Kill for Peace

American Artists Against the Vietnam War

Matthew Israel

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780292753037
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art & Politics

"The book addresses chronologically the most striking reactions of the art world to the rise of military engagement in Vietnam then in Cambodia." —Guillaume LeBot, Critique d'art The Vietnam War (1964–1975) divided American society like no other war of the twentieth century, and some of the most memorable American art and art-related activism of the last fifty years protested U.S. involvement. At a time when Pop Art, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art dominated the American art world, individual artists and art collectives played a significant role in antiwar protest and inspired subsequent generations of artists. This significant story of engagement, which has never been covered in a book-length survey before, is the subject of Kill for Peace. Writing for both general and academic audiences, Matthew Israel recounts the major moments in the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement and describes artists' individual and collective responses to them. He discusses major artists such as Leon Golub, Edward Kienholz, Martha Rosler, Peter Saul, Nancy Spero, and Robert Morris; artists' groups including the Art Workers' Coalition (AWC) and the Artists Protest Committee (APC); and iconic works of collective protest art such as AWC's Q. And Babies? A. And Babies and APC's The Artists Tower of Protest. Israel also formulates a typology of antiwar engagement, identifying and naming artists' approaches to protest. These approaches range from extra-aesthetic actions—advertisements, strikes, walk-outs, and petitions without a visual aspect—to advance memorials, which were war memorials purposefully created before the war's end that criticized both the war and the form and content of traditional war memorials. "Accessible and informative." —Art Libraries Society of North America

1

The Beginnings of the Vietnam War and the Antiwar Movement

The U.S. actions that eventually led to the Vietnam War began in 1946, when, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the United States began to advise and financially support France’s la sale guerre or “dirty war” against Vietnamese Nationalist communist forces. The militant Ho Chi Minh, who during the 1930s worked internationally as a secret Comintern agent for the Soviet Union and helped form the Indochina Communist Party, led the communist forces (also called the Vietminh) against France. The Vietminh fought for Vietnamese independence in a country that had been a French colony for roughly a century.¹ The United States initially justified its support of France in the conflict by explaining that France was an ally and needed assistance retaining its colonial holdings in the wake of the Second World War.² As the dirty war continued into the 1950s, however, the United States focused less on securing a French colony and more on defending Vietnam against communism.

The U.S. agenda changed because these were the watershed years of the Cold War, when the Soviets and Americans—former anti-Nazi allies of World War II—and their respective communist and democratic political systems transformed into enemies. A series of aggressive actions by the USSR—the subversion of postwar regimes in Greece and Turkey, a communist coup in Czechoslovakia, and the Berlin blockade—threatened the potential influence of the United States in the postwar environment and provoked a strong U.S. response focused on forming a large democratic alliance. In 1947, the United States established the Truman Doctrine, which pledged military and economic assistance for any countries fighting against communism, because, as Truman maintained, totalitarian regimes coerced “free peoples” and thus “undermine[d] the foundations of international peace and . . . the security of the United States.”³ In 1948, the United States implemented the Marshall Plan, a massive program of economic aid to western Europe, created to curb communist influence in Italy and France. In 1949, a coalition of European nations and the United States created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an allied defense against Soviet incursion. Mao Zedong’s establishment of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949 and China’s entry into the Korean War, backing North Korea, in October 1950 also pushed the United States to fear that a loss of Vietnam to the communists would be the end of democracy in Southeast Asia.⁴ This worldview marked the beginning of the “domino theory,” which ruled American foreign policy regarding communism in Southeast Asia into the mid-1960s.⁵

The dirty war lasted until 1954, when Ho Chi Minh’s forces defeated a French army 80 percent funded by the United States.⁶ The final battle of the war was at Dienbienphu, where a French garrison fell on May 7, 1954.⁷ France’s defeat did not immediately lead to the creation of a communist country. China and the USSR feared that such a move would be a pretext for U.S. intervention in Indochina, and thus a new war. As a result, the conclusion of the fighting led to seventy-four days of negotiations in Geneva between the Vietminh and the French, as well as countries with a significant stake in the outcome: Cambodia, Laos, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China (which was making its first appearance on the international diplomatic stage). The negotiations resulted in the Geneva Accords of July 21, 1954, which split Vietnam into two countries at the 17th parallel, along which would run a thin, ten-kilometer-wide demilitarized zone, known as the DMZ.⁸ Two states came to be created on each side of the DMZ. The Communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) would control the North, with its capital in Hanoi. The democratic State of Vietnam—alternatively known as the Government of the Republic of Vietnam or South Vietnam—would be established in the South, with its capital in Saigon. France would transfer its power to the South (under the democratic Vietnamese rule of Bao Dai and Ngo Dinh Diem). The Accords stated that the creation of two states was a temporary solution, meant to allocate space for each side to retreat its forces until 1956, when elections would be held to reunify the country.⁹

