Audience members at the Havens Center panel discussion were treated to a showing of “The War at Home,” a film about the events surrounding the Vietnam War on the University of Wisconsin campus, Tuesday night. The panel consisted of activists against the war in Vietnam involved with the UW during the time of most intense conflict — the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The members of the panel included former Madison mayor and former UW student Paul Soglin, Frank Emspah, former UW professor and visiting scholar from UCLA Maurice Zeitlin and UW sociology professor Joe Elder.
One of the main issues the panel took up in front of the eclectic audience was comparing the decade-long Vietnam conflict with the current war in Iraq.
According to Zeitlin, the two wars may have some similarities, but the reasons for going into the war could not be more polar.
“[The Vietnam] war is a very different kind of war than this one,” Zeitlin exclaimed. He went on to say that Vietnam was a “real war; it had a point,” whereas he just questions the reasoning for starting the current conflict in Iraq. “What is this war all about?”
The panel agreed with Zeitlen, when he said the Vietnamese war was started to quash a popular political uprising in French Indochina and simultaneously destroy the communist threat to the peninsula. Zeitlin further explained that the war against Iraq does not have any apparent reasons, as weapons of mass destruction have yet to be found and “facts were distorted” to fulfill the needed terms, an imminent threat to American national security, to go to war with Iraq.
The panel agreed with Zeitlin that Iraq might be a better place without Saddam Hussein, but it asserted that it does not justify waging war upon a country. Especially, Soglin clarified, when a basis for the war is on the foundation of lies.
“It took years to get lies out [about the Vietnam War],” Soglin said. “But now it’s every time Bush opens his mouth.”
Another issue the panel took up was the recent failure of mainstream media.
“Disney is really inconvenienced by news,” Soglin said.
He explained that media is even more controlled by advertisers now than it was 30 years ago. The result, the panel and some audience members felt, is an over-sanitization of the media.
Zeitlin said another key difference highlighted in the current conflict is the administration’s power to keep the public out of the loop, as the laws are different now than what they used to be. Zeitlin said things done illegally during the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson are now done legally under the USA Patriot Act.
Audience member and former UW professor Neil Skinner explained why he decided to attend Tuesday’s lecture and film.
“I was present when the film was shot,” Skinner said. “I might even be in it.”
Another UW employee at the time, Meg Skinner, said she was living in Madison through part of the protest time, but related it back to the present day. Meg Skinner believes that civil disobedience could change government policy on the environment and civil rights, but not always military decisions.
During scenes of the documentary that caught several politicians in lies revolving around the Vietnamese output, the crowd hissed. The panel ended with a poem written by an audience member discussing a woe for America’s repression and war mongering.