why was the vietnam war memorial so controversial?

At that time, they just ignored you and wished you would go away. With such an overwhelming response to the competition, logistics became an issue. The U.S. suffered over 47,000 killed in action plus another 11,000 non-combat deaths; over 150,000 were wounded and 10,000 missing. After listening for a while, Brigadier General George Price, a retired veteran of Korea and Vietnam, stood in quiet rage and said, I am sick and tired of calling black a color of shame. General Price, one of Americas highest-ranking black officers lived with and advised the 1st Vietnamese Infantry Division. On the second day, the jury examined the designs together, walking the many aisles and stopping at each of the 232 designs that had been flagged by one or more of the jurors, pausing to discuss each design that had been noted. The jury evaluation took place over five days, from April 27 through May 1, 1981. In this sense, it was a complex ideological battle. Under those agreements, Cambodia and Laoswhich had been part of the French colonyreceived their independence. On the other side were the veterans and their self-appointed spokesmen, politicians such as Webb and James Watt (Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan), and social conservatives such as Pat Buchanan. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a tribute to the dead of the United States ' longest, most unpopular, and least successful war. Consequently, by the time of the memorials design and construction, veterans had built up a significant amount of moral outrage and found their outlet in the controversy over the memorial. The ceasefire allowed Nixon to declare peace with honor, but no provisions existed for enforcing the terms of the accords. With the seed money from several defense industry donors, especially Grumman Aerospace, VVMF launched its first large-scale direct mail campaign to reach out to the public. Despite the fact that beyond certain superficial qualities, Lins memorial shared little in common with the work of classic Minimalist artists such as Richard Serra or Donald Judd, critics nonetheless conflated it with Serras equally controversial Tilted Arc, labeling it another example of an inscrutable Minimalist public artwork erected at taxpayers expense. The wars length and the growing number of casualties were fueling tensions. This message of personal responsibility, in contrast to governance by an elite group on behalf of individuals, became a hallmark of the Reagan administration. Before the 1880s, the French controlled Vietnam. Over several tense weeks, more debate followed, until the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) and the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) gave their approval for a statue and flag in concept, pending suitable placement of those elements. 7. Daniel Libeskind. That disparity would decline before the war ended, but the racial tensions at home began to insert themselves into the military in Vietnam, damaging unit morale. Charles Mac Mathias, a Navy veteran of World War II, had been opposed to the war in Vietnam, but he had always respected those who served in it. EIN: 52-1149668, Copyright 2023 The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Javascript must be enabled for the correct page display, History of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. Scruggs and Doubek realized that Cupp could be instrumental in helping communicate the all-important personal, emotional side of the healing story. PDF Why was the Vietnam War so Controversial? - University of Wisconsin ARVN divisions in the north were surrounded and routed. Scruggs would never forget the awful scene. For Woods, the growing coalition was a prime example of its not what you know, its who you know. These people, though a small group, were able to reach out to their networks and their extensive contacts to recruit the type of expertise and support required for such a mammoth initiative. They were unwrapped, number coded, photographed for the record, and prepared for display. Scruggs and Doubek met with Mathias to outline their plans. The text size is less than half an inch, which is unusual for monument design, but was selected to make the memorial read more like a book. Its primary goal was to demoralize the North Vietnamese and diminish their manufacturing and transportation abilities. Larry Century, a young inventor from Cleveland, Ohio,was selected to serve as a consultant to Binswanger Glass Company in Memphis, Tennessee, which was awarded the contract for inscribing the names. Significant funding cuts to programs that had been instigated in the 1960s under Lyndon Johnsons Great Society domestic agenda followed, in addition to a major attack on union power. Why reinforce the bourgeoisies pathetic illusions? It was the reminder that the men who died in Vietnam all had faces and names, as well as friends and families who loved them dearly. Though its location on federally owned property and its maintenance by the National Park Service might imply otherwise, the impetus to create the Vietnam Veterans Memorial came entirely from the private sector and from one man in particular: Jan Scruggs, a Vietnam veteran who had been wounded in the line of duty. The task groups proved effective, as described by John Woods, who jointed as a key advisor. About Vietnam Veterans Memorial. After three-and-a-half years of nonstop effort and work, with all that you have to do to accomplish what we did, it was beautiful. 