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For so many of my generation who went to Vietnam , that war with
its painful lessons has become the defining event of a lifetime
.I am one such Vietnam veteran who has never come to peace about
the Vietnam war, and our nations response in the aftermath of the
tragedy of September 11th has only served to unearth some very painful
memories long buried over three decades of every day joys, challenges
and sorrows of family, work, friends and just plain living.
I went to Vietnam in 1969 as a young untrained doctor just out
of internship, drafted because of the urgent need that year for
combat infantry battalion medical support, and I was sent to the
101st Airborne Division in Thua Thien province where some of the
fiercest fighting of the entire war had been occurring. I did not
experience the extreme horror and risks of the infantry grunts,
but I did experience my share of terror from frequent rocket and
mortar attacks and I bore witness to unspeakable suffering, brutalization,
dehumanization ,death and destruction as the war ripped apart the
entire fabric of rural Vietnamese society and destroyed so many
young Americans who along with countless Vietnamese were the victims
of a never ending train of false assumptions.
As long as I live , I will carry with me the memories of the forcible
relocation of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians to a
world of degradation, deprivation, disease and death in squalid
refugee camps. And I will always remember the terrorized , brutalized,
killed, maimed and emotionally crippled young Americans, many barely
beyond high school age, just like my three draft age sons today,
who were sacrificed on the alter of arrogance and hubris. To this
day, I carry with me the questions: why? and for what? Questions
unanswered still after three decades.
Maybe, I'm completely incapable of seeing the present in anyway
other than through the lens of Vietnam. But the blank stares of
despair, anguish and anger in ill clad Afghan refugees holding emaciated
infants and children in televised images are the very same faces
that I encountered over thirty years ago in Vietnam. And the images
of destruction after two weeks of bombing are reminders of the most
powerful bombing campaign in history that went on all around me
in Vietnam.
But beyond this, I see unmistakable parallels between the new war
in Afghanistan and the war in Vietnam. Today's perceived problem
is terrorism, back then it was guerrilla insurrection. But both
of these problems are really consequences of a complex set of political
, social and economic injustices. Then as now, bombing is supposed
to achieve an objective, but it does not. Civilians are not supposed
to be killed but they are.The indigenous population is supposed
to support us but they don't. Then after all of these failed assumptions,we
introduce ground forces, at first on a small scale but eventually
with overwhelming military power to control much of the country
and they live a lie: They are told that they are liberators, but
they are viewed as occupiers and over many years, they are picked
apart spiritually and physically.
If those of us who went to Vietnam have any wisdom to impart at
this crucial time, I believe it would be this: Beware of any tendency
towards arrogance and self righteousness. Beware of anyone with
a strategy to "win hearts and minds"; beware of armchair
generals who have never experienced the consequences of decisions
to send young men into combat;and lastly listen carefully to the
courageous moral and practical positions of the anti-war movement
.
I realize that many don't want to hear about the experiences or
nightmares of an aging Vietnam veteran. But once, not too many years
ago, we were blinded by the power of our technology and the certainty
of our cause. We must not allow that to happen again.
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