Tomado de: Historians Against War: http://www.historiansagainstwar.org/hawconf/Kuzmarov.doc
“Escaping the Horrors of War: Drugs and GI Resistance in
“The
clatter of machine guns was like a Stravinsky percussion interlude from Le Sacre
du Printemps. There isn’t a psychedelic discotheque that can match the beauty of
flares and bombs at night.”
- John Steinbeck IV, 1968.[1]
While worthy of some good laughs, Hope’s remarks -
and the reaction that they elicited – held deep social significance. They
promoted recognition that drug use had different connotations for soldiers than
senior commanding officers or contemporaries back home. In calling for American
leaders to smoke marijuana before going to the negotiating table, Hope further
tapped into a growing anti-establishment ethos and mistrust for government
pervading the military, which helped to account in part for the relatively high
drug usage rates. Expanding on Hope’s jokes, this talk seeks to demonstrate how
the use of drugs during the war by American soldiers served as a reflection of
its high human costs and social injustice. Drugs were a product of what Robert
Jay Lifton referred to as the “counterfeit social universe” of ‘The Nam’ and
means for GIs to cope with the stresses and horrors of the conflict. It was also
a critical dimension of the resistance carried out by lower ranking “grunts”
against their senior commanding officers. This is an element of the war that has
largely been obscured in American popular memory. Most popular depictions –
including the mass media and in
Drug Use in
“Illegal drug abuse by military personnel in
To give the audience a bit of a background, illegal
drugs were readily available in
In 1967, as a result of a growing wave of media attention, the Department of
Defense
formed a special task force on narcotics and commissioned
psychiatrist Roger A. Roffman to conduct a study at the Long Binh Jail, where
drugs were prevalent despite tightening security. He found that 63 percent of
prisoners tried marijuana.[9]
In a follow-up survey, Roffman and Ely Sapol determined that 28.9 percent of GIs
stationed in the Southern Corps experimented with marijuana at least once during
their tour of duty in South Vietnam; a comparable total to user rates in the
U.S. for men between the ages of 18 and 21 (28 percent surveyed had tried before
in the U.S.).[10]
Both were deeply dismayed by the
media’s coverage, which inflated their data and issued “bombastic statements
that 60,70, 80 or even 90 percent of American troops” thus blowing the scope way
out of proportion.[11]
By November 1970, the opening of transportation routes from
the Golden Triangle through
“Drugs
Got Me Through the Day”: The Psychological Importance of Drug Use in
These totals resulted from the important psychological
function of drug use in a war fought on behalf of a corrupt client-regime
against a popularly backed revolutionary movement – a point that was obscured in
most media portrayals. Stripped of their youthful naivety and idealism early
into their tour of duty, most soldiers encountered bitter hostility throughout
the Vietnamese countryside and were perceived as unwelcome foreign intruders –
much like the French foreign legionnaires. They faced grave difficulty adjusting
to the treacherous jungle terrain, in which the National Liberation Front
commanded deep support, and were constantly in fear of guerrilla attack.[16]
Fighting at what one analyst termed the “butt end of a bad war,”
43 percent of soldiers, according to a
study by sociologist John Helmer, cited “escape” as the key reason why they used
drugs, while 37 percent cited “to forget the killing and relieve the pressure.”[17] In
a personal memoir The Drug Hazed War in
Southeast Asia, Sergeant Jay Dee Ruybal, who served with the 4th
Battalion, 60th Artillery from October 1967 to June 1969, commented,
“For many of us, drugs were a form of self-medication. I daydreamed under their
influence. They offered a temporary release from the constant fear and physical
suffering.”[18] Bill
Karabaic, a drug counselor with the 101st Airborne Division,
similarly explained, “
In “The Importance of Being Stoned in
Dr. Richard Ratner, a psychiatrist from the Bronx
working at the Long-Binh military stockade, compared GIs in
Zinberg emphasized further that drug use almost
always occurred in a group environment and served as an important bonding
mechanism and initiation rite for new recruits (or FNG’s – Fucking New Guys in
GI slang) that allowed them to flout the moral exhortations of their officers
and the senior military command. Dr. Clinton R. Sanders, who worked with
veterans at a VA center in
Yale’s Robert Jay Lifton, also committed peace and
anti-nuclear activist, reported that some GIs dreamed up scenarios where they
got high together with the NLF and dropped their weapons in mutual amity and
affection. One soldier told him, “When I was smoking then I would say it’s just
a bunch of bullshit. It really is ridiculous, really stupid... Somebody back
there in
Soldiers in Revolt: Drugs as Symbol of Military Resistance
As Lifton’s analysis illuminates, by studying drugs
and why soldiers took them, we can learn a lot about the Vietnam War; its
brutality, human costs and injustice. We can further learn about the
psychological toll that the war took on the men sent to fight it, and their
ultimate refusal to conform.
