Bringing it all back home: Lessons of the Vietnam War
“I honestly am calling for the reinstatement of the national draft in my country. [..] If a country decides to go to war, it has to have a nation-wide discussion and that doesn’t happen if you have high-tech machines to kill.”
“What my country is trying to do as it advances weapons systems to high-tech, is further remove United States citizens from the consequences of war.[…] The more you divorce the means of killing from humans, the less the population of a country will pay attention at when you’re attacking somebody.”
Having been a student activist at the time of the Vietnam War, Williams argues that the potent combination of daily media reports from trudging troops in the Vietnamese jungle coupled with the looming danger of the draft for American families and their children successfully fuelled the Anti-war movement.
Jody Williams is a life-long activist and Nobel Peace Price Laureate. She also founded and chairs the Nobel Women’s Initiative.
The interview was recorded in Soesterberg, The Netherlands, on April 17, 2016.
