What time frame comes to mind when you hear “Vietnam?” I’d bet that in a free association experiment, most people would think of the period from the 1968 election through April 30, 1975, even though the first American death was 1945. You might see helicopters landing in rice paddies with soldiers shooting their way out to get the wounded and dead loaded quickly. Or perhaps just one word – “Tet.” Or maybe “My Lai.” You might think of what was happening stateside. Protests, sit-ins, Kent State. Walter Cronkite. Richard Nixon.
Perhaps the follow-up images now contain some level of guilt. Broken soldiers coming home to a splintered society. And if you were part of that splintered society, you might feel now that the soldiers were treated poorly by you and your friends. Depending on your age at the time, your feelings may have changed during the 30 year course of the war. Mine did.
In 1966 I was catching a bus on Friday or Saturday nights with perhaps 15 other kids my age to over the Geo. Washington Bridge, followed by the AA train to the Village. It was my intro to psychedlia, black and strobe lights, the Café Wha?, the Purple Onion, Washington Square. Despite the outer “hippie” life, I was in support of the war. After all, I was 13 years old and had a WWII Pacific veteran father who I adored, if secretly. He often said “My country, right or wrong, my country” and so that translated to “If I am needed I will go” statements from me. Easy to say when you are 13. My brother was also in the Far East ~ albeit Taiwan ~ but he was serving his country. Of course I would go when the time came.
Fast forward 2 years. At the still tender age of 15, I see my country being torn apart. The scabs of ’63 were ripped fresh by the wounds of ’68. And a man with dark brooding eyes was taking the reins of power. No longer did “Vietnam” equate to the unquestioned patriotism of my dear father. Even my mother would openly discuss sending her younger sons to Canada if need be. And for many, I think this is what comes to mind when they hear Vietnam. A period of darkness opened by a man with a “secret plan” to end a war he only planned to escalate. As we learned later, his only secret plan was the treasonous act of convincing the South not to negotiate with the North because he would give them a better deal.
Here is why I asked the opening question. Once again (we’ve seen this play all too often) we learn of a man who lied about his “service” during that time in order to burnish his credentials. Never mind that he has the Harvard/Yale kind of pedigree that made him attractive as a leader. No, he had to conflate his military service to that of those who actually fought, bled and died in Vietnam. He lied (calling it a misspeaking is continuing the bullshit).
Someplace in our national psyche we feel shame over that time frame. Is it shame that we treated our own poorly? Is it shame that we “lost” a war. Is it shame that we allowed our leaders to lie us into a war that resulted in both of these outcomes? I don’t have an answer. I do know that we have allowed it to happen again. We are at war with no end in sight. We feel shame when we learn our drones blew up another wedding party, much like the shame we felt when Lt. Calley led his boys into My Lai.
What I wonder about tonight as I write these words is Are we sowing seeds of shame for the next two generations? Will we heal our broken soldiers coming home as well as the countries we destroy or will we just declare “peace with honor”, leave another country broken and take some more poison into our national soul?
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A good place to begin educating ourselves would be putting Christian Appy's incredible book "Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides" in the hands of every citizen.
I did this review of the book some time ago, for Kentucky Public Radio:
**********
I've got a friend whom I've been having a weekly sixty or ninety minute long distance phonecon for over twenty years. We talk about all sorts of things, and a while back John began bugging me to read a new book called "Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides." Seemed like after he first mentioned it, John couldn't shut up about it, was giving it a rave review every time we talk. "You gotta get this book," he says over and over.
And over.
I told him --and myself-- "I know everything I need or want to about that horror." As a young sailor I was involved in it in a very small way, and as a GI-Bill college kid, was arrested several times, while supporting the notion that madness needed to stop. I told John I had less interest in further study of the Vietnam War than in talking to my first ex-wife.
And I'd rather walk to Louisville than do that.
So when John bought another copy of the book and send it down to me I let it lay for a couple days, knowing I didn't want to open it.
But when I did, I found out it's astonishing.
