Mike Toliver

I think a lot of people would like to believe that JFK would have pulled us out of Vietnam - part of the Kennedy charm I suppose. However, actions speak louder than memos, and JFK is the guy who got us closer to WWIII than any other politician; JFK is the guy who was "out to lunch" when Diem got assassinated; JFK is the guy who authorized the invasion of Cuba; JFK is the guy who raised the number of advisors significantly over what DDE had in place. It is no accident that the names on the Vietnam memorial begin in 1959 - right before JFK took over. There was a lot of "home for Christmas" BS - even before the Tet offensive in 1968. I regard it as so much propaganda. There was no public evidence in 1963, but in an "Eyes Only" memo on October 11, 1963, President Kennedy's National Security Adviser, McGeorge Bundy, wrote: "The President approved . . . plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963." Kennedy also directed that "no formal announcement be made." The memo can be seen at: http://www.cs.umb.edu/jfklibrary/images/nsam263.jpg Tony <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Of course it's possible - even likely. That's one reason why armies everywhere like to get young men (and, to some extent, young women) - it's not solely because they're physically fitter. Ronald Reagan called the Vietnam War "a noble cause". I used to regard that with scorn, but you know what? - he's right; right in the sense that we, the American soldiers, were willing to lay down our lives for the freedom of people we had never met. That's why I joined, and that's why my buddies joined - and that's why most of the folks (even draftees) allowed themselves to be sent there. We were wrong - but that doesn't mean we were ignoble. And here's the real kicker - war IS exciting. In my first real firefight I felt more alive than I'd ever felt before; all my senses were as keen as they'd ever been. I'll tell you all about it in two weeks - don't have the time now - but it was a shock to realize that fighting for your life, and trying to kill another human being, can be a real rush. It certainly wasn't always like that, but it was often enough to convince me that one of the reasons we keep having wars is that they are "exciting". The aftermath is a different story. After the fight I allude to above, we policed up the paddies and found 16 bodies - mostly very young men (like us). One had died of a shot in his foot - bled to death in the night. It ain't pretty, folks - and we get to live with that, that and the knowledge that we killed or tried to kill them and got a charge out of it. Would Bush or Blair been less anxious to get in Iraq if they'd experienced combat? I'd like to think so, but I'd say "it depends". Lots of vets have a very different take on the Iraq War than I do (they support it). Still, I think having combat experience should make one pause before getting into a situation that produces still more combat vets. In my opinion, we have enough of those already.

I, too, have trouble with the concept that everything has to be "fun". I also agree that good teachers need to do things to engage the students, and that those things could be "fun". I enjoy teaching biology to non-majors - the other biologist at my college thinks I'm nuts! But part of the reason I enjoy it (more so than many of my majors courses) is that the students come at the subject from a fresh point of view. Often, they've avoided it because they aren't "good" at it or they're afraid of it - but if I can engage them they'll ask completely unexpected questions; questions that get ME thinking about things in a different way. I do some "glitzy" things (Cell morphology Jeopardy, for example) - some of which I learned teaching 1st through 8th grade science at a private school - but mostly I just try and capture their attention. I don't make it easy (the typical score on my first exam is not pretty - and overall there are very few A's and B's at the end), but I try to make it interesting. In that regard, I have to say that technology can actually get in the way. I almost never use videos unless I've made them myself or they're illustrative animations. I do Powerpoint presentations, but I often find students copying what's being projected instead of listening. I've had students tell me to turn the damn computer off and use the board - and if I do I find I become "looser" and more engaged myself. Sometimes (maybe often) "newer" isn't better.

The rate of extinction is currently higher than it's ever been - due to human activities. Evolution does not provide an excuse to ignore environmental problems. As a scientist, I agree that environmental issues are much more important than terrorism, that climate change is in fact occurring because of human activities (the exact nature of that change being unknown), and that the human species is evolutionarily predisposed to behave selfishly. This may be a fatal combination of circumstance, but it doesn't mean we have to give up.

