“We didn’t learn anything from Vietnam,” Warren resident Peter Mahoney said, reflecting on his trajectory from dedicated member of the U.S. Army to staunch anti-war activist.
Mahoney said that when he joined the army in 1968, he felt a responsibility to serve, despite agreeing with a growing anti-war sentiment. His grandfather had served in World War I and his father and uncle in World War II. “It seemed natural to me that Vietnam was my war," he said.
“I think I was trying to use my military experience to prove my manhood,” he added.
When he arrived in Vietnam at 18 years old, he said he realized that “there was only one set of invaders, and they were the Americans.” He saw things that made him want to get out as quickly as possible.
Mahoney learned that the U.S. government was promoting a graceful exit from Vietnam, rather than trying to win the war. “So, when you’re a soldier in a war situation and you know that your country is not trying to win that war,” he said, “then it’s very difficult to justify, why am I killing people? And why are people that I know being killed? For what reason?”
In 1971, Mahoney returned to his home in Massachusetts. He learned that the group Vietnam Vets Against the War (VVAW) was protesting in Washington, DC, where veterans were throwing their medals out. He traveled there to join, but found that having come out of Vietnam only 90 days prior, he wasn’t ready.
Shortly after, Mahoney was studying at the University of New Orleans and saw a leaflet for the VVAW on a bulletin board. He attended a meeting in which the group was planning to march in the local Veteran’s Day parade. The parade organizers threatened to have them arrested, but they marched anyway and 33 members were arrested for parading without a permit.
“It was my first Veteran’s Day back from Vietnam, and I was arrested and put in jail for the first time in my life,” he said. “That kicked me into gear, as far as the activism was concerned.”
Mahoney became more involved with VVAW, becoming a regional coordinator in Louisiana, then leaving school to work as a national coordinator out of New York City. In 1972, he was sent to Florida to work with local chapters there.
At a VVAW meeting in Gainesville where the group was organizing a demonstration for the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, some members asked about what the group would do if the police started shooting people. Mahoney and other members had a conversation about it, later to find that those asking the questions were undercover FBI agents and informants.
Eight members of VVAW were indicted on charges of conspiracy to disrupt the convention. They were facing the possibility of five years in federal prison.
The trial started a year later and lasted one month. Seven FBI informants testified. “Someone I considered to be one of my best friends was an FBI informant,” Mahoney said. “I was worried. I had a lot of nervous energy around that time.”
But in just four hours, a jury found them not guilty and they were acquitted. Mahoney said that he felt a huge sense of relief, but “even though the government lost the case, in some way, they won. Because they drained our resources, and diverted our attention from the cause we were espousing.”
After the trial, Mahoney stepped away from the activism. He worked simple jobs to pay his rent. “I felt completely alienated from American society and stayed that way for 10 years,” he said.
In the early 1990s, Mahoney went to Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed and the U.S. was sending foreign aid in order to help transition their government. This marked the start of his 29 years of work in international development. He said that while he met a lot of good people doing that work, he became a “disillusioned idealist” as he watched the U.S. government send aid to other countries in order to further their own interests and keep other countries subservient to them.
In Russia, Mahoney met his wife Natasha and they had two children, staying in Moscow for nine years. Both moved to Warren in 2001, renting their home seasonally and moving back full-time around 2019. This past summer marked the 50th anniversary of the acquittal of the eight VVAW members. The five surviving members, including Mahoney, met in Gainesville on August 31 and the mayor designated it ‘Gainesville Eight Day.’
Mahoney reflected on the state of the contemporary world, in light of his experience in Vietnam. “We shouldn’t be sending American soldiers to fight and die in other countries for something that has nothing to do with the security of the United States. That should’ve been the lesson that we learned from Vietnam.”
