Corps, clay, pope paul, the wall, kosygin, johnson, warhol, streisand, dope, black power, goldwater, hippie, dayan, woodstock, the pill, james bond, tiny tim king, hair, graham, bobby, wallace, golda meir, ecology, the supremes, apollo, psychedelic, wyeth, joe namath, malcolm x, armstrong, nixon, indira gandhi, demonstrations, lem. But no name, no single word repeated itself as often on the pages of the 1960s, and with so much controversy, as the name vietnam. Ofit was a strange mixture peace and war. An ally at one moment, an enemy the next. A lush jungle with the rest of barbed wire. It was always this. Those who wanted to find the war may have to hunt for it. Those who did not, they might have become the hunted. The question was, who was the hunter in vietnam, and who was the hunted . Who would be the aggressor and the defender . And there was a larger search for the definition of the word peace. Peace mean only the absence of work . Ar . This is a story in two parts. And demonstrations became, to some, a way of life, but at the end of the 1960s the threat and the prophecy were clear. I think we face and extremely intensified struggle with the 2000 civilianling 4000 thereear, was an election in vietnam in which 75 or 85 of the people endorsed the government, and yet we read how vietnam is in danger because of guerrilla operations carried out by this small, well errillas. Group of gu how we fight that kind of to me to be one of the great problems now before the United States. The threat and the prophecy hisship and prophecy name to some was buddha. Two others it was jesus. Was drama and a myriad of names of ancestors. Commonality. Rged a there was a belief that this earth was not all. It is the stuff of South Vietnam. A stranger would say hes a buddhist or a taoist. The oldest form of christianity in vietnam was roman catholicism. Hundreds of thousands more catholics came to the south with the practice of religion was. Till free [bell ringing] narrator the country was as mixed as its faith. The cities were full of patterns, cluttered students and merchants, lovers, and shoppers met in the splendor n. The nation area narrator 90 lived in uncluttered fields, but they found in the land and uncommon contentment of the orchestration of their life and religion. Charlton but in vietnam, the serenity of life and earth and prayer had a new intruder. The intruder was not always visible, not always apparent. At times, it was difficult to believe he was present in the country at all, but he was. His habits were a irregular, his route unknown, his next steps were never told in advance, the evidence that he was there was fast becoming a part of every horizon. [water flowing] the intruder changed the horizons of rural south and they guidelines of northern vietnam of urbanylines northern vietnam as many refugees escaped from the north. Not only shrines where the south, but hospitals as well. And now there was more than the sick to heal. There were hundreds of thousands of wounded. Lets have another retractor, please. Charlton civilians told stories of grenades and shells and men who came to the villages and massacred, talked of pillage and fire, by the vietcong and by men who came from the north. The ones who still lived war deep scars. The memory of a single day would last through their lifetimes, in their minds and on their bodies. These are films of South Vietnam after the destruction of a village by the North Vietnamese. To those in command of North Vietnam, and the viet, the pursuit was a united vietnam under hanoi with a communist government. These are films of South Vietnam after the destruction of a village by the North Vietnamese. To those in command of North Vietnam, and the viet, the pursuit was a united vietnam under hanoi with a communist government. To those in South Vietnam, the pursuit was to be left alone, but they were not left alone. The story was always the same. It became a daily way of life, a daily way of death. Village after village, city after city. Today, dozens killed in one area, hundreds and another, thousands in another. Often, mass graves were located months after a massacre. The ones known previously only to be missing were found, identified and buried. [anguished voices] narrator in North Vietnam, victory rallies were held regularly. Deaths and destruction of villages in South Vietnam were hailed as liberation. [automatic gunfire] this South Vietnamese reacted with missions to search for and destroy weapons use against uses against them. Used against them. In the early 1960s, reconnaissance flights began. From the air, land looked lush and innocent, signs of enemy were nonexistent. If this lush land held secrets, it was rarely apparent from those on the quick overflights. And so the missions were preserved on film for later study by train on unhurried eyes. Each flight brought just like on a precious cargo of photographs. [gunfire] [camera shutter clicking] charlton the evidence was unmistakable, South Vietnam was under threat from external forces and if it was going to stay alive and answer that threat, it would need support. On the occasion of your new year celebration, my fellow americans and i extend our very best wishes for the prosperity and wellbeing of the government and the people of vietnam. In your struggle against aggressive forces of communism, the sacrifices that you have willingly made, the courage you have shown, the burdens you have endured, have been a source of inspiration to people all over the world. Let me assure you of our continued assistance in the development of your capabilities to maintain your freedom, and to defeat those who wish to destroy that freedom. Charlton and so the americans came to vietnam. Other countries came as well to help the South Vietnamese, australia, new zealand, the republic of