Drugs emerged as an important symptom of the internecine
conflict that plagued the Armed Forces, especially after of the 1968 Tet
offensive.[31]
During the course of the war, the military’s composition changed from
ideologically motivated volunteers to dispirited conscripts bent on challenging
authority and resisting
By 1971, Colonel Robert Heinl reported in
The Armed Forces Journal that the
military had disintegrated to a “state approaching collapse,” with “individual
units drug ridden and dispirited when not near-mutinous,” avoiding or having
refused combat and “murdering their officers and non-commissioned officer”
through fragging, or detonating a grenade in their barracks.[38]
The Army eventually admitted to over 700 such incidents.[39]
Following a fruitless offensive on the Dong Ap Bia Hill in the A Shau Valley, a
group of veterans placed a $10,000 bounty on the head of Lieutenant Colonel
Weldon Honeycutt, who had ordered the attack. Many underground newspapers at the
same time featured a “Lifer of the Month” to be targeted for assassination.[40]
This testified to the profound contempt held by many GIs for their senior
commanding officers, due primarily to a sense of betrayal surrounding the
justifications for the war and their willingness to sacrifice human lives for
what they perceived as trivial military gain.[41]
Bearing
the imprint of the 1960s counter-culture which pervaded the Armed Forces, many
soldiers turned to drugs as a collective emblem of their defiance.[42]
Sociologist Paul Starr wrote that by the late 1960s “acid rock, drugs and peace
emblems were as common in I-Corps as they were in
“After
six months, I came to the conclusion that we were the aggressors.
I started to see the injustice of it all. Truck
drivers would just run people
down on the road and laugh about it. We’d be riding
in helicopters and people
would be working in rice fields and the door gunners
would just kill them
right on the spot and laugh. Something just started
to go awry inside of me.
This isn’t right. This isn’t mom and apple pie. So I was involved with smoking
marijuana. At the time this was the symbol of the anti-war movement in the
service.”[46]
One interesting facet to the rebellious connotation
of drug use in
Because of the prevailing racial divide engulfing
the military,
African American GIs were most-prone to use drugs as an
expression of social dissent. Influenced by the Black Power movement, many
formed revolutionary organizations – such as one titled De Mau Mau after the
Kenyan anti-colonial fighters – and instigated a series of racial riots,
including at the Long Binh stockade, where they faced constant degradation and
harassment by white guards.[48]
Many African-Americans had come to identify by this time with the Vietnamese
revolutionary struggle for political autonomy and independence, which they
likened to their own. They overwhelmingly viewed American policy as being
“racist and imperialistic in design.”[49] One
black Marine commented, “The black guys [in our unit] would say that as far as
they were concerned, Ho Chi Minh was a soul brother. Along with a few college
drop-outs, they formed a kind of coalition. They would listen to music all the
time, get stoned and refuse to carry out assigned orders.”[50] Although
some black radicals also frowned on drug use, which they felt diverted activist
energies,[51]
these comments exemplify its importance as a symbol of non-conformity and
resistance to military authority, which was most marked during the latter stages
of the war. They also highlight the growing anti-establishment sentiments of GIs
lying at the root of the crisis in military discipline and insubordination –
which has been largely ignored in mainstream and popular cultural depictions and
even by many historians, to the benefit of those committed to continued American
political and military expansion, and the waging of new wars of aggression.
