The War at Home
By Godsil
October 19, 2007
For me it probably started one weekend evening in Chicago’s Old Towne, Summer 1965, when I chanced to witness a street debate between five or ten mostly Jewish American college students from Roosevelt University and a crowd of about 20, over the merits of the escalating Vietnam war.
I was in Chicago that summer working on roofs in the western suburbs, hanging out with my college sweetheart, Suzy Fountain, sharing work and a room with my college buddy Chuck Paterson. I had never witnessed anyone criticizing U.S. foreign policy until that evening. Military action to prevent the spread of communism, as the Vietnam War was viewed, was an absolute necessity.
I can remember dreams in which I was engaged in ghoulish hand-to-hand combat with Asian soldiers, inspired by a lifetime’s anti-communist teaching in my Catholic grade schools, high schools, and college. Perhaps I was attentive to the anti-war students because my father was disdainful of “flag waving veterans” at work, who had superior airs because of their military service (Dad was exempt because tool and die makers were needed to make the weapons in the arsenal of democracy).
Maybe I listened with an inquiring mind because I was a political science major, with minors in history and philosophy. Perhaps it was the obvious literacy and intelligence of the students, who seemed more knowledgeable about the facts of the Vietnam war. After the crowd dispersed, Chuck and I talked with the students who were sufficiently pleasant and inspiring that a tiny seed of doubt had been planted in my very ripe and fertile mind.