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April, 1969: A Vietnamese woman mourns over the body of her husband found with 47 others in a mass grave at Hue.
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Today is the 35th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, which marked the end of the Vietnam war. I can remember that war like it just happened yesterday. It was the shaping event of my generation. I can remember the bitter feeling of resignation I felt after Saigon fell and what I had suspected all along--that the US would not win because we were morally corrupt--came to pass. I can remember the horror of the pictures we saw of the carnage, the cruelty, the suffering we, the US, inflicted on a small, insignificant southeast Asian country that had the misfortune to become a pawn in the gigantic, ultimately futile and wasteful power game between the so-called "free world" and the forces of godless evil incarnate, the communists, who were all inspired by the Soviet Union and who meant to take over the world. I can remember the newsreels--the real blood and death we saw--the kind of thing we're never allowed to see now because the government and especially the Pentagon discovered that presenting the real picture of war and what it does somehow seems to turn people against it--and the commentary by ridiculously young newscasters like Morley Safer, Dan Rather, Garrick Utley, and a host of others.* I can remember the anger young people (at least those I ran around with) felt at the sight of what we were doing to the people of Vietnam, to the land itself. I can remember how countless members of my generation had their very lives molded by this conflict, which, like all our wars, was wrapped in the red, white, and blue bunting that all "patriots" were expected to follow into the gates of hell and beyond--if not fall down and worship--because we had to "defend our country" against its enemies. Enemies like that poor woman in the picture above. Enemies that were enemies because the politicians in charge claimed they were. No other reason than that.
Oh, I can remember it all, that goddamned, wretched, endless war that ruined us. That ushered me into to being a grown-up in this country. That turned us into callous killers. That snuffed out the lives of almost 60,000 of us and maimed and crippled who knows how many hundreds of thousands more. For nothing. For nothing other than the transitory follies of leaders. The bootless charade of good vs evil measured in deaths. I hated that war then, and I hate it even more now that nobody but those of us with the scars remember.
The full gallery of pictures from which the horrifying shot above was taken can be found
here. Some of the shots, familiar to anyone who lived through it, will break your heart.
*
Vietnam was the last time the US news reporters were granted even semi-free access to the war. Since then, war news has been completely controlled by the Pentagon. "Embedded" reportage is managed news, I don't care what they choose call it. And we're never shown pictures of the reality of war. Never.
4 comments:
Excellent post. So full of real and raw emotion, it really grabs at the heartstrings of the reader while they're reading it.
I always felt like I was blessed to have missed out on most of what went on in our country throughout that decade-long war. The closest it ever affected me by, personally, was when my best friend's father committed suicide in the late 1980's following years of PTSD & other mental afflictions. All which were attained following his tour in Vietnam as a US Marine - where he lost his leg, most of his hearing and nearly his life, at the tender age of 19yrs of age.
Unfortunately, the current circumstances in Iraq and Afghanistan have slowly dawned inside my mind to be actually turning into a Vietnam-like situation for my generation and for all that follow.
Curious ~ you wrote:
"..that the US would not win because we were morally corrupt.."
Would you mind maybe further expanding upon those thoughts you'd had then, just for my personal clarification/understanding?
Kudos for recognizing the date's significance, btw, for something other than Cinco de Mayo.
Well, I would say the war touched you in a pretty tangible way with your friend's dad and his suicide. There are still hundreds of thousands of walking wounded from that war in this country. And like every war, it left an entire generation full of holes because of missing dads, brothers, husbands. Who can count these costs?
I define a country as morally bankrupt which persists in prosecuting a war against the wishes of its citizenry and in face of clear evidence that the tremendous expense in blood and treasure is a waste. A war that publication of the Pentagon Papers made clear had been trumped up, and that our government had lied. (Back in those days, if you can imagine such a thing, people actually trusted the government.) And a war of such wanton cruelty. It was terrible: the Mai Lai massacre and others like it, the whole strategy of "strategic hamlets" that moved masses of the civilian population from their homes, body counts inflated by the murder of civilians, and on and on. Also, the burden of the draft fell most heavily on the poor people of the country. They did the dirty work and the dying for the rest of us.
It was a war whose ugliness and horror was patent, in your face all the time. The first television war, fought before the military figured out how to keep the home front from learning exactly what war means.
Well, the reason I asked you about that specifically is b/c another blogger that I read/followed for 2 years on another site would sometimes mention his opinion about how, following the assassination of JFK, our country began a collective journey along a pathway that only descended lower and lower. I never really had an opportunity to ask him all of the questions I always wished & wanted to ask him about it, so it's still sort of a theory that I sometimes mull over inside of my mind.
But he believed that after JFK, RFK & MLK's assassinations and then the LBJ & Nixon presidencies followed by the Ford & Carter ones, that our country basically followed governmental policy trends that continued to spiral the nation downward, up until this very hour. Like, the death of JFK sort of sent the nation off on a projectory course run by a very small collection of powerful political figure heads whose agendas were morally corrupt.
That last part, of course, is MY assumption/interpretation for the occasional references he'd make there from time to time. When you wrote about your beliefs at the time when the US first chose to enter Vietnam, it just kinda struck me as being somewhat similar in nature to what the other blogger believes...hence, my curiousity there and request for further clarification.
I appreciate you providing yours in further detail for me. Vietnam and the Korean "conflict" are my 2 weakest knowledge areas for US military history. Neither topic was hardly covered in social studies classes & the history dept. at OM had only 1 course available (the years I was there) that even came close - a senior seminar course titled "1968". I did sign up for it, however, only 2 other sr. history majors did as well and they had to have 8 enrolled in order to teach the course. Thus, my fuzzy knowledge of that period of US history.
I'm not sure I agree with your friend. I don't see the chain of events as a steady spiral down a moral sinkhole. This is the kind of pattern you can impose upon events when in fact the events are always more complex and diffuse than the patterns we put on them. I'm rethinking my use of the phrase "morally bankrupt" now. (Maybe "morally compromised" would have been more accurate.) Perhaps it was too strong. I think the phrase fits us perfectly at the present though, because we have become a soulless corporate state. We were well on our way to it in the 1960s, but not there yet. Some principles still prevailed in parts of the body politic.
All of those years and events you mention have to be seen in the context of the Cold War. Nobody who did not live during those times has any idea of how it influenced virtually everything the government did. It was the Cold War that fixed the everlasting and huge military establishment upon us, and it of course is what drove us to war in Korea and Vietnam.
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