During the latter phases of the war and in its
aftermath,
many myths about drug use in
As Ridenhour recognized,
The spread of cultural myths about drug abuse in
Beginning in the 1970s, popular culture became
submerged with images of drug-crazed veterans returning home to foment chaos in
American city streets – as in the Stone
Killer where Gus Lipper is gunned down by a team of assassins seeking his
share in the drug trade. One cultural critic commented: “No grade-B melodrama
was complete without its standard vet as a psychotic heroin addict.”[64]
In reality, studies have shown that few veterans who had used drugs in
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter proclaimed that we “owe
Cultural misrepresentations about American soldiers and drugs have contributed
immeasurably to a post-war revisionism and have helped to sanitize the American
record in the conflict and obscured its deeper roots. They in turn helped to
shape
the waging not only of the War on Drugs, since drug use divorced from its social
context was blamed for American misconduct and military failure, but also the
War on Terror, whose legitimacy is sustained by a belief in
aggrieved national innocence and virtue shaped in part by a historical amnesia
surrounding the record of American imperialism in Indochina, as well as other
murderous conflicts like Korea (which leading historian Bruce Cumings refers to
as the “most genocidal” of the post-war American interventions).[72]
Ironically, history appears to be repeating itself.
Evidence suggests that, in spite of official governmental denials, dwindling
morale and a flourishing black market economy is resulting in a “surge” in
military drug abuse among psychologically distraught soldiers in both
[1]
John Steinbeck IV, “The
Importance of Being Stoned in
[2]
“GI’s in Vietnam High on Hope’s Jokes”
The New York Times, December
23, 1970, p. 2.
[3]
M.D Stanton, “Drugs,
[4]
Colbach & Wilson, “The Binoctal Craze”
[5] “Pentagon Explains GI’s Get Pep Pills to Diet and Survive” The New York Times, March 7, 1968, p. 16, Personal Interview, F. Wayne Thornton, March 24 2007 (Lubbock Texas).
[6]
See
[7]
Steinbeck, In Touch, p. 132,
Verrone & Calkins,
Voices from
[8]
“Monthly Drug Abuse Report” Edward G. Lurie, Colonel, MPC, Deputy
Provost Marshall, January, 1972,
Records of the United States Army Vietnam, Drug
Programs & Plans Branch, (National Archives, College Park Maryland), Box
4, Folder 12 (hereafter DP&P),
“Marijuana in Vietnam” Major
Anthony Pietropinto, Chief Mental Hygiene Consultation Services, Cam
Ranh Bay, Vietnam, Drug Abuse, DP&P, Box 4.
[9]
Roger A. Roffman, “Survey of Marijuana Use: Prisoners Confined in the
USARV Installation Stockade as of July 1, 1967” In Pike & Goldstein,
“History of Drug Use in the Military”
Drug Use in America: Problem in
Perspective (Washington, D.C: G.P.O., 1973), “Memo for the Assistant
Secretary of Defense (Manpower)” November 9, 1967, DP&P, Box 4, Folder
12.
[10]
Roffman & Sapol, “Marijuana in
[11]
“Alleged Drug Abuse in the Armed Services” Hearings Before the Special
Senate Subcommittee, 91st Congress, 2nd session, p. 25,/1142,
Personal Interview, Dr. Roger R. Roffman, University of Washington
School of Social Work, November 1, 2004 (Telephone).
[12]
Norman Zinberg, “Heroin Use in
[13] “Introduction of Heroin in Vietnam by Thai Soldiers” January 1970, PSD, Records of the Agency of International Development, Office of Public Safety, East Asia Branch (National Archive, College Park Maryland), Box 111, Folder 1.