Did you know the first direct American involvement in that Vietnam mess came in 1945, when a batch of US merchant ships bringing troops home from Europe were re-routed to transport thirteen thousand French soldiers to defend their Indochina empire? And arguably the first American opposition to our involvement was the telegram the crew of the SS Winchester Victory sent to the White House, protesting the use of their ship to carry foreign combat troops? 1945 and we're that far into the thing already.
Did you know that by 1954 American tax dollars were paying 80% of the cost of maintaining the French army in Vietnam?
There are pages of similar trivia in the book, but that's not what makes it a compelling read.
It's mostly a series of interviews, with people from both sides of that conflict.
Americans who tried to destroy tunnels.
Vietnamese who lived in those tunnels.
Americans who were already on Vietnamese ground in the late fifties, early sixties and saw even then what a disaster was building.
Vietnamese who as late as 1954 hoped for a friendly relationship with the US.
An ex-Marine from West Virginia who came home missing his legs and his eyes.
A former North Vietnamese soldier, paralyzed from the waist down during a B-52 raid.
An American Senator and President-to-be who said, in 1954, "I am frankly of the belief that no amount of American military assistance in Indo-China can conquer an enemy which is everywhere, and at the same time nowhere, which has the sympathy and covert support of the people." Nine years later John Kennedy was dead in Dallas, and the craziness of the American end of the war was already spiraling out of control.
A Vietnamese nurse who tells about assisting in surgeries as her hospital shook from bombs dropped all around her hospital from B-52s.
I can't imagine anyone who would argue Vietnam was anything but a terrible, decades long mistake for this country. "Patriots" details the early expectations and the contrary experience of those who tried to implement this fatally flawed diplomatic/military exercise. It names some of those who tried to stop the madness before even one American had died in combat there, and what those attempts cost them.
Patriots is not easy to read. It's just people telling their stories in their own way, but it can be a hard, harrowing slog. I can only handle ten or twenty minutes of it a day.
But if you think you know something about Vietnam, and haven't read this masterwork, find yourself a copy and discover, as I have, just how little you really know.
"Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides" is an amazing and totally worthwhile experience.
I use to assume wrong that War can be forgotten.
But, on many days I feel post-Drafted, I crawling.
I craw bloody off the battlefield. O, pot-hat Baca.
apology. John Baca flopped on a grenade Boom!
Nixon gave Baca a deserved valor award for that!
I call John Baca the `Kooky `Nam Steel pot flop!
In 1968 my Draft records were in Catonville, Md.
That was were the Berrigan priest poured "blood."
As soon as I could walk I visited Phil Berrigan. Yes.
I wanted to Thank anti-War HUMANS WHO CARE.
thanks.
Tim4Change. Kathleen Parker has a Wash/Post ed.
Her brother was older and went to Viet`Nam. sighs.
I am saying War is filtered via every thought values.
Warmokers are depraved sociological cowards, yes.
War's Mystery can't be conveyed @ the blogosphere.
hi Baca.
pot flopper.
bless Ya heart.
O Bless Ya Life.
No Flop again.
Truth. Ask BO?
Rabbi Barkee?
Nickname you?
BO Rabbi Bacon?
Rabbi Bacon lard?
Woe unto killers.
I best go nap agin.
Obama wear burka?
What I found myself wondering about was not just the whys and wherefores of the Vietnam War, but how it plays out today. People who werent there lying ~ in this You Tube and Internet age, when statements can be so easily verified, How deep do the scars run to make people do stuff like that?
America won't get over Viet Nam because of the lies that ripped our hearts out over what it was really about and its real results, entirely the opposite what the lies of the left tell us. See my post "They Didn't Die In Vain: The Real Results Of Viet Nam' which you can find here:
http://open.salon.com/blog/henryr/2010/03/05/they_didnt_die_in_vain_the_real_results_of_viet_nam
And if you do read that, then by all means follow it up with "The Myth Of Uncle Ho" for a more complete understanding of the lies of the left about our involvement in Viet Nam.
http://open.salon.com/blog/henryr/2010/03/15/the_myth_of_uncle_ho
Richard Blumenthal isn't the first political candidate to falsely claim service in Viet Nam. There have been others. In Blumenthal's case, it is particularly interesting in that he tried so hard to avoid the possibility of Viet Nam service, taking 5 deferments and finally pulling strings to get into the Marine Reserves for his last resort safe haven. There is a special kind of repugnance that that inspires, to now try to capitalise personally on the very service he avoided so streuously. And yet, in a way it is a bit of a compliment to those who did serve, that he should now try to pass himself off as one of us. But that doesn't lessen the repugnance. And I have to wonder if his real reason for his claims is simply that he now sees himself as less of a man because he didn't serve when he could have done, and he can't bear to have that questioned and so he tried to stave off any questions about that by claiming he did.