6 Things You May Not Know About the Vietnam Veterans Memorial The Veterans needed this, and so did the nation. After meeting with the VVMF officers and advisors, Warner volunteered to help the organization raise the seed money needed to launch the fund raising campaign. At the time, well-managed open design competitions were common in Europe, but not in the United States. On the other side, the same thing was occurring, with even more inflated numbersvastly more. Having chosen Libeskinds overarching vision, titled Memory Foundations, in February 2003, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (tasked with coordinating the redevelopment of lower Manhattan and administering the nearly $10 billion in federal funds devoted to supporting that effort) two months later announced the memorial design competition. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. The shift, however, did not represent a resolved conflict between public art and public memory and memorialization, but merely a temporary relocation of the site of debate. He was in Vietnam, serving in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade. She is still remembered fondly by veterans for the moving Memorial she designed for them. Ultimately, the Commission of Fine Arts, which had the final say in the matter, overruled Lins objections. The more people you got to co-sponsor, the more people wanted to join.. Please leave evidence I will report anything other than this 1 See answer Advertisement lheduardomarques Emphasis switched to Vietnamization, preparing South Vietnams military to take over responsibility for continuing the war. 4 (Summer 1996): 685. There is considerable debate over whether he was primarily nationalist or communist, but he was not especially anti-Western. Support for the war eroded further. North Vietnam, had by then established a presence in Laos and developed the Ho Chi Minh Trail through that country in order to resupply and reinforce its forces in South Vietnam. One day in October 1969, fifteen members of the Americal Division wore black armbands while they were on patrol, the symbol antiwar protestors wore in the states. In late spring 1969, American and South . To its own surprise, Hanoi found its forces advancing rapidly toward Saigon, realized victory was at hand, and renamed the operation the Ho Chi Minh Offensive. For the millions of people who visit each year, Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall sends a chilling message about war, heroism, and sacrifice. The construction process hits a snag when relentless and powerful critics, led by Tom Carhart, find an unsavory political message in the supposedly apolitical winning design -- ultimately forcing a compromise, the addition of a flag and a statue with three soldiers to the Wall. The women soldiers the nurses suffered too. It echoed the theme that regardless of how anyone felt about the war itself, everyone cared about honoring the men and women who had served and those who had ultimately lost their lives. Westmoreland adopted a search-and-destroy policy to find and engage the enemy and use superior firepower to destroy him. The Vietnam Wall Controversy - About - Overview - Lehigh University Revisiting the terms of this conflict not only provides insight into how and why visual art came to be so politicized in the 1980s, but also sheds light on the debates of our present historical moment, which, in many ways, parallel the debates of that period regarding the social purpose of art. It also offered a way to exorcise lingering bitterness and anxieties that the war had propagated. The controversy overshadowed the mission and what we were doing, until the Salute brought it all together. Spreiregen wrote, I saw this as a needed opportunity to honor the service and lives of the soldiers we had lost and do so by running a model competition., Arthur Mosley headed the site selection task group and was assisted by John Woods, a structural engineer, who had been permanently disabled in a helicopter crash in Vietnam. The Vietnam War was the longest in U.S. history until the Afghanistan War (20012021). Swartz, 95. He also found that those veterans whose units experienced high casualty rates were experiencing higher divorce rates and a greater frequency of combat-related dreams. Shortly after the dedication of the land for the memorial, the VVMF announced an open competition for designs for the memorial itself. 4 Facts About Vietnam Veterans Memorial Controversial History I think I even spilled my coffee. But, her presence made a difference. Many veterans, politicians, critics, and the general public read its refusal to explicitly glorify the war or frame the listed soldiers sacrifice in recognizably heroic terms as an ideological statement, proof of Linsand the memorialspurported anti-war position. He has written that he was prepared for a 25-year war; he realized he did not have to achieve military victory; he only had to avoid losing. Because Warner was from Virginia and Mathias from Maryland, the two had worked together on many regional issues. In the Shadow of the Washington Monument. They were either ignored or shouted at and called vicious names. General Price, along with Senators Warner and Mathias and future Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, gave moving addresses before the command was given, and 150 shovels entered the ground with enthusiastic veterans enjoying the moment. Similarly, casualty totals among the VC and NVA and the number of dead and wounded civilians in North Vietnam cannot be determined exactly. At 21 and still an undergraduate, Linconceived her design as creating a park within a park a quiet protected place unto itself, yet harmonious with the overall plan of Constitution Gardens. Vietnam Veterans Memorial, also called The Wall, national monument in Washington, D.C., honouring members of the U.S. armed forces who served and died in the Vietnam War (1955-75). Yet, this seemingly god-given shrine wears political feet of clay, and behind it lies a fierce controversy that re-opened the wounds of the war the memorial was designed to heal. Video: Like all stereotypes, this one was unfair. Marita Sturken, The Aesthetics of Absence: Rebuilding Ground Zero, American Ethnologist 31, no. (Woods continues to serve on VVMFs Board of Directors to this day. Im sure I looked like a deer in the headlights, I was so nervous, Scruggs recalled. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) advised that was not the caseAmerica had a strong military presence in the Pacific that would serve as a deterrent. South Vietnam The Vietnam Women's Memorial was established to honor the women who risked their lives to serve their country. The list of tasks to achieve such a goal seemed endless. Success was measured in body count. It was to be a war of attrition and statistics, a policy that suited Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who distrusted the military and often bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff in issuing directives. Just as the American people could be a part of building the Memorial through their contributions and support, they could also have an opportunity to participate in its design. Although publicly the war in the south was described as a civil war within South Vietnam, it was guided, equipped and reinforced by the communist leadership in Hanoi. The ARVN bent but did not break. While many veterans successfully reintegrated into their families and communities, tucking their experiences in combat away on a mental back shelf, others were unable to cope on their own. After the dedication, Scruggs and Wheeler walked together along the upper side of the Memorial ground, near Constitution Avenue. The Making of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial - JSTOR Daily On April 30, their tanks entered Saigon. A Space of Loss: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial - JSTOR Sturken notes, "the memorial was seen as a monument to defeat, one that spoke more directly to a nation's guilt than to the honor of the war dead and the veterans." The disagreements over the design revealed anxiety about ownership of the war's representation. It consists of a black granite wall with the names of over 58,000 soldiers who were killed or went missing in action inscribed on it. One film that came out early that year,The Deer Hunter,explored the effects of war on three friends, their families and a tight-knit community. The Three Soldiers. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was built without government funds. Karal Ann Marling and Robert Silberman, The Statue Near the Wall: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Art of Remembering, Smithsonian Studies in American Art 1, no. It's the most-visited memorial on the National Mall in Washington, attracting more than 5 million people each year - the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The memorial, located near the western end of the Mall, is a black granite V-shaped wall inscribed with the names of the approximately 58,000 men and women who were killed or missing in action. 9. Jan Scruggss and VVMF members desire for a memorial that would heal the social rifts wrought by the war was wishful thinking. By the end of 1967, there were 540,000 American troops in Vietnam, and the military draft was set to call up 302,000 young men in the coming year, an increase of 72,000 over 1967. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. The following February a strategic hamlet program began; it forcibly relocated South Vietnamese peasants to fortified strategic hamlets. Scruggs was raised in a rural Maryland town between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. His mother was a waitress; his father a milkman. On April 27, 1979, Doubek incorporated the fledgling entity, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, and Scruggs asked him to be an officer and director. It was like a Woodstock atmosphere in Washington for those who had served in Vietnam, recalled Scruggs. Rather, by honoring those who sacrificed, we hope to provide a symbol of national unity and reconciliation.1. One needs no artistic education to see this design for what it is, a black trench that scars the Mall. Early in his efforts Scruggs had called on Emogene Cupp, then the national president of the American Gold Star Mothers. It was becoming apparent that we had been able to be instruments to something far greater than anything we had ever imagined.. Jan C. Scruggs, a wounded Vietnam War vet, studied what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder upon his return to. Millionaire H. Ross Perot made a sizeable donation. A lingering question of the war is what might have happened if Eisenhower and Ho had arranged a meeting; possibly, an accord could have been reached, or possibly Ho was simply seeking to limit American involvement, in order to more easily depose the Diem government. But the veterans had real problems. Today, The Wall continues to be the most-visited memorial on the National Mall, attracting more than five million people each year. ' Continuing, Wolfe sarcastically asked: Shouldnt public sculpture delight the public or inspire the public or at least remind the public of cherished traditions? It distributed an instructional booklet communicating its vision to all who registered for the competition. The Three Servicemen Statue Vietnam Women's Memorial And