This post was originally published on Veterans Day 2010. Veterans’ stories are so important that I’m posting it again. Need help telling your story? Let us know and we’ll be glad to work with you.

In the United States, today is Veteran’s Day.  I live in New York City, so I’ll be walking up to Fifth Avenue to watch the parade.

But before I go, I want to publish some resources that will show vets how to put their stories in the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress. First, though, for any of you unsure about the day, here’s an abbreviated history.

An official day honoring veterans in the US was established in November 1919 when Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11 to be the first commemoration of Armistice Day. He did this to honor the end of the “war to end all wars”: World War I. The fighting had actually ended about a year earlier on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. At that time, an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany had gone into effect. Logically, November 11 was designated as the day of celebration and was to be observed with parades, public meetings, and a brief suspension of business beginning at 11:00 AM.

On May 13, 1938, the United States Congress made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday—a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as “Armistice Day.”

At that time, Armistice Day was primarily a day set aside to honor veterans of World War I. In 1954, after World War II had required the greatest mobilization of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen in the Nation’s history and after American forces had fought aggression in Korea, the 83rd Congress amended the Act of 1938 by striking out the word “Armistice” and inserting in its place the word “Veterans.” On June 1, 1954, November 11th became a day to honor American veterans of all wars.

Later that same year, on October 8th, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the first “Veterans Day Proclamation.”

Veterans Day continues to be observed on November 11, regardless of what day of the week the 11th falls on. This preserves the historical significance of the date, and helps focus attention on the important purpose of Veterans Day as a celebration to honor America’s veterans for their patriotism, love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good.

Clearly, Veterans Day is important!

But another way to honor vets is to listen to their stories. The Veterans History Project (VHP) honors American war veterans by preserving stories of their service to the country. It is open to veterans of World War I, World War II, the wars in Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf, and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The VHP also collects stories of civilians who supported these efforts, including men and women who worked in defense related industries, as USO entertainers, and as Red Cross workers.

Stories can be submitted to the Library of Congress to be made available to researchers and the public. If you want to honor the day but you have to work — or if your town doesn’t have a parade — why not take a minute now to listen to one of those stories?

The Veterans History Project is a unique opportunity for Americans of all ages and backgrounds to play an important role in the preservation of our national collective memory. This is a project you can do yourself with the help of a family member or friend, or you can hire a professional to work with you. Let Cold War Studies know if you require assistance.

Regardless of whether you DIY or hire an interviewer, you can participate. Here’s how:

• Print the VHP Field Kit. You can find it here.
• Prepare for the interview. Tips and resources are here.
• Conduct the interview. You can find a list of suggested questions here.
• Send your collection to the Library of Congress. Click here for directions.
• If you need help leave a comment on Cold War Studies. We’ll be sure to get right back to you.
  

Finally, if you participate in the VHP please let Cold War Studies know so that we can link to your remembrance.  Bob Hope is famous for his trademark “thanks for the memories.” Let us pay tribute to your (extra) ordinary story! And, don’t forget. We’re happy to help.

 

(This post is by Robert C. Donnelly)

Former President Jimmy Carter.
AP

Robert C. Donnelly, Gonzaga University

Jimmy Carter was a dark horse Democratic presidential candidate with little national recognition when he beat Republican incumbent Gerald Ford in 1976.

The introspective former peanut farmer pledged a new era of honesty and forthrightness at home and abroad, a promise that resonated with voters eager for change following the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War.

His presidency, however, only lasted one term before Ronald Reagan defeated him. Since then, scholars have debated – and often maligned – Carter’s legacy, especially his foreign policy efforts that revolved around human rights.

Critics have described Carter’s foreign policies as “ineffectual” and “hopelessly muddled”, and their formulation demonstrated “weakness and indecision.”

As an historian researching Carter’s foreign policy initiatives, I conclude his overseas policies were far more effective than critics have claimed.

A Soviet strategy

The criticism of Carter’s foreign policies seems particularly mistaken when it comes to the Cold War, a period defined by decades of hostility, mutual distrust, and arms buildup after World War II between the US and Russia, then known as the Soviet Union or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

By the late 1970s, the Soviet Union’s economy and global influence were weakening. With the counsel of National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Soviet expert, Carter exploited these weaknesses.

