The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs

Notes

notes introduction Epigraphs Szasz, “Scapegoating Military Addicts,” 5. House Select Committee on Crime, Drugs in Our Schools (1972), 914. Paul Starr, “Drug (Mis)treatment for GIs,” Washington Post, July 16, 1972, B1. 1 Abramsky, American Furies. 2 See, for example, Alsop, “Smell of Death,” and “GI’s Other Enemy.” 3 “Excerpts from President’s Message on Drug Abuse Control,” New York Times, June 18, 1971, 22; Nixon, “Special Message to the Congress,” 744. 4 Gravel, Pentagon Papers. 5 Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt; Moser, New Winter Soldiers. For polling data on Vietnam and support for withdrawal, see Gallup, Gallup Poll, 93, 153. 6 Featured in Geiger, Sir! No Sir!; Meyrowitz and Campbell, “Vietnam Veterans and War Crimes Hearings,” 138; Washington Evening Star, April 23, 1971, A3. 7 See Kerry and Vietnam Veterans Against the War, New Soldier; Wells, War Within, 495. 8 E.g., Staneford Garellek to President Nixon; Raynard I. Jameson, President B’nai Brith, to Nixon; “Drug Letters,” Memo for Bob Haldeman, Chuck Colson, Bud Krogh, June 18, 1971. All in LEN, OF, box 12, folder July 1971. 9 See Nixon, Real War. 10 See Dallek, Partners in Power, 145; Perlstein, Nixonland. 11 Richard M. Nixon, speech to Republican National Committee, September 17, 1968, and “LEN 13-3, Staff Papers on Drug Abuse,” NA, box 12, folder 4. 12 Roszak, Making of a Counter Culture. 13 “President’s Proclamation on Drugs,” Philadelphia Bulletin, May 25, 1970, collected in “Off the Press—Drug Abuse News Excerpts from the Nation’s Press,” June 4, 1970, CWP, box 35, folder 5. 14 Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, World Heroin Problem (1971), 39–86. 15 Michael Parks, “CIA Reported Shifting Attention in Laos from Communists to Opium,” Baltimore Sun, March 13, 1972; Johnson and Wilson, Army in Anguish; Musto, American Disease, 91, 246. 16 Steinbeck, “Importance of Being Stoned”; Steinbeck, In Touch. 17 Steinbeck, In Touch, 4, 71. 18 Stanton, “Drugs, Vietnam and the Vietnam Veteran”; Roffman and Sapol, “Marijuana in Vietnam.” 19 Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 6. 20 E.g., Marilyn B. Young, Vietnam Wars; Kahin, Intervention. 21 The classic expression of the quagmire view is Halberstam, Making of a Quagmire. For an effective criticism, see Franklin, Vietnam and Other American Fantasies, 198 notes to pages 7–11 42; Chomsky, “Responsibility of Intellectuals”; and among general histories of the war, Kolko, Anatomy of a War. 22 Franklin, M.I.A. or Mythmaking in America, 7: Lembcke, Spitting Image, 3; Kimball, “Stab-in-the-Back Legend, 433–58”; Jeffords, Remasculinization of America , 18. A recent variation of the stab-in-the-back myth promoted by right-wing historian Mark Moyar blames liberal journalists David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan for reporting about Diem’s political repression and hence creating public doubt about American involvement in Vietnam; see Moyar, Triumph Forsaken , xvi. 23 See Chomsky, “Visions of Righteousness.” 24 E.g., Alvin M. Shuster, “GI Heroin Addiction Is Epidemic in Vietnam,” New York Times, May 16, 1971, 1, 20; Malloy, “Harvest Home.” For the historical precedent , see Courtwright, Dark Paradise, 76; Dikotter, Laamann, and Xun, Narcotic Culture, 98. 25 Alsop, “Worse Than My Lai”; “Heroin Plague: What Can Be Done?”; Barbara Campbell, “Ex GI’s Report Vietnam Drug Use,” New York Times, March 21, 1970, 26. 26 Robert M. Smith, “Senators Told GI’s in Song-My Unit Smoked Marijuana Night before Incident,” New York Times, March 25, 1970, 14; “My Lai Drug Question Raised,” New York Times, March 16, 1970, 24; Parenti, Lockdown America, 9. 27 “Remarks in Introducing Omnibus Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Control and Rehabilitation Act of 1969,” in Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Narcotics Legislation (1969), 2. See also Dodd, Freedom and Foreign Policy. 28 Berman, No Peace, No Honor; Morris, Uncertain Greatness; Dallek, Partners in Power, 111; Hersh, Price of Power. 29 Quoted by Chomsky in Caldwell and Tan, Cambodia, x. 30 See Shawcross, Sideshow; Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power, xxiii; Owen and Kiernan, “Bombs over Cambodia.” On the hideous U.S. record in Laos in particular , see Branfman, Voices from the Plain; McCoy and Adams, Laos. 31 Kimball, Nixon’s War; Valentine, Phoenix Program; Zinberg and Robertson, Drugs and the Public, 29–30. 32 See Goode and Ben-Yehuda, Moral Panics, 7; Glassner, Culture of Fear. 33 Browning and Garrett, “New Opium War,” 41. 34 On a GI viewing himself as an “agent of imperialism” see Ehrhart, Passing Time. 35 Lifton, Vietnam Veterans, 125–26. 36 On the right’s particular brand of populism, see Kazin...