It seems to me I was asked to join this forum because of my experience, which - if I'm willing to share it - may help students understand what happened. So, I'm going to try and share some of my 'Nam experience here - maybe others will want to join in. Below is an essay I wrote shortly after the Marine barracks in Beirut was bombed. It was eventually published in the Peoria Journal-Star as a Memorial Day essay. I've tinkered with it over the years. It is, in fact, an essay. The only parts I've made up are the names of people killed. NAMES - by Michael E. Toliver "Tonight, as we did last night, we close our newscast with the names of the servicemen killed in Beirut and Grenada." The face of Robert MacNeil fades from the television screen and, in silence, the names begin to roll across the screen; credits in a movie no one wanted to make. In silence, other names from a different war begin to roll through my mind. The tears come again - I can't stop them. It is June, shortly after Memorial Day - rush hour on Friday afternoon in Washington, D.C., and Peg and I stand near the Vietnam Memorial. I check the ledger for the names, but I'm unsure of the spellings. Most of them were known by nicknames, or by some corruption of their last names. Spelling was never a priority until we were leaving to go home and were swapping addresses. The names in the ledger didn't swap addresses with anyone before they left. I know approximately when they died, so I locate the panels of the memorial where the names should appear, and we walk to them in the rain. I look on the panels, but it is impossible - there are too many names. Names, names, stretching away on either side of me in unbelievable profusion. For a moment I am stunned. I turn to Peg and she is weeping. It is too much, these names representing 58,000 sons and daughters, brothers and sisters - names I knew when they had flesh and spoke to me of hope and fear. I hold Peg close and our tears fall together. Two older women, whose son's names could very well be lost among all those I see, come up and one of them briefly hugs us. "We're crying too." she says, and then they fade away into the rain. It is May, 14 years earlier, and I am listening to the obscene thump of the helicopter rotors carrying us into "Dodge City" for the umpteenth time. I crouch, trying to become as small as possible to avoid incoming rounds. There is a loud crash, and a huge hole appears in the tail ramp. A .50 caliber machine gun is on the ground, probing upward, searching for a target. The gunner didn't lead us enough. I recall the helicopters I've seen go down. I've seen the awful hesitation when the engines stop, the rotors disintegrate, the fire starts and then the helicopter drops like a stone. They're alive in there, knowing that they have only 20 seconds of life left before they hit the ground. Please, please let me die on the ground. At least on the ground, death seems to be something of a surprise. Our helicopter lands and we quickly scramble out, so glad to be on the ground that it doesn't matter that the ground is filled with Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers, waiting to meet us. We establish a perimeter, and there we sit for three days - patrolling in the vicinity and making only light contact. We begin to think that this will be one of those times when we might scrape through - perhaps they've left, in search of bigger fish than a marine infantry battalion. Still, the nights in the foxholes are uneasy. Around two in the morning is a favored time; they think we're worn down, sleepy, discouraged and they try to slip in then. A rat in the foxhole, the frogs in the rice paddies, a strange bird croaking from the tree line - all these and more cause our eyes to widen as we stare fearfully into the dark. Please, please - not now. I've only got a month and a half left. Not now, not now. On the third day we pack up. We're going to walk out instead of riding the choppers. Thank God, thank God. It isn't that far to the battalion command post. We start early. It is cloudy and therefore cool and my pack and radio aren't too heavy for a change. We're getting out. Within minutes of our start, there is a single explosion. Someone has tripped a booby trap, and another name is ready for the wall in Washington. We wait for the medevac, and then we get under way again. Soon, another explosion, another ugly cloud of grey smoke and another name for the wall. While we've been sitting in our "secure" position, the V.C. and NVA have ringed us with an incredible number of booby traps, made from hand-grenades with shortened fuses attached to trip wires. No other booby trap is so portable and so effective in turning marines into hamburger. During our morning stroll, I count nine separate explosions leading to who knows how many new names for the wall. I watch where I step. By afternoon, we have moved out of the area where most of the booby traps seem to have been placed. At about one o'clock, we come to a river - not very wide - that we'll have to ford. As we prepare to cross, a single shot rings out and the round cracks over our heads. We hit the ground and try to figure where it came from. A sniper? A trigger-happy soldier from an ambush? Being trigger-happy is not a mistake the V.C. or NVA make: this stuff is old hat to them. I have been here nearly twelve months - it's almost old hat to me, too. Still, this is the perfect place for an ambush. What the hell - it was probably just a sniper, and a bad one at that. We might as well cross now; we've got to get to our command post before dark. We get up and move down the bank. I feel them on the opposite bank - so do most of the other marines - but we've got to go through. This is what we came out here for. We're half-way across when we get our answer: it was a trigger-happy soldier from a very large ambush. The opposite bank explodes in a cacophony of small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. I see the shrubbery on the opposite bank waving as if in a strong wind - leaves are flying off into the river, to drift passively while the world explodes above them. Names appear on the wall in reckless profusion now. There is no leisurely "Thump!" as the booby trap goes off, the corpsman arrives, the medevac is called and ALFREDO MALDANDO appears on the wall. Now, the names are in an anarchy of multiplication WILLIAMJONESMICHAELSMITHROBERTTHOMPSONWILLIAMOLIVEROSCARHAKES: they fly to the wall in Washington with the speed of light and another panel fills up - the one containing the names from May 25, 1969. On this day and all other days surrounding it, names are collected for final deposition on black granite, 10,000 miles and 14 years away. The names from that nameless, insignificant river are but a drop lost in the swirl of 10,000's. The fire knocks us back and we get down and try to return fire. We've got to throw more bullets at them than they throw at us, so we can make them get down: there's marines trapped on the opposite bank who are in danger of losing their names. It's no use; if your head goes up to see where you shoot, your name goes on the wall. Finally, the jets come in and now Vietnamese names multiply, scorched in napalm and fragmentation bombs. Gradually, technology has its temporary way with Will and we advance across the river, picking up names along the way. Later, I will wonder why. Why did we sit in one place for three days while the V.C. and NVA planned our monument? Why did we go to "Dodge City" time after time accumulating names for panels yet unquarried? Having arrived, why did we leave, taking with us only our names? At the time, I am merely glad that I am leaving without surrendering my name to black granite. Now, fifteen years later, new names confront me in the privacy of my bedroom. What were they dreaming as they slept in their barracks? What were their thoughts as they boarded the helicopters to assault the beaches of Grenada? We will never truly know, as they left behind only their names. The madness continues. In silence, the names roll by on the television screen and in silence, I weep for the newest set of names."

All of the things John says in his "dispassionate examination of the record" are true - and are among the reasons I never voted for the man. However, I don't think John's "dispassionate examination" is truly that - it only tells half the story. Michael White's reply is right on target; the role of the President is bigger than just head of government. What recent President DIDN'T deserve to be impeached because of some underhanded deal? I always thought the impeachment hearings against Bill Clinton were focused on the wrong thing - what happened to his deals with China? This doesn't mean we have to accept underhanded dealings, but we do have to accept the flaws of a democratic system if we in fact want to be a democracy. John makes much of charm and its uses. I don't like it, either, but it's what got John Kennedy into office, and it's what ultimately did Richard Nixon in (because of his complete lack of it). What's the solution? The average person has many immediate concerns that outweigh any global vision. There was a recent letter to the local paper castigating some of our representatives because they voted against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. No mention that we will, in fact, eventually run out of oil and that oil consumption in the US is greater than it was only a few years ago because people "deserve" to drive big gas-guzzling cars. We get the government we want. That is the nature of democracy.

I heard Pres. Reagan 3 times when he came to Eureka College (his alma mater ). The first time was in 1982, when he made his famous "START speech", which, I am told, many historians regard as the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Many of you are historians, so I suppose you'll weigh in on that opinion. I will tell you that at the time I thought it was a remarkable and uncharacteristic speech. The second time was in 1984 when he came to give a Time "Man of the Year" speech. I was leading a protest against his central American policies, which was an "interesting" experience in Reagan country. His speech did tick me off, because he laid all the problems our country was facing at the time at the feet of Vietnam. Of course, he may well have been correct, but we had very different perceptions of the nature of that "problem". I viewed Vietnam as an example of the arrogance of American power; he viewed it as a failure of will. It is my sense that he thought "if only the military had been allowed to do what they wanted, we'd have won the war". My sense from my experience there was that there was no way we could have "won". The third time was in 1990, when he came back to give a nice, essentially non-political speech remembering his years at Eureka College. He was, as many people will tell you, a very nice man. Unlike John, I do feel he played a major role in the end of the Cold War. Unlike many Reaganites, I'd give equal credit to Gorbachev. I'm not an economist, so I can't contribute much to the discussion of how his policies affected our economic state. I will state that some people who know more about this than I do feel that Pres. Clinton essentailly used "Reaganomics" to lead the economic upturn of the 1990's.

I have "bookend" experiences of the Berlin Wall. The first, when I was 11 or 12, was when the Wall went up. I remember relatively little of this, but I do remember the fear that was a part of those times. I grew thinking that we would all be killed in a nuclear war, and the erection of the Berlin Wall just seemed one more step towards that inevitable end. Living in Albuquerque, site of a major weapons lab and a major storage facility for nuclear weapons, I knew we were very high on the target list for the Soviets. If a war started, we were done for. The other bookend occurred when I began teaching at Eureka College. President Reagan was a graduate of the College, and was due to speak in 1982 at Commencement. This was his famous START speech, which many regard as the beginning of the end of the Cold War. I have to admit that I was not then, and am not now, a sympathizer with the conservative world view - I never voted for Pres. Reagan and in fact led a protest against his policies on his visit to the College in 1984. However, the START speech really did strike me as ground-breaking. At last a president was proposing that we REDUCE our stockpiles of nuclear weapons. We now have the "Ronald Reagan Peace Garden" on campus - visit the College website for a look: Eureka College Peace Garden It contains excerpts of his START speech, and one of the largest pieces of the Berlin Wall in North America. When the Garden was dedicated, Maureen Reagan and the German Counsel from Chicago came to speak. The German Counsel's speech was really moving and remarkable.