[14]
Harry C. Holloway, “Epidemiology of Heroin Dependency Among Soldiers in
[15]
Lee N. Robins,
The
[16]
See for example,
Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1977), W.D. Ehrhart,
Vietnam – Perkasie: A Combat
Marine Memoir (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1983), Appy,
Working-Class War (1993),
Wilfred
Burchett, Vietnam Will Win: Why
the People of South Vietnam Have Already Defeated U.S. Imperialism and
How They Have Done It (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969).
[17] John
Helmer,
Bringing the War Home: The American Soldier in
[18]
Jay Dee Ruybal,
The Drug Hazed War in
[19]
Eugene Linden, “The Demoralization of an Army: Fragging and Other
Withdrawal Symptoms” Saturday
Review, January 8, 1972, p. 13, Personal Interview, William Leary,
January, 24, 2004, Revere, Massachusetts.
[20] David Kashimba, “Uncle Sam, Pusher” The Nation, September 20, 1971.
[21]
John Steinbeck IV, “The
Importance of Being Stoned in
[22]
Gabriel Kolko, Anatomy of a War:
[23]
Paul Starr, The Discarded Army:
Veterans After
[24]
In Fred Halstead, “The New Antiwar Army”
International Socialist Review
(January 1972), p. 28, “GI Heroin Addiction Is Epidemic in
[25]
“Testimony of Dr. Norman Zinberg “Drug Abuse Prevention and Control”
Special Senate Subcommittee Hearing on Drugs in the Military, 92nd
Congress, 1st Session, March 1972 (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O.,
1972), p. 356, “The Search for a Rational Approach to Heroin Use” In
Addiction, ed. Peter Bourne
(New York: Academic Press, 1974), p. 157.
[26]
Norman Zinberg, “Heroin Use in Vietnam and the United States: A Contrast
and Critique” Archives of General
Psychiatry (May, 1972), p. 488, “GI’s and OJ’s in Vietnam”
The New York Times Magazine,
December 5, 1971, p. 120, “Testimony of Dr. Norman Zinberg ”Drug Abuse
Prevention and Control,” p. 356,
Zinberg et al. “The Effectiveness of the Subculture
in Developing Rituals and Social Sanctions for Controlled Drug Use” In
Drugs, Rituals and Altered States
of Consciousness, p. 111-133.
[27]
Personal Interview Dr. Clinton R. Sanders,
[28]
Clinton R. Sanders, “Doper’s Wonderland: Functional Drug Use by Military
Personnel in
[29]
Ibid, p. 71-72.
[30]
Robert Jay Lifton,
[31] David Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005, 1975), p. 22.
[32] Johnson
& Wilson
Army in Anguish: The
[33] Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt, p. 19, Terry Anderson, “Counter-Culture” In The Movement and the Sixties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 245. For an early dissenting voice, see Donald Duncan, “I Quit” Ramparts (February 1966), “The Whole Thing Was a Lie” Ramparts (February 1966), The New Legions (New York: Pocket Books 1967).
[34]
Cortright, “GI Resistance during the Vietnam War” In
Give Peace a Chance: Exploring
the
[35]
For an emblematic piece, see Andy Stapp, “CIA
Ordered Nazi Style Massacre in My-Lai”
The Bond, December 16, 1970,
“GIs United Against War in Indochina”
Bragg Briefs, Special Spring
Offensive, 1971, “Legalized Prostitution: Brass’ New Weapon Against GIs
and Vietnamese Women” The Bond,
January 27, 1972 (Alternative Newspaper Collection, Thomas J. Dodd
Research Center, University of Connecticut), Andy Stapp,
Up Against the Brass (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1971).
[36]
See David Geiger,
Sir No Sir! The Suppressed Story of the GI Movement to End the War in
[37]
Waterhouse & Wizard,
Turning the Guns Around: Notes on
the GI Movement (New York: Praeger, 1971), Richard B. Moser,
The
New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent During the Vietnam Era
(New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996), James Reston, “A Whiff of
Mutiny in Vietnam” The New York
Times, August 27, 1969, “A Deserter Raps: Outasight in Saigon
– How to Scram in the Nam”
Berkeley Barb, February 11-17, 1972, p.2.
