The 50th reunion of my high school graduating class went well, as reunions go. Many of the facades that we all developed have broken down by now. All things considered, people looked pretty good and still full of life. I was there nearly four hours and could have stayed longer.
But one moment in the evening's festivities made me pause. There's something we haven't gotten over yet. I'm guessing that that's true no matter where you go and no matter how people felt at the time.
Lots of great things were going on: The moon landing, which took place that very weekend; the Chicago Cubs' surge to first place in the National League, which captivated lots of folks until the Miracle Mets took over and won the whole thing; Woodstock, which happened that August (and I was in North Adams, Massachusetts, where members of our class had had a student exchange that year; I heard a couple of refugees from that idyllic ordeal complain about water, which came in small quantities, being spiked with 'brown' acid, whatever that was but about which I would gratefully be forever clueless).
What also took place, though, were two moratoriums on the Vietnam War in Washington, DC that fall. By then, I had matriculated into college, and my views on things were starting to change. The war had begun its long, tragic descent through withdrawal into defeat. Nixon's "Vietnamization" strategy--de-emphasize the ground war and cover our tracks with massive bombing--had begun to take hold. It didn't matter; those against the war didn't trust or believe in the new president, and the moratoriums were there to tell him so.
But those Americans still getting drafted and those who had volunteered for Vietnam were still there and still getting killed or wounded or thoroughly messed up with something people could finally label, something so many soldiers had suffered from but we had placed that into our endless category of denial: post-traumatic stress disorder. I wonder if anyone returned the same.
One of the leaders of the reunion's organizing group (one of the most popular people in my class, a bright fellow that nearly everyone would call a great guy) got up and gave a talk about the fact that it had been, indeed, fifty years since we'd been to high school in Grafton, Wisconsin. Lots of things had changed, of course. But he felt he needed to point out that three of our classmates had gone to Vietnam and returned, though only one, who had served in the Air Force, was present at the reunion. We stood and saluted him (ignoring, for the moment, a career Marine who had distinguished himself in more than one 'side theater') with applause.
All well and good. But the presenter felt he also had to add that we had come around to the idea that we could hate the war but appreciate the warrior. Unquestionably, that attitude surrounded us fifty years ago; there were stories galore about how Vietnam vets had been verbally abused, even spit upon in airports when they returned. There were no parades celebrating that, of course, because the war went on and dissolved into near meaninglessness as the people we had given blood to help collapsed beneath the relentless onslaught of their northern fellows. Nixon's "peace with honor" became empty rhetoric that salved no wounds.
Gradually, our society grew out of pointless mockery and moved on. I haven't read anything about belittling or diminishing those who serve our country for quite some time now. After all, one of the most meaningful consequences of the Vietnam War was the development of the all-volunteer military. Now, there would be no more draftees being sent to die elsewhere; they would make their choices and a grateful public would give them their parades and Super Bowl flyovers--that is, if they made it back from wherever we would send them.
But our fundamental support of them has also fizzled into a vanilla lukewarmness. There are no updates on troop successes. There are no reports on advances. The only things we know are when people return for good--not as easy as it once was to determine exactly that, since many go back for two, three or more tours of duty--or when they are killed. And we shake our heads and mourn for their loved ones, but not for ourselves because in the end, there remains little real connection between us and the purpose of their duties, just like Vietnam. We are told that they're fighting for us, but where's the proof? We are fighting for someone, but who are they? People keep getting killed, but get serious now: Do you feel that we're losing, or winning, anything?
But we don't make fun of any of them anymore, so it's all okay. Is that a net gain for us? Or are we missing the point--that the policies of successive administrations have led us into yet more quagmires that, just like Vietnam, we know lack chances of measurable success but someone can't do the sensible thing and withdraw because of political blowback?
Or maybe, just maybe, if we continue to justifiably love the warriors, we by implication have to appreciate the wars and keep from demonstrating and screaming about the uselessness of what they're doing, just like we did about Vietnam. The country becomes split into the terrorism-obsessed and the opposition that has acquiesced into a sleepwalk. So we pile war vets onto the backseats of convertibles as they wave at the throngs gathered on the sidewalks, make sure that we all stand for the national anthem--whatever that has to do with it--and spend incredible billions of dollars to supply corporations with the people power and resources to keep getting the troops their endless hardware, utilized to overwhelm the enemy except when they don't or can't. The excess is now shoved along to police departments, which have re-armed and display it like invading armies themselves.
So it's all good, right? We now really, really love the warriors, so discussion about what they're doing and where and why they're doing it goes awry, somehow gets too old, and is jettisoned like plastic into the ocean--a waste that keeps washing onto our shores, not unnoticeably but something that someone out there somewhere needs to deal with. Never mind that there's now an island about a third the size of Texas floating out there in the Pacific, proving that like everything else, whatever you put off not only doesn't go away, but builds inexorably. We put it there, but nobody knows what to do with it so we just keep piling it up. And now, to oppose or object to our military excursions is not only unpopular but somehow disloyal, even though what a person's trying to do is make things better.
For some reason, the stock phrase dictates the priority due to the positioning of the clauses: Hate the war but love the warrior. It isn't usually said the other way around, Love the warrior but hate the war. Done the latter way, it sounds like the point is to give them a reason not to continue to be warriors but to stop being warriors as soon as they can, to get their asses home. I prefer the latter.
There's a middle ground here. We can support the military, and speak well of it, without giving them what amounts to endless but token attention at public gatherings. We need to have the deeper conversation about post-modern America: Namely, that we are wearing out our welcome as the saviors of civilization as we know and prefer it--and that Vietnam was the place where that image began its descent.
We all would love to avoid it. Just last year, Ken Burns made an outstanding mini-series on the Vietnam War. But almost no one debriefed it. The networks made little fanfare. We were already too focused on the gaffes and abuses extended by 45 and his cronies. Vietnam is the illegitimate child that was taken 'up north' to be born, that we hope is all right but nobody is going to ask about it.
Vietnam is fine. If there were any POWs left behind, they are most likely gone now. The government is still communist, a captive society in which dissent is punished far beyond a tweetstorm. We recognized it, though, nearly a quarter-century ago. I went to a symposium on it at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee back then. A presenter was someone who sold VCRs (remember those?) to Vietnamese businesses. The two he said were most asked for were--get ready--"Little House on the Prairie" and "The Waltons". The language of business, he said, was English.
We have come some way from fifty years ago in our appreciation of those who serve in our military. But the glossy, mini-observances that have taken over our culture now miss the point and constitute the easy way out of that deeper conversation. All of it together makes it look like we prefer war. Well, do we? Half a century on, there's reason to make that assumption, so let's start there. And if that newfound love for the soldiers is working so well, if those temporary celebrations have their lasting impact, why are 22 of them committing suicide (on the average) every single day?
They went off to fight a war 50 years ago, came back all messed up, and we ignored them at best. Now they go off to fight wars, we do everything we can to salute and honor them, but they still come back messed up. Has it occurred to anyone that it's the decision to go to war that puts these things into motion regardless of what happens afterwards? That it isn't about us and our collective guilt, but still and always about them?
I'm glad I attended my 50th reunion. All of us have learned a great deal since the more formal learning ended back then. Since true learning is demonstrated by a change of behavior, how much, as a nation, have we really learned?
The American Legion hall (ironic, huh) wasn't the place to be philosophical last Saturday night. There were plenty of good memories and hugs and laughs. But the main speaker brought up a point that we have never really settled, and it lingers there, waiting. If we don't, we leave it as an albatross of our legacy as a generation. Sure hope we can deal with it, even at this late date. We had too much fun besides that to leave that stain behind.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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