And still the Democrats of Connecticut gave him their blessing to run for the Senate in their name. I have to wonder about them as much as I do about him.
Henry - I will look up your blog post on the subject, but I have a feeling I read it already. Understand that you addressed my question more in the second half of your comment - my bewilderment over people who worked to avoid the service and their disavowal of their actions today and where that comes from in the national psyche. You are wrong on one point however. Blumenthal got the Democratic nod before the fit hit the shan. I know if I had supported a candidate that did what he did I would be calling for him to get off the ticket.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Connecticut,_2010
Even after this news broke, they still gave him the nod by 11 percentage points over Simmons.
We should have never gone into Afghanistan on the ground and stayed. We should not have gone into Iraq at all, and worse yet, stayed. And we should get out of both yesterday.
We have messed both up beyond recognition and should pay with massive aid to both, but stop the fighting and remove our military presence.
That will not make up for the damage we have done, and many will be hurt, destroyed, by our removing ourselves. But to argue that we are going to improve either place by imposing our will on those lands by military action is either wishful thinking, or willful ignorance, or both.
Monte
I find the lack of holding people accountable for their crimes, especially Presidential successors, really leaves no opportunity for us to learn from our mistakes. We just keep making them. I am baffled how Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld still walk as free men - simply baffled. Nixon? Cambodia alone - never mind all the other criminal behavior - was never even addressed.
America's military stance puts us in the position of being the aggressor the world over. The fact that we spend more on our military than our schools shows the deficit in our ability to prioritize. We are the world's terrorists as far as I'm concerned - and the fact that more Americans aren't concerned about this baffles me.
What gets people mad is not whether or not someone served, but when someone says they served but really didn't. A lie like that is an insult to those who sacrificed years of their lives, and to the nearly 60,000 who paid the ultimate price. That's worth getting mad about.
Sparky: The US military has bases in nearly 200 countries. The US military is the largest single user of petroleum in the world. The US Navy is larger that the next 13 largest navies combined, 11 of which are US allies. Whats wrong with this picture? But to the point about protecting the office of the presidency against all comers, past and present, I agree with you. Hard to move forward when you spend all your days looking over your shoulder at the past.
Procopius: Blumenthals actions are reprehensible, even more so given he wont step aside, nor do his words today equal taking responsibility. How about being a man and saying "Yes, I got caught up in an exageration and didnt know how to back out of it, I was wrong" instead of the ever-evasive "I mis-spoke?" And politicians wonder why we hold them in less esteem than used car salesman.
The Roman Catholic five percent ruling elite of Vietnam owned 95% of its wealth. Recall the monks immolating themselves? Buddhists were essentially slaves to the Roman Catholics.
John Kennedy, raised Roman Catholic, became Jeffersonian in office, and in keeping with the Whig Theory of History shared by The Founders, ordered our military's withdrawal as papal catspaw in Vietnam (Hitler was but a catspaw for the same historic, geopolitical force...identified by Mr. Jefferson as "the real Anti-Christ,""an engine for enslaving mankind").
Rome's "Fifth Column," already under threat after JFK's EO11,110 ended their illegal, unconstitutional fiat-money franchise of The Fed, led by Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush, using a hit-team from the Knight of Malta-led, Roman Catholic CIA, assassinated him to send 58,000 of us to die for the pope in Indochina...to keep the Golden Triangle heroin trade in business, and for Mafia/corporate war contractors to make money in the U.S..
9/11, inarguably committed by Bush and Cheney (Nixon's "boy") follows the same pattern: sending us to false war for private profit...and in this case to restart the Taliban-ended Afghan heroin trade, to protect the corrupt Saudis Rockefellers set up a century ago, and for a corrupt faction of false Jews with PNAC Netanyahu in the State of Israel who have no concern that G-d was watching when they helped Bush and Cheney shed innocent blood on 9/11.