[38]
Robert Heinl, “The Collapse of the Armed Forces”
Armed Forces Journal (June
1971), p. 30/31. See also, Cincinnatus,
Self-Destruction: The
Disintegration and Decay of the U.S. Armed Forces in the Vietnam Era
(New York: Norton, 1981), Rae et al.
Future Impact of Dissident
Elements within the Army on the Enforcement of Discipline, Law, and
Order (McLean, Virginia: Research Analysis Corporation, 1972),
Seymour Hersh, “The Decline and Near Fall of the U.S. Army”
Saturday Review, November 18,
1972, p. 58-65, Charles Levy,
Spoils of War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974).
[39]
Appy, Working-Class War, p.
246, H. Bruce Franklin, “The Antiwar Movement We Are Supposed to Forget”
in
[40]
See The Bond, July 24, 1971,
“Lifers Dig War……. It Makes Them Rich”
The Ally, November 1969
(Alternative Newspaper Collection,
[41]
Eugene Linden, “The Demoralization of an Army: Fragging and Other
Withdrawal Symptoms” Saturday
Review, January 8, 1972, p. 13, Fred Halstead, “The New Anti-War
Army” International Socialist
Review (January 1972), p. 24-31.
[42] Cortright Soldiers in Revolt, p. 19, Matthew Rinaldi, “Olive Drab Rebels: Military Organizing during the Vietnam Era” Radical America (March 1974), “Drugs in the Military” GI News & Discussion Bulletin (January 1972), p. 41 Swarthmore Peace Collection, www.sirnosir.com/archives.
[43] Starr, The Discarded Army, p. 23, 36.
[44]
In Terry Anderson, “The GI Movement and the Response from the Brass” In
Give Peace a Chance: Exploring
the
[45]
Moser, The New Winter Soldiers,
p. 63.
[46]
Ibid., p. 63.
[47] Captain
Larry H. Ingraham, “’The
[48]
See “How Nazi Brass Run Long Binh Jail”
The Bond, October 21, 1970,
Cecil B. Currey,
Long Binh Jail: An Oral History of Vietnam’s Notorious U.S. Military
Prison,
p. 50.
[49]
See James E. Westheider, Fighting
On Two Fronts: African Americans and the Vietnam War (New York: New
York University Press, 1997), Wallace Terry,
Bloods (New York: Harper &
Row, 1984), Herman Graham III,
The Brothers Vietnam War:
Black Power, Manhood, and the Military Experience
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003),
Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt,
p. 39, Gerald Gill, “Black Soldiers Perspectives on the Vietnam War” In
The Vietnam Reader, ed.
Walter Capps (New York: Routeledge, 1991), p. 174.
[50]
Clinton R. Sanders, “Doper’s Wonderland: Functional Drug Use among
Military Personnel in
[51] “Black Power Group in Vietnam Fights the Enemy Within: Heroin Addiction” The New York Times, August 12, 1971, p. A3, Graham III, The Brothers Vietnam War, p. 110.
[52]
This was my impression of Musto & Korsmeyer,
The Quest for Drug Control (
[53]
“Statement of Charles West, Chicago, Illinois” Drug Abuse in the Armed
Forces, Hearings Before the Subcommittee to
Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, Committee on the Judiciary, 90th
Congress, 2nd Session, March, 1970 (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1970),
p. 6291, Robert M. Smith, “Senators Told GI’s in Song-My Unit Smoked
Marijuana Night Before Incident”
The New York Times, March 25, 1970, p. 14, “My Lai Drug Question
Raised” The New York Times,
March 16, 1970, p. 24.
[54]
Drug Abuse in the Armed Forces, p. 6260.
[55]
Personal Interview, Dr. Roger Roffman, November 24, 2004 (Telephone),
Jeffrey A. Roth, “Psychoactive Substances and Violence” (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 1994),
www.druglibrary.org,
James Tinkelberg, “Drugs and Crime” In
Drug Use in America Problem in
Perspective: The Technical Papers of the 2nd Report of the National
Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, ed. Raymond Shafer, March
1973(Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1973), Charles E. Reasons “The Addict As
Criminal: Perpetuation of a Legend”
Crime and Delinquency
(January, 1979).