From the beginning, while both North and South Vietnam outwardly supported the Accords, neither side truly complied. Numerous Vietnamese communists failed to retreat from the South to the North, and joined by those sympathetic in the South to their cause, they formed a growing oppositional movement to renew their struggle.¹⁰ For its part, the United States saw the accords as giving the Communist Party of Vietnam too much power and consequently began providing substantial military and economic aid to the South. This aid came directly under the cover of a newly created coalition of anticommunist countries inspired by NATO: the Southeast Asia Trade Organization (SEATO), comprising the United States, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, and Pakistan. In August 1954, the United States, via the CIA, began conducting secret sabotage missions against the communist forces in the South, in direct violation of the U.S. promise at Geneva to “refrain from the threat or the use of force” in the country.¹¹

Until 1956 the South Vietnamese government and its leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, were able to keep the communists at bay through a series of repressive laws.¹² Yet these laws provoked the communists. In 1957, they commenced attacks as well as assassinations of politicians and others associated with the South Vietnamese government. By 1959, communist armed forces (which became commonly referred to as the Vietcong or VC) were regularly involved in firefights with the South Vietnamese army. At the same time, more and more South Vietnamese—both communists and those sympathetic to the communist cause—joined the National Liberation Front (NLF). The NLF was the political arm of the Vietcong and was employed as an umbrella organization to embrace anyone in the South who opposed Diem and wanted to reunify Vietnam.¹³ Also, the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party—located in North Vietnam—privately resolved to help the Vietcong use force to overthrow Diem.

Between 1961 and 1962, because of the increasing power of communist forces both inside and outside South Vietnam, it became progressively clear that the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), or the military of South Vietnam, could not adequately defend the country. In 1961, there were more than one hundred ambushes and attacks on ARVN posts per month. Between 1959 and 1961, the number of South Vietnamese government officials assassinated by the Vietcong increased from twelve hundred to four thousand a year. By 1962, almost thirteen thousand communist cadres had infiltrated the South from the North. These forces were supplied from the North via the Ho Chi Minh trail, a network of roads that ran north and south through Laos, and with American weapons captured from the South Vietnamese or sold by Diem’s corrupt military officers.

In response to this situation, during 1962 and 1963—the last two years of President John F. Kennedy’s administration—the United States dramatically increased its aid to South Vietnam and Diem. The form of Kennedy’s aid differed in character from what it had been historically. It significantly enlarged the presence of American (CIA and military) “advisers” at all levels of the Vietnamese military and government, from eight hundred, which it had been throughout the 1950s, to more than nine thousand.¹⁴ Following the lead of a report by his advisers Walt Rostow and General Maxwell Taylor, Kennedy also supplied South Vietnam with military hardware, such as helicopters and armored personnel carriers. This increased U.S. military investment in South Vietnam was kept secret from the American public.

Over the next few years, Kennedy’s aid did little. One of its more dramatic failures was the addition of helicopters, which the VC quickly learned to shoot down with antiaircraft guns. This period also saw the striking collapse of major U.S.-devised initiatives like the Strategic Hamlet Program, launched in 1962. Reminiscent of earlier approaches pursued by the United States in South Vietnam (such as the “Agroville” scheme, which had failed three years previous), the program sought to concentrate peasants into more defensible positions and segregate them from VC influence.¹⁵ Yet it backfired and proved one of the most destructive ARVN strategic maneuvers. South Vietnamese peasants, moved to unfamiliar hamlets outside their villages, refused to defend them against other Vietnamese who had grown up in or near the area. In displacing villagers far from their homes and farms, the program also created masses of poor and distraught men and women. In all, the Strategic Hamlet Program resulted most often in the conversion of peasants into communists or communist sympathizers.¹⁶