In my experience (1968-1969) "protest" took much less extreme forms. There were no "fraggings" in my battalion. I have a sense that "fragging" has been exaggerated. Our "protests" took the form of not going out into Night Defensive Positions and calling in as if we had done so. This deserves some explanation. I was guarding a bridge with 9 other marines. We were already grossly understrength to face a determined attack by the VC, and yet the battalion command post wanted us to send 2-3 guys out into the rice paddies after dark to set up NDP's; which would only further dilute what strength we had. So we called in as if we had done this, and then stated that we were going to observe "radio silence" while we were "out there" - all the time staying back on the bridge in a position with some decent defenses. I think a lot of "protest" took that form. And it wasn't really protest in the sense of this thread - it was simply trying to use some common sense to stay alive.

Interesting discussion on "war crimes". My dad worked on the A-bomb in WWII. He always felt it was necessary to use it - not to "punish" the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but to convince the Japanese government that it must surrender. It did, in fact, have that effect. Richard Rhodes makes that clear in his Making of the Atomic Bomb. Only the personal intervention of the Emperor forced the Army to concede defeat, and even at that there were those ready to attack the Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945, rather than surrender. Does that mean we had to drop it on populated areas? Hell, I don't know. All we know is that it had the "desired" effect. In the case of Dresden, it is pretty clear that the fire-bombing had no noticeable effect on our war aims. Strategic bombing in Vietnam did not have the effect people like McNamara thought it would. What about aerial bombing in the Gulf War? Did that make the subsequent land battle less costly? Probably.... The bottom line is that war IS a crime and when you get into it, you WILL use criminal methods to attain what you believe to be your aims. Like most other crimes, the fact that it is a crime doesn't mean we'll stop doing it.

I've been re-reading McMasters' Dereliction of Duty recently. The book received a lot of praise when it came out in 1997, mostly because McMasters did a great deal of research and used a number of previously classified sources. In brief, the book argues that Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were Derelict in their duty by pursuing policies that they knew were doomed to fail in Vietnam. I have to admit I found the book repetitive; but it certainly convinced me that it would be appropriate to try Robert McNamara as a war criminal, a position I've been unwilling to take. I also saw "The Fog of War", and that probably influenced my reaction. I'm bringing this up in this thread because I think it's relevant to the situation in Iraq. What crystallized this for me was another re-read: Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly. Tuchman makes the same points as McMasters, only she did it 10 years earlier and with much more clarity. In the chapters on Vietnam, she points out the folly of "nation building". In the concluding chapter, she notes how inevitable folly is, given the nature of humans and governments. Downright depressing, but a good read to help understand our current situation. Deja Vu all over again!

This is an extract of an essay I wrote in response to a speech by the Alabama State Auditor, Beth Chapman. To see the whole thing, visit my web site and click on "Standing up for America". "The United States of America is arguably the greatest country in the world at the present time, maybe ever. If that statement is true, it is true because the U.S. was founded on radical ideas advanced by philosophers and poets and artists over 200 years ago. Artists and poets and philosophers continue to preserve those radical ideas, in part by continually questioning them. Among those radical ideas was the notion that all men are created equal, endowed with equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. At the time those words were current, "all men" meant all white, property-owning men. Because that vision was imperfect, and was recognized as imperfect, our country has struggled to transform that phrase into "all people are created equal, endowed with equal rights..." That struggle of transformation is one of the things that attests to the greatness of this country; the fact that we have yet to achieve equality attests to the work still needing to be done. Our willingness to do that work in the future is one of the determinates of whether or not we will continue to aspire to greatness. In the current war with Iraq, I regard the voices raised in dissent as one of the truest indicators of the value of our country. I am sensitive to the people who argue that voices of dissent demoralize our troops; but I would hope that our troops would recognize that such voices need to be heard. The freedom to question government policy means nothing unless people are actually questioning it. My unease about the current war stems from the fact that we were unable to convince much of the rest of the world that the forcible removal of Sadaam Huessin was necessary. Like it or not, we do need the rest of the world; and the United Nations, imperfect as it is, is the only game in town. I fear that our unilateral action will make us more subject to acts of terror, not less. What I fear more is that people in other countries will look at the statement with which I opened this essay and answer "No - look at what they did in Iraq!""