korea, malaysia, the republic of china, thailand and the philippines. [explosions] [automatic gunfire] [helicopter overhead] charlton just beyond the village were the vietcong and North Vietnamese. Civilians of the village were evacuated before the battle that was sure to come. [helicopter overhead] [helicopter overhead] [automatic gunfire] [automatic gunfire] [mortar fire] [automatic gunfire] [mortar fire] charlton discovered were the prisoners taken by the North Vietnamese, or the vietcong. [automatic gunfire] [indiscernible voices] [military drumroll] charlton the battle, for today, is over. The battle for tomorrow has yet to begin. And in the night that separates the two, the enemy would resupply and regroup and replan to attack the village again. The daybyday price of holding a village was not cheap. [military drumroll] charlton in the 1960s, 40,000 americans were killed in vietnam, and there were another 1000 whose fate were not known. And the wives of the missing appealed to the representatives of North Vietnam. We are very puzzled about why they wont tell us whether or not the men are alive or dead. It seems a very simple thing for them to do. They have told many wives to come back and demonstrate against the United States government, and they implied that we should join that womens strike for peace, and that this would be the most helpful thing that we could do to help our men. Once we educate the general public, not only in this nation but worldwide, to the true facts that these men are not being treated the way hanoi would like to paint the picture. And i believe public pressure will be brought to bear on hanoi, and they will be shown up for the dishonesty and this truth they are putting forth. They tell the world, we have not heard, we do not know. Please, just let us know if our husbands or sons are alive. This is so little to ask. Senator mcgovern has been to paris and has talked with the vietnamese. I have written to the secretarygeneral of the u. N. , and i have written several times and have not received a reply. In one of my most recent letters to senator fulbright, i said, last summer i wrote to you asking for an appointment with you and expressing the idea that the most vociferous critics of the war had very probably lengthened the war and thus had a detrimental effect on the possibility of release for the prisoners. At that time, you refused to see me on the grounds that my idea was so preposterous, and that was his phrase, that visiting with me would serve no purpose. We are going back today to paris, in hopes of finding the information that we originally went there seeking on september 17. The North Vietnamese promised to send us letters regarding our husbands status and wellbeing. We have not today received those letters. We still want to know about our husbands. We want to know what we can tell our children concerning the fathers. Yes, at the beginning the real rough treatment came at first, when they were trying to get militarytype answers from you. And after that, they tried force you to go before these delegations to say that you received humane treatment. And they would throw rocks at you and hit you. And one of the little ones came up and hit me in the side of the mouth, and it dislodged a filling. And then, once i got to the camp, they refused to give meet to give me medical treatment, saying i was going to die in four hours if i did give them information. I just finally passed out. He refused because his treatment had not been humane. He had been tied up with ropes to such a degree that he still has large scars on his arms from the rope burns which became infected. He was deprived of sleep, beaten, had his fingernails removed and put in solitary, but the North Vietnamese demanded he make the false statement and through him in a cell alone to think about it for 38 days. I feel a solemn obligation to the men back there. They know im going to come back here and tell the truth and that is what they wanted. [drums beating] end the war end the war the great free debate, perhaps the greatest of all time in service to the united dates, when the country gave birth to 100 voices in universities, in town halls, and in washington im opposed to this war not only because i think it is morally and legally wrong, but because i think it is destroying the good name and the leadership of the United States. Furthermore, i believe that the war is militarily unwinnable. If we should succeed in bombing vietnam to rubble, we will only find ourselves up against the chinese. What i could do with is more compassion and more sympathy, with those tens of thousands of civilians who have been killed in kidnapper by the vietcong and north Vietnamese Forces as a matter of deliberate policy, and the far larger tens of thousands of South Vietnamese military who have been killed and wounded simply because North Vietnam is trying to seize South Vietnam by force. I lost a really good friend over there. They brought his body home to me. All of a sudden, i began wondering, what are we doing over there . Is this what honor is all about . Is it worth it . I dont think it is. Tend to place greater value on our people. Can you really draw a line as to if it is worth one american life, if that by saving that american life, you subject probably thousands of vietnamese to death . Human life is human life. We believe that this war is illegal from every point of view, completely immoral, and i would like to add for myself that it is detrimental to the best interests of the United States. How do you feel about the charges that america is immoral and wrong in this war . I feel they are false. I think if people who make these statements could go over and see whats going on they would think it is a just war. We cannot just now dishonor our word or abandon our commitment, or leave those who believed us and who trusted us to the terror and repression and murder that would follow. I dont think theres any evidence, any real reason to believe that kind of mass execution would take place. The very fact that practically 2 million of the North Vietnamese fled to South Vietnam to escape the communist regime is an indication that this government did not represent the will of the people. Bleeding ourre we men, having them die in vietnam, we are spending at about the rate of 30 billion a year, 2. 