University of Nebraska Kearney - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Kearney, NE)

Page 27 text:

communist ideology, supported by the Soviet Union. The North Vietnamese be- lieved they were fighting for their na- tional survival. We tend to define that contest as though it were a super power contest ’ Magstadt explained. We see it as the United States versus the Soviet Union, using Vietnam as the battlefield. It was actually a civil war between the North and South. He said the question was not wheth- er or not Vietnam should be free or com- munist, but whether or not it should be tt T here was a ready- made formula for massive protest be- cause those fighting the war would be college age ... When the protest really got going, you had an army of college students demonstrating in and around the Capital. I was there and saw tre- mendous demonstrations.” — Magstadt divided or united. Ho Chi Minh was seen as the sym- bol of a reunited Vietnam, making it inde- pendent from the western powers, he said. The Vietnamese saw the United States as just replacing the French, which represented an extension of that past colonial dependency. He said the government of Saigon before its fall was not what many per- ceived it to be. We were defending a de- mocracy in Vietnam, but that was a transparent falsehood because South Vietnam was not a democratic govern- ment, Magstadt said. Itwas a dictator- ship and a corrupt government. The South Vietnamese government was bankrupt and the North Vietnamese recruited many South Vietnamese. Many of the guerillas who fought for the North were from the South, he said. ... democratic societies operate at a distinct dis- advantage in a contest against dictatorships. ” — Magstadt Magstadt said there will always be a gigantic question mark that hangs above the Vietnam Conflict. There is a serious question concerning whether the conflict was moral and just. This is the first time in history that we fought a war that raises that ques- tion, he said. It continues to haunt us. The other question is 'Was the war worth it?' We didn’t win our objective, he said, and the war cost us 55,000 lives and many other lives were hindered. Vietnam was, without a doubt, the most morally and politically disruptive, in terms of an international war,” he said. There were no victory celebrations be- cause there was no victory; the war nev- er climaxed but just zonked out because we pulled out of Vietnam in stages. It went out with a whimper. “The American people were disap- pointed with the end of Vietnam,” he said. As a result of that, the soldiers weren’t given a big reception when they came home. They were expected to re- sume life as though nothing had hap- pened. Magstadt said he believes Vietnam veterans deserve as much tribute and recognition as any other soldier of any other war. Some risked and others gave their lives, and they weren’t the ones who decided to go to war, he said. He also believes the system of drafting soldiers to go to Vietnam was unfair. “Those with affluent family back- grounds and higher incomes were the ones being deferred, he said. The na- tional lottery was designed to do away with that. The way the draft worked was unequal and unfair. Magstadt said he was not drafted because he was attending graduate school. I was from a small town in South Dakota and they had no problem filling their quota. I checked in with my draft board at home and they told me that as soon as I finished my requirements for aPh.D., I would be drafted. I said, ’okay.’ I was never contacted after that and I don't know why,” he continued, It was an unfair system, there's no doubt about that. Had Magstadt been called for mili- tary service in Vietnam, he said he would have gone. He mentioned that he was not enthusiastic about the Vietnam Con- flict but he would have served the coun- try nevertheless. He said because he did not serve, he feels a sense of guilt. “To have been eligible for the draft in those years and not have been called, leaves a certain sense of guilt, Magstadt said. “I did nothing to avoid the draft. There were many others my age who went in my place; some of them didn’t come back and others came back maimed. Magstadt said he would not consid- er Vietnam as one of the brighter chap- ters in American diplomacy. Because of Vietnam, we've learned to look before we leap. T o have been eligible for the draft in those years and not have been called leaves a certain sense of guilt. I did nothing to avoid the draft. There were many others who went in my place; some of them didn’t come back and others came back maimed. ” — Magstadt Platoon: KSC student per- spective on the diary of a Vietnam vet On Dec. 19, 1936, the film Platoon opened et box offices across the nation. By the weekend of Jan. 9-11, 1987, Platoon av- eraged more than $22,000 in 74 theaters which was the highest per-screen take of any new film, according to Time Magazine This diary of one man's experience in Viet- nam is predicted to be one of the hottest films of 1987. Following ere some KSC stu- dents' first thoughts after seeing the film. “The hell my dad went through k” — Tom Bernard, Imperial freshman ,And to think they were only 17 years old” — Ray George, Bayard freshman It meant so much to many people but they never let anybody know about it— they just kept it inside. ” — Jason Kosmicki, Alliance freshman “I really had an empty feeling, ” — Doug While, Hutchinson, Ken. freshman Wow, they really went through a lot ” — Beth Montgomery, Lincoln freshman It was a wonder more men didn't crack while they were in Vietnam. ” — Carter Siebke, Casper, Wyo. sopho- more Now I know why people act the way they do after they were in Vietnam — Pam Woodward, Lincoln freshman How terrible it realty was. ” — Jim Collins, Alliance freshman I didn't realize there was so much fighting amongst the soldiers, and that they killed women and children over there. — Kris Tynan, Fairbury junior Each day they risked their lives to de- fend a position, but yet they weren’t allowed to go out and win the war ” — Todd Wardyn, Litchfield freshman 23

Page 26 text:

Vietnam continued taught us all the functions but they never taught us what to do when the commun- ists jumped out of a hole two or three feet in front of us, Tonthat said. The North Vietnamese would not have been able to defeat France or the United States without military and finan- cial assistance and training from China. “Many of the enemy’s pilots were train- ed in China, he said. The Vietcong were determined to win because they knew if they held on long enough, they would be victorious. “They were willing to sacrifice a whole generation on behalf of the next generation,’’ Tonthat said. “They were highly motivated and nationalistic, and willing to die for the independence of the country.” Tonthat believes the United States could not have won the Vietnam conflict even if they had been allowed to invade and annihilate North Vietnam. “Even with a half million American troops and two and a half million South Vietnamese troops, there wasn’t an inch of ground in South Vietnam that was safe,” he said. He attributes the danger to Vietcong infilitration within the Ameri- can and South Vietnamese forces. The Chinese considered western forces to be “paper tigers” which meant Westerners had strong fronts but could be worn down by their adversary, he said. The United States felt their conven- tional fronts were strong enough to overpower China’s doctrine of guerilla warfare. Tonthat said the Vietnamese people did not want their country to be the testing ground of these two opposed doctrines. He explained that the Vietnam con- flict was a civil war between the North and South. Tonthat explained, “By day, a village might be controlled by Saigon and, at night, the communists might con- trol the area. Both sides drafted soldiers from the same villages, and in some cases, the same family.” L C hey couldn’t defeat the United States on I the battlefield. The communists said they would de- feat the United States on their col- lege campuses and American streets. They were right. ” — Tonthat Tonthat concluded that he is sorry for all those he knew in Vietnam who now live under the communist regime but he appreciates the United States’ efforts on behalf of the South Vietnam- ese. Magstadt: Politics and Vietnam Political constraints on the U.S. mili- tary and protest from the American pub- lic played a large role in the outcome of the Vietnam Conflict, according to KSC Political Science W Department Chair- man Thomas Mag- stadt. There were constraints on the military. U.S. politi- cal leaders wanted to contain the con- flict in Vietnam. They feared the conflict could es- calate into a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union or China. “We were defeated militarily be- cause we couldn’t use the military means we had at our disposal,” Mag- stadt said. Because the United States is a democratic society, public opinion plays a large role in decision-making. The pub- lic provides funds for Congress to allo- cate and when the public no longer supports a war, funding is cut off, he said. “Domestic politics played a key role in the outcome of Vietnam,” he explain- ed. There was a ready-made formula for massive protest because those fighting the war would be college age. “There were several universities lo- cated near Washington, D.C.,” he said. “When the protest really got going, you had an army of college students demon- strating in and around the Capital. I was there and I saw tremendous demonstra- tions. “Public pressure and the fact that the war dragged on were two primary reasons for the United States' withdraw- al from Vietnam,” Magstadt continued. “If it had been a quick war, that would have been one thing, but a prolonged war is quite another thing. 1 The war was, in a sense, lost in the United States, he said. “Democratic societies operate at a distinct disadvan- tage in a contest against dictatorships.” Magstadt said a dictator can move much more quickly when it comes to decision- making. The United States opposed a com- munist regime and therefore backed South Vietnam. The Vietnam Conflict grew through a series of stages, he said. “Eisenhower said that the United States would help the South Vietnamese help themselves,” he explained. “Kennedy committed military advisers e tend to define that contest as though it were a super power contest. We see it as the United States versus the Soviet Union, us- ing Vietnam as the battlefield. It was actually a civil war between the North and South. ” — Magstadt but they weren’t considered combat troops. Johnson ordered the bombing of the North. “Because we had bombers over there, we had to protect the perimeters around the bases. To protect the bases and pilots, it takes infantry. The Army and Air Force were both in- volved in de- fense. A few skir- mishes arose, and by 1968, we were committed and had a half a million troops over there.” Magstadt said it would be difficult to place a finger on any one reason for the involvement in South United States’ Vietnam. There were a variety of rationale and explanations for the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. One of the rea- sons was keeping Vietnam free of com- munism, he said. Maintaining the commitment to the United States’ allies was another rea- son. Because France was the United States’ ally, the United States could not withdraw from South Vietnam without losing credibility with France, he explain- ed. There was also a theory called the domino theory. By pre- venting the North from conquering the South, the rest of Southeast Asia would be saved from communism, Magstadt said. “There was the belief that if South Vietnam fell, there would be a series of falling dominoes in which even- tually communism would rule the entire area,” he said. “In retrospect, there was some va- lidity to that theory, although it was wide- ly dismissed at the time. Shortly after South Vietnam fell, Cambodia and Loas fell.” The Vietcong, North Vietnamese sympathizers, were communists but they were also nationalists, Magstadt said. “We seemed to have addressed the problem as if it were international com- munism when, in fact, it was national communism,” he said. “It was a nation- alist movement that was inspired by a Thomas Magstadt 22

Page 28 text:

Recruiting: C ur coaches are doing a heck of a job I 1maintaining KSC’s national notoriety.’ — Zikmund Like many other American colleges and universities’, KSC takes the recruiting of its athletes very seriously, according to Allen Zikmund, director of athletics. KSC receives funding through the athletic association and private donations to carry out the task of recruiting. “Since funding is so limited, we don't mass recruit,” Zikmund said. “We must carefully select our athletes. Our coaches are doing a heck of a job maintaining KSC’s national notoriety in spite of the limited funding.” According to Tom Kropp, men’s basketball recruiter, KSC cannot offer a full-ride scholarship to an athlete be- cause of the limited funds. “The best we could offer a student would be $900, Kropp said. Kropp said he tries to sell the prospective students on the college, as well as basketball and the benefits that come with it. “I want to impress the athlete on the college first,” Kropp said. “If they come just to play basketball, then we don’t want them.” Apparently prospective athletes are coming for more than just the athletics. According to an article published in the Kearney Daily Hub, “Seven out of eight KSC basketball players earn their degrees.” “Our goal is to see our athletes graduate, Kropp said. “Playing basketball is just something they participate in along the way.” Brian Sandfort, a Holdrege freshman, practices layups the day before KSC’s game with UNO. Sandford is a guard for the Lopers. 24 I I .