Of the Americans who fought in Korea or Vietnam, none were “innocent” by virtue of having been drafted. The moral choice there was to either dodge the draft, defect to the other side, or frag the guy giving orders. Anyone who chose otherwise was a criminal and a murderer. And once the draft was over and the army became volunteer-only, all the excuses vanished. Yes, there are people who were in Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria who regretted it, but regretting your crime doesn’t undo it. That’s just the minimum requirement for being a decent human being in the aftermath.
To everyone who says “you leftists can’t go around hating on the troops, don’t you want them to join the revolution?” I say “why would they join us if they couldn’t handle being told the truth about the genocidal terrorist organization they volunteered for?” If their reaction upon hearing people call the US military murderers and terrorists is to deny or equivocate or rationalize their participation, then they’re not yet fit to be a revolutionary. If we’re trying to dismantle the imperialist warmongering empire that continues to use its might and influence to murder millions around the world that is the United States, what good is a person who balks at the notion that the troops who volunteer to pledge their lives and their loyalty in service of this empire might be complicit in its crimes?
An American soldier or veteran who is not ready to admit they were wrong will not be any more ready to join us if we lie to them and say they made no mistake in joining the US military. We only weaken our own messaging and our own position if we refuse to condemn not just the US military as an organization but all those who continue to participate in and defend its actions. The troops are not innocent.
I don’t agree with this. I understand the baseline argument here, but not everyone actually had options. These were mostly kids getting drafted. Like, straight out of high school. They didn’t have life experience, or political awareness, or an understanding of what was really going on. This also downplays how effective propaganda is. Some 18 y/o from the rural deep south just isn’t going to have the tools to make the informed decisions that you or I could with the ocean of information and opinions we have now. It was a fucked up, rigged system from the start and we should focus on the monsters that run that system and not the civilians that get caught by it.
Where did I say that we should “focus” on people who were drafted into Korea or Vietnam? Obviously the draft sucked for a lot of reasons and it wasn’t the fault of anyone who was drafted against their will. That said, if someone holds a gun to your back and tells you to torch a home with kids inside, do you think the moral choice is to do it? The draftees weren’t threatened with death if they refused. 99 out of 100 draft dodgers during Vietnam (and that’s out of those that actually dodged the draft, not those with deferments) never even saw a day in prison. Prison time was also rare for those charged with desertion or cowardice. If we can agree that “just following orders” wasn’t an excuse for the Nazis, who had far harsher punishments for draft dodgers and deserters, why should that be an excuse for American soldiers in Korea or Vietnam?
Why should propaganda be an excuse, either? Propaganda is a reason why someone would willingly sign up for military service. It’s not a legal defense. US soldiers aren’t brainwashed. Most of them, I would assume, had the full capacity to make their own decisions. We have US soldiers on record talking about how they were aware they were killing civilians in Vietnam and that the government was fraudulently reporting those deaths as enemy combatants. You could say they couldn’t have known what Agent Orange would do, but you can’t say the same for bullets, bombs, or napalm.
US troops were complicit when they followed orders to “shoot everything that moves”, when they bombed cities and towns and villages, when they raped women and children. US troops were complicit when they saw their fellow soldiers do these things and kept their mouths shut. Being drafted doesn’t explain why these things happened. Propaganda doesn’t explain why these things happened. Racism and imperialism explain why these things happened.
The US government made the choice to invade Korea and Vietnam, and the US troops made the choice to follow orders, or worse. If we have to append “but remember, the troops were drafted!” to the end of every statement condemning the US atrocities in these wars, we’re only undermining our own argument. The US military is not a liberatory force, and US troops are not pawns with no agency or motives of their own. I think it’s a lot better to tell anyone still in the military that they have a choice and can think for themselves and choose not to be a racist imperial stooge than it is to tell them “you have no agency, you’re just a tool for the government, and you are not to blame for anything you do”. Let’s praise the draft dodgers, the deserters, the defectors, the whistleblowers and the saboteurs. Let’s raise them up as an example of good conduct for every US troop to follow.