If you don’t remember the Richard Nixon who told David Frost, "When the President does it, that means it’s not illegal," then you don’t remember the real Richard Nixon. Probably you are too young. You certainly didn’t suffer the vengeance he inflicted upon those of us who dared to oppose him. The parallels to the Bush/Cheney administration confirm the warning that those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.
Thank you, btex, for recommending "Combat by Trial: An Odyssey with 20th Century Winter Soldiers" in your diary review of "Frost/Nixon." In the book, I tell what it was like to suffer the wrath of Nixon and explain that we endured it because we could not remain silent when his administration was inflicting so much damage on tiny Vietnam while turning family members and neighbors here at home against each other—much as the swiftboaters tore our national Band of Brothers to shreds by turning veterans against each other during the 2004 presidential campaign.
Someone who read "Combat by Trial" and who, like me went through the Nixonian crucible, remarked that I "got it exactly right—those years, the fear, paranoia, disbelief, determination, courage, exhaustion, loneliness, struggle."
The Vietnam War, like the Iraq War, was begun on the basis of lies, as I delineate complete with comparisons of the two wars and references to additional information. The Winter Soldiers I tell of and let tell their own stories were the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. We were not among those stupid enough to set off the bombs that attracted so much attention. We wanted to end a war, not start one. But we were all tarnished by the Weathermen, even as President-elect Obama was during the campaign by his acquaintance with Weatherman Bill Ayers.
Although I am not a veteran, I worked closely with VVAW for 4 years. When we wouldn’t sit down and shut up, we were spied upon, set up, jailed and indicted on fabricated charges designed to prove we were the terrorists the Nixonians believed us to be. Because the indictments were fictitious, almost none of them resulted in convictions, and most of those that did were overturned on appeal. Still such treatment affected us.
My life was torn apart—a condition I perpetuated by insisting upon writing about what we endured and why we did so. The stories I tell in "Combat by Trial" are stories that the powers-that-be in the country did not want told. But I persevered and finally got it written and published. Which emphasizes one of the points I bring out in the book: oppression is counter-productive. Today, Israel’s current war against Palestinians is proving that point. The Israelis have had the Gaza Strip blockaded for years in one of many unsuccessful efforts to make the Palestinians shut up or go away. For 60 years Israel has provided a clear demonstration that blockading and bombing people produces more resistance, not less.
In "Combat by Trial" I write of how my friends and I dug in our heels when the powers-that-be tried to make us shut up or go away. I parallel our resistance to other, older resistance movements in this country. The American Indian Movement’s occupation of Wounded Knee was going on while close friends of mine were being tried on trumped up charges to shut us all up. Wounded Knee, along with the seizures of Alcatraz and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, illustrated how centuries of being oppressed had created greater, not less, resistance. Another resistance movement culminated in the Black Panther Party when young blacks—refusing to be either "Uncle Toms" or "Oreos"—took up guns to resist. So have people around Israel in Hamas and Hezbollah.
The election of Barak Obama as our president is proof positive of how working through our differences, rather than fighting each other, works for the good of everyone. No one dreamed, when the Panthers grabbed our attention back in The Day, that we would see a black president.
Recently Eyad el-Sarraj noted, in a column for The Washington Post, that the children of Gaza "see the fear in their mothers’ eyes. The image of their fathers as a source of security is shattered. Their fathers could not provide them with food, and now they are unable to protect them. The rockets will eventually stop flying, I am certain, but it may be too late for these children. To me, the chances seem great that they will join Hamas as they search for a replacement for the father figure, someone to provide and protect. In this way, Israeli actions will only strengthen Hamas."
Such resistance begins, as I illustrate in "Combat by Trial," with a government misusing its powers to rid itself of awkward truths. Yes, many people drop away out of fear of further repression—loss of jobs, reputations, freedom, lives, etc.—but that leaves a solid core ever more dedicated to telling the truth. And the longer that repression continues, the more people are drawn back in to join that core of resistance.