The Roman Anti-Christ, "toryism," must destroy the once sovereign People in America...or be "the Beast" cast into the Pit of expropriation for treason, and extirpation by the Citizenry outraged.
Death for Treason - The Truth is easy to know. There is but one Creator, G-d of the universe.
Annuit Coeptis
Thanks for asking. R.
Quote General Maxwell Taylor, who helped start the war,
"first, we didn't know ourselves. We thought that we were going into another Korean War, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn't know our South Vietnamese allies... And we knew less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we'd better keep out of this kind of dirty business. It's very dangerous."
Lesson learned?
The only lesson learned by the Hawks was to stick with bribed volunteers ... Conscription, and the uneven and unfair application of it, was what blew up in their face. They learned though, and now they blow up wedding parties in other countries only with volunteer patriots at the wheel. There would be no Iraq War if they relied on a draft, in fact, the protests would make the 60s look like a pic-nic.
What no one wants to hear is who Diem lobbied in the 50s- McCarthy, who maybe was sober at the time, probably not.
We put our might behind a Catholic killer in a Buddhist part of the World. In hindsight, it is indeed the stupidest mistake our military has ever made, oooppps, until putting a Shia killer in with Sunnis- oh well, some things never change.
But why listen to Henry when Will is so obviously right?
Because, we now know the truth- that the Left, including many I protested with, were horribly wrong, many carried little red books with them! Something that disgusted me even then ... only to find out Henry's points were not just valid, that Communism was instead the most horrible thing in history, that Mao was a vicious killer of tens of millions, like Stalin, that anyone who had a little red book was at best an idiot, that we all really truly felt if the Reds had enough power they would kill us all, and they would of.
The Left is the wing that needs to re-visit the big picture, the Right simply needs to re-read the General's quote.
AUWE
It would probably help if you could agree on the lessons of Vietnam, though.
Will, Bob, Oahu, to properly respond to you may require another post. I am not a very prolific writer, I need the muse to descend on me, and she does so rarely. But you all raise points that need greater examination.
Robin, as a fine and talented writer yourself, I am very complemented that you find this "beautifully written" and worth more thought.
Norwonk, you are right. We need to learn from our mistakes, not get over them.
To all who commented and to any who trip over this post in the future and wish to comment, I again thank you. I hope my central question, which to me was more about the psychology of the issue of Blumenthal's (and others) dishonesty and what that says about the guilt we feel over the war. My perspective changed at a very impressionable age and I tried to use that shift to think about the institutional dishonesty we feel as a county in our approach to this piece of history.
I just stood frozen for a minute right in the middle of this. I realized then that I was seeing Vietnam from two ends for the US soldier. The ones coming home never had a chance; neither did the ones going over. I have no desire to put this war past me.
And yes, we are making the same mistake again in Afghanistan. So sad. Thanks.
I stare daggars at anyone who does not stand, cross their heart with their hand, when our vetrans walk or limp by, at parades. I like to tell kids that those guys fought, so you could use that language and wear your hair in a mohawk, so stand up!(Yes, my hubby cringes.)
This was a very interesting post, I was a crazy hippie kid,at the time and very full of myself..30 yrs later I wrote"60's". I have a link if you have time, check it out. Great write.
ONL - its not veterans vs. college towns. There is so much pain in out psyches over this period, and it is very very confusing. Im not sure we can sort it out any more than the first two or three generations post Civil War could sort that out. Hell, we still havent!
Thank you CIndy. Very kind indeed. I read your post on Sparking and I am looking forward to getting to know you better!
I lived through some of it and see the relicts we still have.
Maybe it is the guilt/shame of the aggressor? In Japan, the period including 60 years after WWII was labeled "post WWII" lasted a long time.
it apparently guided their behavior to be "good actors" in the world.
not so us...sigh
Dad was conservative, voted for Wallace at one point, but with the Vietnam war, he sat me and my brother down one day and told us he felt the Vietnam War was wrong and horrible. He promised to help us stay out of the conflict if we had low numbers.