REALITIES OF LIFE AND WAR
I’m not a philosophical person. Experiencing the realities, basic realities of life, when you’re in the jungle you look down on the ground and in a six inch square on the ground in the jungle you’re seeing creatures attack and kill other creatures, dismember them, and consume them, and its all going on down there in the jungle and that experience gives you a different perspective on life that you don’t get otherwise in terms of what is life really about. What’s really meaningful. We’re dealing with war, and with war, the rules are different. What’s fair game in war? Combat is its own culture. When I was drafted the question asked is: “Are your or anyone you know a communist party member or a card carrying member of any organization that doesn’t uphold the principles of the USA,” and I checked off yes. So, going through the screening committee, we get down to the box checked yes and I’m hauled down to the special security room. Here’s a guy interrogating me and he asks, “What’s this organization you’re a member of?” and I say, it’s my draft card sir. Buy motrin He looks at me like, your draft board? What kind of wise ass are you? I said the principles of the draft board are not the same ass democracy, they’re not the same as the principles of this country, the rules of the military are not the principles this country was founded on.
Here I am, a part of this behemoth military industrial complex in this little country that has nothing going for it, fighting an enemy that has no air force, they have no artillery to speak of, the odds are overwhelming, its the sort of battle that I think of the revolutionary Americans that were fighting with the British. felt that we were on the wrong side. Could we have won Vietnam? From my point of view, absolutely not. There was never a question that we could win this war. The litness test of a Vietnam veteran is what do you think of Jane Fonda, and anyone who is a veteran will tell you that they’d love to strangle her with their bare hands, they would kill her in a second because she’s a traitor, she’s sold out, they have nothing good to say about Jane Fonda. I like Jane Fonda, she screwed up like the rest of us in her twenties, she made some bad choices. She’s ackonwledged they were bad choices. I made some stupid choices in my twenties, I wasn’t as influential as she was but if I was I’d probably make as disastrous decisions as she did.
1968-1978 the nation angst was very much anti-Vietnam. What was incomprehensible to me at the time and seems incomprehensible now was why are the veterans seen as the ones who were perpetuating the war. I was called a baby killer. You know the Australians have what they call “Sorry Day”, where they nationally acknowledge the maltreatment that they gave the original Aborigines of Australia. I think for me, well I don’t know if you’ve heard, but apparently there was a bill this last week in the Senate trying to get this last March 30th declared national “Welcome Home Day” for Vietnam vets, it would be an official country welcoming the vietnam vets. From my point of view the time has passed for that, there’s a time and a place and that window has closed. I remember the first time I was at USC as an assistant professor. I’d probably been here a couple years, and I said something in class about when I was in Vietnam, and this young girl comes up to me and asks if she can come see me, and I said sure, come to my office hours. She said, you were in Vietnam right? I said yeah and she said, “I’d like to come talk to you about it.” I said okay, so she showed up to my ofice hours and she had this book, like a highschool yearbook. She said, “My dad was killed in Vietnam, I never knew him, and this is all I have. Can you tell me what this book means?” It was really sad, because what this book was, the army gave each solder this little yearbook at the end of your eight weeks of basic training, so you open it up and they’d have pictures of guys you were with, and some pictures going through different maneuvers, and you’re all decked out in your garb, but it’s basic training. It’s not Vietnam. But, this was the only thing this girl had of her father.
Welcome home soldier.