The following is an extract of a larger essay posted on my web site, which John wanted me to extract for discussion here. It was written in response to a widely-circulated speech given by the Alabama State Auditor, Beth Chapman (a link to her speech is provided on my website - look in the page entitled "Standing up for America"). "I joined the Marine Corps in December, 1967, much against the wishes of my parents. My parents did not want me to join the military; and if I had to join the military, they wanted me to join anything but the Marine Corps. They did not want me to join because they wanted me to go to college, and they didn't understand why we were fighting in Vietnam. (BTW - my father is a WWII veteran who worked on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos). I remember arguing with my mom, pulling out Patrick Henry's famous speech "My country, right or wrong..." in answer to one of her points. One of the main reasons I joined was because I thought the South Vietnamese needed and wanted our help. I went to boot camp in January of 1968, finished my training there and then trained to be a radioman. On 25 June, 1968, I went to Vietnam. There, I joined the 3rd battalion, 1st marine regiment, 1st marine division. We operated mostly south and west of DaNang in I Corps - one of the bloodiest areas of Vietnam. In the spring of 1969, I estimate (from the casualty reports I took as a radioman) we lost the equivalent of a third of our combat strength in 3 months (around 500 men). I myself came through unscathed, though I did earn my combat action ribbon (the Marine Corps equivalent of the Army's Combat Infantryman Badge) firing at the enemy and being fired at in return. On my very first patrol, it became abundantly clear to me that the South Vietnamese did NOT need or want our "help". I got two responses from the Vietnamese anytime I went out - either extreme fear, or extreme hate. If looks could kill, I would've been dead a thousand times. The most important reason for my being in Vietnam evaporated on that first patrol - after that, the only thing I was fighting for was survival (which may be the ultimate case in combat, anyway, but it's not much of a reason, is it?).

The following is an excerpt from an essay I wrote in response to a speech by the Alabama State Auditor, Beth Chapman. The whole thing is on my website - click "Standing up for America". "I'm on a list of people students can email to interview about the Vietnam war (the website is based in Britain - http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/). I often get questions asking how I feel about the people who protested the war - and here's what I tell the students who ask me this: The people who protested the Vietnam War were right - we had no business in Vietnam. Furthermore, this country is based on the freedom to dissent. Thus, even if the protestors had been wrong, they had every right to make themselves heard - or our freedoms mean nothing. I'm often asked how I regarded the anti-war protests when I was in Vietnam. I don't remember much about anti-war protests. For one thing, the news I received was sporadic at best - letters from home, the occasional Stars and Stripes, rarely a broadcast on Armed Forces Radio. The last two of those tended to avoid much coverage of anti-war protests. In any case, I had little inclination to think about that kind of thing; the demands of the moment were more than enough to occupy my time. When the likelihood of living or dying, remaining whole or suffering crippling injury, depends on the decision of where you put your foot next, things like "news" fade into the distant background. For another, I saw quite enough to become a convinced opponent of war in general, and the Vietnam War in particular. It is trite to say that soldiers are the strongest opponents of war - and it may not even be true. However, soldiers who have experienced combat are almost always "anti-war"."

Hello - My name is Mike Toliver. I'm currently a biology professor at Eureka College, in Eureka, Illinois, USA. Our college is perhaps best known as the alma mater of Pres. Ronald W. Reagan. I've taught for 24 years, but I suppose the main reason I've been asked to join this group is because of my experience in Vietnam. I was born and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. After graduating from high school in 1967, I joined the U.S. Marine Corps. Finished boot camp in March of 1968, had specialized training as a radioman, and was then sent to Vietnam. Spent 13 months (normal Marine Corps tour) there with the 3rd battalion, 1st marine regiment, 1st marine division. Got out of the Marines in Dec., 1969 and immediately started college at the University of New Mexico. Finished my B.S. in May, 1973 and went on for graduate study in entomology at the University of Illinois. Finished my Ph.D. there in 1979, got married in 1980, started teaching at Eureka in 1981. I've been a resource for students on the Vietnam War for some time now, through my participation on the Spartacus web site and on npr.org (they did a forum on the Vietnam War following a "Point of View" program on Maya Lin). I have a web page at www.eureka.edu/emp/toliver/index.html My email is either miketol@mtco.com or miketol@eureka.edu