During his presidency, Carter insisted nations provide basic freedoms for their people – a moral weapon against which repressive leaders could not defend.

Carter soon openly criticized the Soviets for denying Russian Jews their basic civil rights, a violation of human rights protections outlined in the diplomatic agreement called the Helsinki Accords.

Carter’s team underscored these violations in arms control talks. The CIA flooded the USSR with books and articles to incite human rights activism. And Carter publicly supported Russian dissidents – including pro-democracy activist Andrei Sakharov – who were fighting an ideological war against socialist leaders.

Human rights were a cornerstone of President Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy. Here, a billboard with his picture on it in Liberia.
AP Photo/Michel Lipchitz

Carter advisor Stuart Eizenstat argues that the administration attacked the Soviets “in their most vulnerable spot – mistreatment of their own citizens.”

This proved effective in sparking Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s social and political reforms of the late 1980s, best known by the Russian word “glasnost”, or “openness.”

The Afghan Invasion

In December 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in response to the assassination of the Soviet-backed Afghan leader, Nur Mohammad Taraki. The invasion effectively ended an existing détente between the US and USSR.

Beginning in July 1979, the US was providing advice and nonlethal supplies to the mujahideen rebelling against the Soviet-backed regime. After the invasion, National Security Advisor Brzezinski advised Carter to respond aggressively to it. So the CIA and US allies delivered weapons to the mujahideen, a program later expanded under Reagan.

Carter’s move effectively engaged the Soviets in a proxy war that began to bleed the Soviet Union.

By providing the rebels with modern weapons, the US was “giving to the USSR its Vietnam war,” according to Brzezinski: a progressively expensive war, a strain on the socialist economy, and an erosion of their authority abroad.

Carter also imposed an embargo on US grain sales to the Soviets in 1980. Agriculture was the USSR’s greatest economic weakness since the 1960s. The country’s unfavorable weather and climate contributed to successive poor growing seasons, and their heavy industrial development left the agricultural sector underfunded.

Economist Elizabeth Clayton concluded in 1985 that Carter’s embargo was effective in exacerbating this weakness.

Census data compiled between 1959 and 1979 shows that 54 million people were added to the Soviet population. Clayton estimates that 2 to 3 million more people were added in each subsequent year. The Soviets were overwhelmed by the population boom and struggled to feed their people.

At the same time, Clayton found that monthly wages increased, which led to an increased demand for meat. But by 1985, there was a meat shortage in the USSR. Why? Carter’s grain embargo, although ended by Reagan in 1981, had a lasting impact on livestock feed that resulted in Russian farmers decreasing livestock production.

The embargo also forced the Soviets to pay premium prices for grain from other countries, nearly 25% above market prices.

For years, Soviet leaders promised better diets and health, but now their people had less food. The embargo battered a weak socialist economy and created another layer of instability for the growing population.

The Olympic boycott

In 1980, Carter pushed further to punish the Soviets. He convinced the US Olympic Committee to refrain from competing in the upcoming Moscow Olympics while the Soviets repressed their people and occupied Afghanistan.

Carter not only promoted a boycott, but he also embargoed US technology and other goods needed to produce the Olympics. He also stopped NBC from paying the final $20 million owed to the USSR to broadcast the Olympics. China, Germany, Canada, and Japan – superpowers of sport – also participated in the boycott.

Historian Allen Guttmann said, “The USSR lost a significant amount of international legitimacy on the Olympic question.” Dissidents relayed to Carter that the boycott was another jab at Soviet leadership. And in America, public opinion supported Carter’s bold move—73% of Americans favored the boycott.

The Carter Doctrine

In his 1980 State of the Union Address, Carter revealed an aggressive Cold War military plan. He declared a “Carter Doctrine,” which said that the Soviets’ attempt to gain control of Afghanistan, and possibly the region, was regarded as a threat to US interests. And Carter was prepared to meet the threat with “military force.”

Carter also announced in his speech a five-year spending initiative to modernize and strengthen the military because he recognized the post-Vietnam military cuts weakened the US against the USSR.

Ronald Reagan argued during the 1980 presidential campaign that, “Jimmy Carter risks our national security— our credibility — and damages American purposes by sending timid and even contradictory signals to the Soviet Union.” Carter’s policy was based on “weakness and illusion” and should be replaced “with one founded on improved military strength,” Reagan criticized.

