would characterize our intervention in Korea vs. Vietnam 10 years later. They seemed the same war to us at the time I bet.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v02/d193 is returning an Orwellian "502" now, but the internet archive has John McNaughton's infamous estimation of why we intervened in '65:
70%—To avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor).
20%—To keep SVN (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.
10%—To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life.
Also—To emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.
posted by torokunai2 at 9:13 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v02/d193 is returning an Orwellian "502" now, but the internet archive has John McNaughton's infamous estimation of why we intervened in '65:
70%—To avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor).
20%—To keep SVN (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.
10%—To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life.
Also—To emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.
posted by torokunai2 at 9:13 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]
That 70/20/10 breakdown doesn't have a category for "Because Democratic Party leaders were deathly terrified that if they didn't, they'd be facing ten years of Republican candidates thunderously demanding 'Who lost Vietnam?'"
I'm calling it bullshit for that reason, like claiming that the 2003 Iraq invasion was caused by "intelligence failure."
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 10:00 AM on February 2 [5 favorites]
I'm calling it bullshit for that reason, like claiming that the 2003 Iraq invasion was caused by "intelligence failure."
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 10:00 AM on February 2 [5 favorites]
Also, to the extent that D Party leaders actually believed there was a risk of a Chinese takeover of Vietnam... Christ what ignorance.
The Cold War days were a time of deeply stupid policies pursued for reasons of profound ignorance about highly knowable issues. But the "Who lost China" purge destroyed all of the institutional expertise that could have later informed talk about Vietnam. It was a stupidity that fed on itself.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 10:06 AM on February 2 [3 favorites]
The Cold War days were a time of deeply stupid policies pursued for reasons of profound ignorance about highly knowable issues. But the "Who lost China" purge destroyed all of the institutional expertise that could have later informed talk about Vietnam. It was a stupidity that fed on itself.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 10:06 AM on February 2 [3 favorites]
If you haven't read Jonathan Shay's books, Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America, well - you should.
posted by BWA at 12:34 PM on February 2 [2 favorites]
posted by BWA at 12:34 PM on February 2 [2 favorites]
one of the most interesting facts about ARVN, mostly in rural areas, they often took their families with them when fighting.
I remember this in my Vietnam course.
especially the retaliatory measures taken by the Nixon Administration. Plus, it led to Kerry's testimony before the Senate a month later.
"We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum."
I'd suggest a book chickenhawk not quite related directly to war crimes but it does serve as one of the best memoirs.
John Carpenter was set to make the film but the author got busted for smuggling pot.
oddly, increase in sales was reported.
capitalism is the greatest game ever devised by the insidious machinations of a a bored mercantile society and the likely Prince with his eyes upon expansion.
posted by clavdivs at 4:28 PM on February 2 [3 favorites]
I remember this in my Vietnam course.
especially the retaliatory measures taken by the Nixon Administration. Plus, it led to Kerry's testimony before the Senate a month later.
"We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum."
I'd suggest a book chickenhawk not quite related directly to war crimes but it does serve as one of the best memoirs.
John Carpenter was set to make the film but the author got busted for smuggling pot.
oddly, increase in sales was reported.
capitalism is the greatest game ever devised by the insidious machinations of a a bored mercantile society and the likely Prince with his eyes upon expansion.
posted by clavdivs at 4:28 PM on February 2 [3 favorites]
I'd suggest a book chickenhawk not quite related directly to war crimes but it does serve as one of the best memoirs.
Chickenhawk is a fantastic book, very sobering.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:15 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
Chickenhawk is a fantastic book, very sobering.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:15 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJfqdwvO7pA
http://www.174ahc.org/videos.htm for more
posted by torokunai2 at 10:09 AM on February 3
http://www.174ahc.org/videos.htm for more
posted by torokunai2 at 10:09 AM on February 3
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Vietnam, like Afghanistan and Iraq for my generation, was a really nutso involvement. The right came away from our '65 - '71 experience with the belief we could have won "if the politicians would have let us", or, worse, that Kissinger did win with the 1973 Peace Accord but "Congress lost the peace" by letting the Thieu regime twist in the wind in 1973-74.
While we did in fact "win" every ground engagement and bomb the crap out of SE Asia for a decade, what Westmoreland did not understand is that *his* casualty total was the true determinant of who was winning, not the VC casualties his troops were reporting up the chain. Hamburger Hill in May 1969 was when US casualties exceeded Korean conflict casualties, and after that the US's morale on the home front really began to flag.
Life then published Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll in its late June edition, and after that Nixon knew the jig was up.
posted by torokunai2 at 7:59 AM on February 2 [7 favorites]