5 billion a month in vietnam. That is more than we spend on our entire housing program, more than we spend on our entire Poverty Program in a year. This money must be diverted back to our domestic needs. War. St end this futile the vietnamese never existed the invasion of any and all outsiders, the french, the japanese, and now the americans. [applause] and let me say as one who is in opposition to our policy in Southeast Asia, long preceded the rising tide of revolt against it, there can be no peace by negotiation. The mlfs part, of course, of South Vietnam, a part that is like an alien body fed, supplied, supported, and kept up in some state of vigor by a Hostile Force outside the country namely, North Vietnam. I wonder how we in this country or somebody in any other western european country would feel if such a force existed in their ranks and somebody from the outside would tell us now, be a good boy and let those people determine your fate. It started out as a colonial war and became a civil war. We intervened on one side, a thing which this country has never done before and i hope never does again. Do you think what you have gone through and what you will have to go through for the rest of your life is worthwhile . Yes, i do. Because i think just about all people should think of just one thing right now, and thats freedom. Are going toway we get freedom is to protect ourselves if its in this country or other countries that need help, and i think a lot of people feel as i do. I have said we ought to publicly indicate our willingness to accept the new government in South Vietnam, which could be a coalition government. Or a fusion government. I dont really care what they call it. You have to assume it would include elements of the National Liberation front. The purpose of communism is to have a policy in government. Our people in South Vietnam dont like to have communists. Underergoes flirting those flirting with communism i , can only say, have you ever lived under a totalitarian government . I have lived under two types, and i know what im talking about. Why dont you ask a hungarian or a check or a pole or anyone else how they like it before you really ignore the facts of life and support something you would not for yourself or for your children . We aree cease bombing, in a sense calling the bluff of other governments who have said this is the key and confront them with the responsibility of following through the imperative logic of their pronouncements in this respect. That might be one element, but i dont hear very many people talking about the invasion of South Vietnam by the North Vietnamese. It seems to me the two go handinhand. There have been four or five bombing halts. The soviets have asked us to for two weeks,gs the suggestion being they thought negotiations could begin within that period. The bombing lasted 37 days and was resumed. I have now ordered that all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam cease, as of 8 00 a. M. Washington time friday morning. This is the kind of peripheral struggle that i think should be compromised. Out not mean by that we go and run away. Mean that at all. It surely would cause great nations it is not of the kind of importance that surely would cause great nations to go to all out war. If you are going to fight a war, i believe in winning because you are losing lives, so bes is one thing that should the number one priority. Whenever you enter a war, my idea is get everything you can fast as you can and get it over with. I have preached this. Im not saying anything new. Until the president stands up and says we are bringing all the troops home as quickly as we can bring them home, we are bringing them home now, i think the discontent in our country will continue to grow. You have to bring them home immediately. Conflict is not soa conflict simple as just calling it off and coming home because the price for that kind of peace could be a thousand years of darkness for generations yet unborn. You do not think there should be a demonstration against the war . No. Do you think it does any good, that it might hurry the withdrawal . No, i dont think it will hurry up anything. It might delay it. Do you have any children . Yes, i have three boys. Any of them old enough to take part . One will be 18 next month. Grossman,ring, terry a boston businessman the , president of the massachusetts Peace Action Council suggested it might be possible to begin to put together an effort across the country devoted to working against the war. A lot of americans are against war, but a lot of them that are against it dont really know anything about it. Alf know about it and dont really try to understand they half know about it. They dont really know the vietnamese people or understand the situation. They know they will not become stronger, but they believe you will become weaker and weaker. Wake up in the morning when we rise can you imagine a protester in hanoi, how far he would get if he wanted to protest North Vietnam sending troops into South Vietnam or laos or cambodia . Have the authoritys taken any action against you as a result of burning your card in central park in new york . None whatsoever. How do you feel about those who say to those who say you are prolonging the war because of this kind of action