In 1985, however, President Reagan publicly acknowledged that his predecessor demonstrated great timing in modernizing and strengthening the nation’s forces, which further increased economic and diplomatic pressure on the Soviets.

Reagan admitted that he felt “very bad” for misstating Carter’s policies and record on defense.

Carter is most lauded today for his post-presidency activism, public service, and defending human rights. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for such efforts.

But that praise leaves out a significant portion of Carter’s presidential accomplishments. His foreign policy, emphasizing human rights, was a key instrument in dismantling the power of the Soviet Union.

Robert C. Donnelly, Associate Professor of History, Gonzaga University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The 1960s: Protest and Resistance

Happenings That Frame The 1960s

The civil rights movement, assassinations, Bob Dylan, the Vietnam War, hippies, America’s first real antiwar movement, organic food, the Beatles, massive riots in several cities, the first riots on college campuses, Woodstock, Black Power, bombings in the name of the peace movement, Hair (Broadway’s first naked musical about hippies), thousands of military funerals, birth control pills, free love, the collapse of dress codes in schools and universities, vegetarian restaurants, drug overdoses, 50,000 deserters from the US military, women’s  lib, Muhammad Ali on trial for draft evasion, young men fleeing to Canada and Sweden to avoid the draft.

(This list is drawn from Playing With Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics by Lawrence O’Donnell )

A 1960s Timeline

November 1960: John F. Kennedy is elected President of the United States of America.

June 15, 1962: Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) complete their manifesto, the Port Huron Statement. SDS was a student activist movement in the United States, one of the main representations of the New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969.

July 1962: Algeria gains independence after an eight year war.

September 1963: Attorney General Bobby Kennedy speaks to the National Congress of American Indians in Bismarck, North Dakota. His opening line: “It is a tragic irony that the American  Indian has for so long been denied a full share of freedom — full citizenship in the greatest free country in the world.”

November 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. Vice President Lyndon Johnson succeeds him.

May 1964: Twelve young men publicly burn their draft cards in New York City.

Summer 1964: Known as Freedom Summer, students go south to help fight for civil rights.

July 1964: The Civil Rights Act is passed.

August 4, 1964: President Johnson goes on live primetime TV.  He announces an unprovoked communist attack on two US ships off Vietnam. You can read more about the Gulf of Tonkin incident here.

September 1964: The Free Speech Movement begins at Berkeley.

September 1, 1964: Bobby Kennedy resigns as US attorney general, nine months after the assassination of his brother. (You can read his resignation letter here.)  He moves to New York and  announces his candidacy for the Senate.

November 1964: Lyndon Baines Johnson is elected US president in a landslide, a year after the JFK assassination.

End of 1964: Race and civil rights are the most explosive issues of the day. Johnson is launching federal antipoverty programs he calls the Great Society.

1965: Johnson sends the first American ground troops — 210,000 of them to Vietnam.

January 1965: Bobby Kennedy is sworn in as senator (NY). His focus becomes the amelioration of poverty.

February 1965: America begins bombing North Vietnam; Malcolm X is assassinated.

April 1965: Protesters demonstrate in Washington against the Vietnam War.

June 1965: Algerian President Ben Bella is overthrown by a coup.

August 1965: Watts Riots erupt in Los Angeles.

August 6, 1965: President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965, ensuring that the Democratic Party is seen as the leader on racial equality.

December 1965: Johnson suspends the bombing of North Vietnam for the 1965 Christmas holidays.

January 1966: US casualties in Vietnam near 2,000. Protests by antiwar students are gaining traction.

January 27, 1966: Eugene McCarthy and 14 other senators send the president an open letter urging him to continue the North Vietnamese bombing suspension. However, the letter did not push for US withdrawal from Vietnam.

March 1966: Stokely Carmichael is elected chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

May 1966: The British government declares a state of emergency in response to a seaman’s strike. The Cultural Revolution begins in China.

July 1966: Stokely Carmichael uses the phrase Black Power.

September 1966: French President Charles de Gaulle gives a speech in Phnom Penh calling for peace in Vietnam.

October 1966: The Black Panther Party is founded in California; the Radical Student Alliance is created in the United Kingdom.

1967: Ground troops in Vietnam grow to 485,000.