The continuing decay of the Diem government further impeded Kennedy’s aid. Diem’s brother Ngo Dinh Nhu was mentally unstable, and it was believed he was negotiating secretly with the North.¹⁷ Nhu’s wife occupied the place of first lady of South Vietnam (as Diem was celibate), and infuriated many in the population by her arrogance and by instituting puritanically repressive social laws. She abolished divorce, made adultery a crime, closed Saigon nightclubs and ballrooms, and allowed cafés to remain open with the stipulation that the women who worked there (many of whom were prostitutes) wear white tunics that made them look like dental assistants. Conjointly, in 1962–1963, Diem began to severely antagonize the Buddhist population, which had been protesting the regime at the same time as the NLF. One of the most harrowing examples of this occurred on the birthday of the Buddha, on May 8, 1963. Buddhist crowds were angered because the government censored a popular monk’s radio address, and the regime used the army to disperse the crowd. A stampede resulted in which eight children died. In the summer, Buddhist unrest became international news. On June 11, a sixty-year-old Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc climbed out of a motorcade, sat down on the ground, and as other monks and nuns encircled him allowed himself to be doused with gasoline and lit on fire, thus committing ritual suicide. Buddhists and others watched him in reverence, prostrating themselves as he burned in the streets. A photograph of the scene, taken by Malcolm Browne, an Associated Press photographer who had been tipped off by the monks, was on the front page of almost every significant international newspaper the next morning. Further Buddhist protests provided a variety of dissidents (who hadn’t joined the NLF) an outlet for nationalist tendencies.¹⁸ Members of Diem’s government even came to the Buddhists’ defense. Madam Nhu’s father, Tran Van Chuong, quit his post to denounce the government alongside the Buddhists.¹⁹ Foreign Minister Vu Van Mau resigned and shaved his head like a Buddhist monk as a gesture of protest.²⁰

Though Washington told Diem to conciliate with the Buddhists, Diem decided to raid Buddhist pagodas in South Vietnam in his belief that they were harboring communists. In conjunction with the near-collapsed state of the Saigon government, this action led the United States to quietly encourage a coup (originally proposed by South Vietnamese generals) to remove Diem. Engineered by Henry Cabot Lodge (the U.S. ambassador in Saigon), the coup eventually took place on November 1. ARVN units seized Saigon, disarmed Nhu’s security forces, and occupied the presidential palace. Though the coup intended to spare the lives of Diem and Nhu, insurgents captured and murdered them both. Diem’s murder allegedly shocked Kennedy, who himself would be killed three weeks later.²¹

After the coup, the situation in South Vietnam became even more politically unstable.²² During the seven months between December 1963 and June 1964, the South Vietnamese leadership changed hands four times.²³ In January, the commander of the First Corps, General Nguyen Khanh (with the help of the Catholic General Tran Thien Khiem), toppled the junta that had displaced Diem only three months before.²⁴ Following Khanh’s move was a demi-coup by the “Young Turks”: Generals Nguyen Cao Ky, Nguyen Van Thieu, Nguyen Chanh Theiu, Nguyen Chanh Thi, and Le Nguyen Khang.²⁵ Then Khanh retook power, after which Van Theiu, Ky, and Nguyen Huu Co proclaimed themselves the National Leadership Council and Ky was selected to be chief of the Executive Council charged with the day-to-day administration of the country.

During this period, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara—in many respects the chief architect of American involvement in Vietnam—began making it clear to Johnson and his administration (newly installed following Kennedy’s assassination) that he believed U.S. strategies were grossly in error. This was a startling turnaround, since throughout his management of the armed forces in Vietnam until that point, McNamara had consistently assured Kennedy of the military’s stable progress. According to McNamara, the Southern regime and its hold on the countryside were now deteriorating much faster than he had anticipated.²⁶ To make matters worse, in late 1963 the North Vietnamese, fearful that the United States would further escalate the conflict, persuaded the Soviet Union to support them. This move heavily bolstered defenses around North Vietnam’s major cities and coastline and solidified the conflict as another principal site of U.S.–Soviet Co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraphs
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Beginnings of the Vietnam War and the Antiwar Movement
• 2. The Beginnings of Artistic Antiwar Engagement: Artists and Writers Protest and the Artists’ Protest Committee
• 3. Creating Antiwar Art
• 4. Angry Arts
• 5. 1968
• 6. 1969: AWC, Dead Babies, Dead American Soldiers
• Color Plates
• 7. The Invasion of Cambodia, the New York Art Strike, and Conceptual Art as Antiwar
• 8. Toward an End
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index