[56]
Robert M. Smith, “Marijuana Link Denied”
The
New York Times, March 26,
1970, p. 14, See also, Seymour Hersh,
My-Lai 4: A Report on the
Massacre and Its Cover-Up (New York: Random House, 1970),
Goldstein, Marshall, Schwartz,
The My-Lai Massacre and Its
Cover-up: Beyond the Reach of Law? The Peers Report (Washington,
D.C.: U.S State Department, 1972), Jack Anderson, “Lt. Calley Describes
My-Lai Massacre” The
[57]
Interview with Ronald Ridenhour, 1994, Dan Baum,
Smoke and Mirrors: The War on
Drugs and the Politics of Failure (
[58]
Citizens’ Commission of Inquiry,
The Dellums Committee Hearings on War Crimes in Vietnam (New York:
Vintage Books, 1972), p. 55,
[59]
Noam Chomsky
At War With Asia: Essays on Indo-China (New York: Vintage Books,
1970), p. 25, Chomsky & Herman,
The Political Economy of Human Rights: The Washington Connection and
Third World Fascism (Boston: South End Press, 1979), p. 313. See
also, Kolko, Falk, Lifton eds.
Crimes of War (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), Nicholas Turse, “’Kill
Anything that Moves’:
[60]
“Alleged incident Involving Fourth infantry
Division Troops on February 1, 1968,” January 17, 1970, “12 year old
Vietnamese Boy Killed, An Bang Hamlet” “Alleged ROK Massacres” “100
Montagnard Villagers Shot,” “Soldier trying to Smuggle Vietnamese head”
CIB, Boxes 34-36. See also, Turse & Nelson, “Civilian Killings Went
Unpunished: Declassified Papers Show U.S. Atrocities went Far Beyond
[61]
Christian G. Appy,
Patriots: The Vietnam War
Remembered from All Sides, p. 77.
[62] Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now (United Artists-Zoetrope, 1979)
[63]
For discussion of this scene, see Jeremy Devine,
[64]
George Swiers, “Demented Vets and Other Myths: The Moral Obligation of
Veterans” In
[65]
See Paul Starr, The Discarded
Army: Veterans After
[66]
See Wilbur J. Scott, The Politics
of Readjustment:
[67]
Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting
Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of
[68]
Don Irwin, “
[69]
The quote comes from a professor at the
[70]
See Robert J. McMahon, “Contested Memory, The
Vietnam War and American Society, 1975-2001,” SHAFR Presidential
Address, Diplomatic History
(Fall 2002), p. 166, 171, Noam Chomsky, “The United States and
Indo-China: Far From an Aberration” In
Coming to Terms, Indo-China, the
United States and the War, ed. Long & Allen (Boulder CO: Westview
Press, 1991), p. 10.
[71]
This is born out by my own teaching experience,
where in a survey courses, not one student is usually aware of these
events. See Noam Chomsky, “The United States and Indo-China: Far From an
Aberration” In Coming to Terms,
Indo-China, the United States and the War, p. 10,
War and State Terrorism: The
[72]
For a deconstruction of the administrative perspective, see Chalmers
Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days
of the American Republic (
[73]
See for example, Amy Schlesing, “Drugs, Booze Easy for GIs to Get in
Thomas Harding, “Stressed US troops in
Turning to Drugs to Deal”
Washington General News,
November 15, 2006,
Susan Milligan, “Drug
Use Seen on Rise In
Iraq
Porous Borders, Lack Of Security Are Cited As Cause”
Boston Globe, August 23, 2003, p. A.33,
On the climate of corruption in Iraq bred by the
illegal U.S. occupation, see Rajiv Chandrasekaran,
Imperial Life in the Emerald
City: Inside Baghdad’s Green Zone (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006).
[74]
See Andrew Bacevitch,
The New American
Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War
(