Douglas Kinnard fought in three wars, retired as a brigadier
general and began studying dissent. That was in 1970, when the high-flying West
Pointer turned down a promotion after his second tour in Vietnam and returned to college to study for a
Ph.D at Princeton. Like many other colleges,
the Ivy League campus in New Jersey was in
turmoil as students and faculty passionately protested the expansion of the war
in Vietnam into Cambodia.
Kinnard, who had harbored
private doubts about the war while in uniform, said in an interview years later: “I think that the people
who demonstrated against the war … frankly, I think they did the country a
great service.”
Asked what, in subsequent years, he
taught his political science students at the University of Vermont
about the Vietnam War, he said: “I taught them that it was a war that
should not have been fought.”
Kinnard, a native of Paterson,
NJ, who died July 29 at age 91, after Army
service in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, was widely known as an
author of military histories that reexamined established views. His obituary in
The Record of North Jersey noted that he “ruffled the military establishment
with his 1977 book ‘The War Managers,’ which asserted that the majority of
generals who served in Vietnam
from 1965 to 1972 were critical of how the war was run and, in retrospect,
regretted U.S.
involvement.”
According to The Record obit, Kinnard’s son, Frederick, said
his father “also disagreed with the U.S.
invasion of Iraq
after 9/11. ‘He was extremely critical of going to war,’ the son said. ‘He felt
that is the very last thing you do.’”
Kinnard was the author of several books, including an autobiography titled Adventures in Two Worlds: Vietnam General and Vermont Professor.
An insightful interview on Kinnard’s transformation from
soldier to war critic can be found at:
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