Vietnam In the early 20th century, Vietnamese nationalism began to rise, clashing with the French colonial rulers. If all of the names could be in one place, these names would have great powera power to heal. Cupp attended many of their meetings on Capitol Hill as they drummed up support. From the registration forms, it was apparent that architects, artists, designers, as well as veterans and students of all ages and all levels of experience were planning to participate. Private Funding No government funds were used to build the memorial, only public land. Although thousands of people were there, It was so very quiet, Wheeler recalled. Earlier, in March 1968, the Americal Division had been involved in what became known as the My Lai Massacre, in which over 100 men, women and children were killed. The truth was, veterans were no more likely to be addicted to drugs than those who did not serve. They did not like its minimalist design. Mao Zedongs Communist Party had won the Chinese Civil War in 1949, and western governmentsparticularly that of the U.Sfeared communist expansion throughout Southeast Asia. Though a congressional investigative committee the previous year had warned that America could find itself slipping into in a morass that would require more and more military participation in Vietnam, Johnson began a steady escalation of the war, hoping to bring it to a quick conclusion. In 1973 a "third" Vietnam war begana continuation, actuallybetween North and South Vietnam but without significant U.S. involvement. Letters came from moms, dads, grandparents, sons and daughters with heartfelt notes accompanied by checks and dollar bills. It would have power for individual veterans, but collectively, they would have even greater power to show the enormity of the sacrifices that were made.. Just before Christmas 1979, Warner hosted a fundraising breakfast in his Georgetown home. Everything has to be thought out and in place before the launch button is pressed.. The Tet Offensive shocked Americans at home, who thought the war was nearing victory. Both sides were fighting a war of attrition, so communist commanders sent Hanoi battle reports that often were pure fantasy. However, polls consistently showed the majority of Americans supported the war. [] Over the past two months, art mullahs of every description have begun a holy war against the addition of [Harts] statue.8. Yet, this seemingly god-given shrine wears political feet of clay, and behind it lies a fierce controversy that re-opened the wounds of the war the memorial was designed to heal. It was a whirlwind of events, and the press coverage was unbelievable. My background was relatively modest, he said. In April 1995, Vietnams communist government said 1.1 million combatants had died between 1954 and 1975, and another 600,000 wounded. VVMFagreed to the statue compromise, as well as to adding a flag and to reviewing the inscription on the Memorial, but they did not want to wait untila statue was designed before breaking ground. We had to build credibility among the design community, but also build credibility with the veterans, said Woods. Their motto is: Honor the dead by serving the living. Volunteering to assist VVMF was an ideal opportunity for Cupp to do just that. Lin vociferously objected to the inclusion of Harts piece, arguing that it violated the integrity of [her] design and created the sensation of being watched, as if one were on a golf green. As Sturken points out, this did little to evoke veterans sympathy: Lin stuck to her position as an outsider . Dark tourism, also known as black tourism, thanatourism or grief tourism, is tourism that is associated with death or tragedy. . Together, we can make sure our heroes will get the reverence they deserve and the stories and sacrifices of our heroes will never be forgotten. When I meet Vietnam veterans who stop me to say thank you for creating the Memorial, I always want to say: thank you, for the service and sacrifices that all of you have made in service to your country, she added. Usually it refers to the period when the United States and other members of the SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) joined the forces with the Republic of South Vietnam to contest communist forces, comprised of South Vietnamese guerrillas and regular-force units, generally known as Viet Cong (VC), and . As noted above, a number of sources warned U.S. leaders against becoming embroiled in Southeast Asia. Wheeler suggested that it should be a landscaped solution: a peaceful, park-like setting that could exist harmoniously with the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Ibid. When they returned home from serving their country, there was no national show of gratitude. The Vietnam War: Facts & Info About the Most Controversial - HistoryNet They serve as testaments to lives lost, as repositories of grief, and to facilitate processes of mourning. What is dark tourism and why is it so popular? Yet, to say the media cost America victory in Vietnam is vastly oversimplifying a very complex situation. The design Lin envisioned listed the names chronologically by date of casualty. Furthermore, the extreme visual simplicity of Lins monument made it easy for critics to utilize it in a concurrent debate about the merits of minimalist sculptures as public artworks. It just resonated, he explained. To make matters worse, Diem responded by sending troops to raid pagodas. Originally, Vietnam ended at the 17th parallel, but it gradually conquered all the area southward along the coastline of the South China Sea and west to Cambodia.

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