Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence Summary

Although the presidents of the sixties tended to speak in vague abstractions of American livelihoods, ignoring the realities of violence and bombings, antiwar demonstrators took the Vietnam War head-on, criticizing it in various iterations. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. directly challenged the Vietnam War in his speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” which was delivered on April 4th, 1967 at a Riverside Church in New York City. In this speech, King makes two standout claims, challenging President Johnson’s foreign policy, and ultimately dissolving his faith in Johnson’s notion of a Great Society. Firstly, he critically characterizes the United States as strange liberators, making a deliberate pairing of words to critique our confusing

In the “Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement” delivered by John Kerry on April 23rd, 1971, Kerry speaks to the tragedies done by and done to American troops during the war. On behalf of the organization, Kerry shares some of the grueling stories “this country, in a sense, made them do” (Kerry 1971). To name a few, Kerry recalled stories of rape and mutilation done to American troops and accounts in which hatred overpowered American agency, causing troops to destroy South Vietnamese land. Although troops were told to enact violence in that moment, the passing of time reveals a sense of confusion. Kerry shares that he and the other antiwar troops believe that “there is nothing in South Vietnam…that realistically threatens the United States of America” (Kerry 1971). In fact, most civilians were not politically charged; they wanted peace whether that be communism or democracy. Driven by our hateful ideologies, the United States ignored the actual realities of Vietnamese civilians who would be killed in our anti-communist journey. Moreover, American soldiers have to put their lives on the line only to “die for a mistake” (Kerry 1971). Even If they make it out alive, the troops still have to live with the brutal memories of the violence they committed. As a whole, the organization wants the nation to actively remember Vietnam instead of repressing our involvement overseas. If Vietnam is repressed in the American imagination, that only reinforces the mistakes of America. Instead, Vietnam Veterans Against the War want to remember the war as the moment in which America realized the pain and violence it was enacting, and finally stopped. While we cannot hide from our history, we can learn from