The young dead soldiers do
not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard
in the still houses: who has
not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks
for them at night and when
the clock counts.
They say: We have done what
we could but until it is
finished it is not done.
They say: We have given our
lives but until it is finished
no one can know what our
lives gave.
They say: Our deaths are not
ours; they are yours, they
will mean what you make them.
They say: Whether our lives
and our deaths were for
peace and a new hope or for
nothing we cannot say; it is
you who must say this.
They say: We leave you our
deaths. Give them their
meaning.
We are young, they say. We
have died. Remember us.

--Archibald MacLeish

Today is the 25^th anniversary of the birth of my son. Friday was the 6^th anniversary of his death in Vietnam.

It feels very good to be here in Denver in support of Richard Bucklin who will be tried by military court martial tomorrow at 9 o’clock. My son would be happy that I’m here. He knew before he went to Vietnam that he was being used in a bad cause and talked of going AWOL. On his Christmas card from Vietnam was pictured a maze and through it ran the words: “They who have walked in darkness have seen a great light.” His light came too late for him to extricate himself from the trap we all had created. But this awareness came in time for many courageous men to make the conscious choice of life and peace over war and killing and death. As Roger Williams says in The New Exiles, there is nothing sad or negative or tragic about this kind of choice. “The tragedy is not in the fleeing but in what is being fled.”

What was fled was the fact that most of the population, because it did not have to choose between life and death, was allowing leaders with completely upside-down priorities, and drunk with the power of our position and technology, to wage an undeclared war on a peasant population which was opposing an oppressive regime. Thousands of young men applied for C.O.’s and were refused. As one resister said, “You’ve got to have a showable ideology. You can have it in your head but if you can’t verbalize it you’ve had it.” They fled a selective service system that discriminated consistently against the poor and uneducated, and which allowed 20,000,000 draft age men to legally avoid the war.

The president said, “America will not turn he back on those who served—nor make a mockery of their sacrifice by granting amnesty. The two and a half million who served have paid a price. The few 100 who chose to desert America must pay a price.”

In the first place, men who have left the country or gone underground have paid dearly for those who demand a price. The decisions were for the most part agonizing. The more than half a million veterans with less than honorable discharges suffer from permanent loss of civil rights, discrimination in employment, and they receive no veterans benefits.

And the former president’s statement reflects and encourages that common, narrow definition of service to one’s country—service which says that only blind obedience is patriotic when service actually can take many forms. It also involves a traditional definition of masculinity which says that to be a man one must pick up a gun and go to war, that might makes right. When the resisters refused to participate in the war, they were not deserting the country but rather its disastrous policy. Information and insight came to all of us at different times in and out of the military. My son followed this conscience and went into the army. With a little more time to question rather than trust our leaders, his conscience would have probably led him in a different direction. I wish it had!

Dr. Brown of Stanford points out that amnesty is a way of showing that America still respects the right of an informed conscience to act against public opinion. He says we must remember how much we need citizens who will take risks for the sake of their convictions and will jeopardize their futures so that their country does not jeopardize its future.

In an amnesty debate last spring in Boston on TV, one of the members of the group, a Vietnam veteran opposed to amnesty, asked “What block amnesty? What stands in the way?” I loved the question, because in it there seemed to be the potential for a real dialogue—in which the conflict could be borne in common, and solutions sought. Martin Buber might call it the turning in a crisis, where the healing power, in this case, trust, can begin. Someone answered that he thought it was hate that blocked amnesty. The program ended and the opportunity passed, but the response that developed in me later was that it is fear that blocks amnesty. Fear that our system of law will be undermined if we let go unpunished those who break laws; fear amongst Congressmen who could legislate amnesty, that their constituents would not understand or accept moral leadership; fear that armies could not be raised if our country were really threatened; fear of all things not understood, such as protest itself; seeming lack of patriotism; fear honestly, that all the sacrifice was in vain, and of having been wrong about the war. But most of all, fear of questioning anything, lest everything representing security, crumble.

And probably an even greater obstacle to amnesty is apathy which is an outgrowth of fear. Apathy is a defense against anxiety, a withdrawal from feeling and involvement. Unfortunately, in a country where responsibility in representative government is not understood, and where a follow-the-leader attitude prevails, increasing usurpation of power, over the years has encouraged apathy and a feeling of powerlessness. Without moral leadership, morality can be lost. If the leadership is punitive as is the president’s attitude toward protest, so will a great part of the constituency feel punitive. So this is our task: to attempt to engage in genuine dialogue in which truth can be sought. The truth which needs to be discovered is the answer to the question: On what should our country’s important policies be based—on fear and mistrust, or on faith and generosity of spirit?

Perhaps the time is more receptive now. Watergate has shocked and roused the country, where the ten-year was has not. The dishonesty and deceptions recently revealed seem to offend people more than enormous destruction to life and culture, as long as it is not one’s own.

Even if it were not an American tradition to grant amnesty wouldn’t the gruesome experience (suggested a Conscientious Objector in Brookline, Mass.) provide a fitting place to begin the tradition in view of the awesome destruction? It would seem that an unprecedented amnesty is called for in view of the unprecedented barbarity dealt by our technological warfare, which has not been war at all but slaughter.

When I first heard that I was to be with you this morning I was told the topic was to be “Amnesty—A Question of Forgiveness.” I had trouble with that for I feel there is nothing to forgive.

To forgive would be to imply wrongdoing by the resisters. Also it would be treating the symptom—the refusal of hundreds of thousands of our youth to participate in the violence—instead of the illness------------------------------------------. If we treat only the symptom, we deny ourselves as a nation the possibility, the opportunity, of health and of growing up. So the real question is, can we face up to what we’ve done in Vietnam and forgive ourselves? It’s the fear that we cannot that prevents the facing up. Or perhaps the lack of understanding that one can and must, first of all, forgive oneself.

A Harvard PhD. Candidate in an amnesty debate said, “What is required by those who have lost sons in Vietnam is psychological compensation—and that compensation is punishment.” I realize that this reflects a widespread attitude and there are a number of Gold Star parents who feel an obligation to counteract this. We need to convey to the country that there is no compensation for the loss of our sons in an illegal, undeclared war, certainly not in the punishment of those who resisted it. We would like to say to all the exiles here and abroad, and to all those in prison, forgive us for presenting you with such cruel choices. We can’t bring back our sons, but we can restore a part of life to those who can be an influence against violence. To further punish them delays the consciousness, individual and national, that is essential to the resurrection of some of the ideals on which our country was founded; and the consciousness that is essential to the humane use of our country’s power.

The other parents and I feel that a universal, unconditional amnesty would be a living memorial to all the young dead soldiers who leave us the task of giving meaning to their deaths. Our nation can only begin to heal its terrible wounds with a true amnesty.