1967: Vietnam Veterans Against the War is founded when 6 Vietnam veterans march together in a peace demonstration.

1967: Opposition to the war sparks opposition to the establishment in all things from neckties to draft cards. Yale drops its dress code.

Liberal movements come together to oppose the Vietnam War. A focus: hatred of Lyndon Johnson.

Dr. Martin Luther King, America’s greatest civil rights leader, speaks against the war in Vietnam.

Organizer Tom Hayden and the New Left organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) make opposition to the war in Vietnam their centerpiece.

January 31, 1967: A group called the National Emergency Committee of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam (CALCAV) gathers in Washington DC for two days of lobbying and prayer. This is the first large scale action in DC to protest Johnson’s Vietnam policy and propose quick ways to peace. 2400 people attend.

March 2, 1967: Bobby Kennedy gives a speech on the Senate floor openly questioning Johnson’s Vietnam policy and offering a 3-point plan for bringing the war against communism to a favorable conclusion. He calls for a bombing halt; oversight by an international agency with multi-national troops eventually replacing US troops; and then free elections in South Vietnam.

April 1967: Large demonstrations are mounted in New York and San Francisco against the Vietnam War.

Summer 1967: US casualties in Vietnam now number 11,000.

July 1967: Race riots erupt in Newark and Detroit.

August 1967: Al Lowenstein, a Democratic politician, approaches Bobby Kennedy about running as the Dump Johnson candidate.

August 17, 1967: Nicholas Katzenbach (US Under Secretary of State) testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under the chairmanship of William Fulbright. Chairman Fulbright presses Katzenbach on the Johnson administration’s legal authority to wage war in Southeast Asia without a congressional declaration of war. Katzenbach replies: a declaration of war “would not, I think, correctly reflect the very limited objectives of the United States.” Senator Eugene McCarthy, a member of the committee, is infuriated. He blurts out that he will run against Johnson if he has to. (Read more about the Gulf of Tonkin incident here.)

Fall 1967: The counterculture explosion of protest, irreverence, generational mistrust, rebellion, and all sorts of radical experimentation — is polarizing the nation on questions of basic American values. The explosion’s flashpoint is Lyndon Johnson’s war in Vietnam.

A Dump Johnson movement catches fire.

October 1967: Che Guevara is killed in Bolivia.

October 21, 1967: Antiwar protestors converge on Washington for the first truly mass antiwar demonstration in the nation’s capital. “Confront the War Makers” is the demonstrators’ slogan. The group is known as the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam – MOBE for short. The key words were mobilization and end. The group wants a definitive and absolute end to the war. Kennedy’s 3-point plan is not acceptable. More than 500 are arrested and jailed overnight.

The antiwar movement is shifting from protest to resistance.

Late Summer 1967: With reelection approaching, Johnson’s war strategy is changing. Previously, his single most important guiding principle is that he will not be the first American president to lose a war. Now he starts using the word withdrawal. This is only a label. He does not intend to withdraw. Instead, he intends to end the war on his own terms by bombing and burning North Vietnam into submission. He also intends to gear up the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) so that it can defend itself without US support. This means sending more US troops to Vietnam to train and support.

Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara is concluding that the war is unwinnable. And, if the war is unwinnable, it’s also immoral because the US is sending American troops into harm’s way to be wounded and killed for nothing.

Late August 1967: Secretary McNamara admits to a Senate subcommitte that LBJ’s strategy of bombing will not work. He says: North Vietnam “cannot be bombed to the negotiating table.”

November 1967: Senator McCarthy announces that he will enter the Democratic primaries in four states; Wisconsin, Oregon, California, and Nebraska. He does not say “I intend to run for the Democratic nomination. Just, I intend to run in four, maybe six states.” Poll numbers show President Johnson trouncing McCarthy.

November 21, 1967: General William Westmoreland tells the National Press Club that he is certain the enemy is losing.

December 1967: Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign starts up. He is not fully embraced by the left.

December 20, 1967: General Westmoreland cables Washington to say that the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese were soon “to undertake an intensified countrywide effort” that would bring the enemy into the kind of conventional battle that he and LBJ believe is winnable.

Westmoreland reports that 68% of South Vietnamese people are under the control of the Saigon government; only 17% are Vietcong. He concludes: “The Viet-cong has been defeated.”