Vietnam: A “war between the classes (and races) in America”??
January 2nd, 2009 From
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>Date: Fri, 4 Jul 1997 14:11:52 -0500 (CDT)
>From: “Louis R. Coatney”
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>To: milhst-l@ukanvm.cc.ukans.edu, mahan@microwrks.com
>cc: “Louis R. Coatney”
>Subject: Vietnam: A “war between the classes (and races) in America”??
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>
>
>Our local Congressman –loyal to Clinton … and his VN “record”–
> gave a speech to the Western Illinois U. pol sci and history students
> (and faculty) wherein he described Vietnam as “a war between the
> classes in America, and it was fought mostly by poor blacks, Hispanics,
> and working class whites.” I suppose he thought he was “preaching to
> the choir” on a campus. Unfortunately for him, I saw the article in
> the student paper. (The reporter got his speech on tape, incidentally.)
>
>(He *may* have also tried to pass himself off as a Vietnam vet …
> again, according to friends up in the Quad Cities … but that is yet
> to be determined.)
>
>Since the 3 kids in my (fully integrated) Rock Island High School Class
> of 1964 were all white middle class, I was more than a little upset by
> this and did some research.
>
>As it turns out, an article in OPERATIONS RESEARCH Sep-Oct92 was the first
> to challenge this myth, finding Vietnam deaths represented all the
> economic 10%s well enough that the “class war” accusation was false and
> cruelly unjust. Moreover, the MIT researchers found that the black
> death percentage was actually less than the percentage of those of
> military age at the time who were black.
>
>This was attacked by ATLANTIC MONTHLY Washington editor James Fallows in
> April 1993, and an exchange followed in August 1993.
>
>In the Spring 1995 issue of ARMED FORCES & SOCIETY, however, two
> separate articles confirmed that variance was not so great that VN
> could be termed a class war. (Mazur used CDC Agent Orange survey
> data of Army veterans. He found no racial bias, either.) What they
> did find was serious service/draft-dodging by a very small
> *intellectual elite* … and Fallows made his early writing reputation
> as a student gloating about the strategms he and his Ivy League
> buddies used to escape service. (Fallows took editorial control of
> U.S. NEWS in Dec96 and immediately purged its staff … which explains
> the sudden decline in its objectivity and content.)
>
>In other words … and “the beauty of this,” if you can call it that
> … the intellectual Left in this country is using its *own*
> draft-dodging to claim that VN was a “class war”! :-)))) (Why
> am I laughing?)
>
>Does anyone else know of any more recent research on this?
>
>Anyway, if you hear your local politicians or “pseudo-intellectuals”
> spouting off about VN being a class or race war, you now are
> fore-warned and fore-armed.
>
>If you want a copy of my article, let me know, and I’ll e-mail it to
> you. I’m calling for my Cngrsmn to make a public retraction … and it
> is really hard-hitting … ethically. Among other things, I point
> out that one of my classmates killed in VN would undoubtedly be in
> his Congressional seat, if he hadn’t been killed in VN.
>
>Lou Coatney, mslrc@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu