| Published on Thursday, May 3, 2001
The Mythology of Vietnam
A
Reality Check for
a Clueless Nation
by Ted Rall NEW
YORK -- Historical memory has never done terribly well in this country, but our
national case of collective amnesia over the VietnamWar surely sets a record for
mass delusion.
Former Sen. Bob Kerrey (finally) admits that he led
a commando raid on the village of Thanh Phong on the night of Feb. 25, 1969, that
ended up with the accidental killings of between 12 and 14 unarmed civilians.
One of the six men under Kerrey's command alleges that Kerrey ordered the Vietnamese
lined up and shot. For all we know, both men may be telling the truth as they
remember it. According to Dr. Frank Ochberg, a former associate director of the
National Institute of Mental Health, the stress of combat "makes it possible
to remember things in a part of the brain that causes you
to focus on certain
events and completely ignore others."
In an April 29 op-ed piece
that appeared in the Washington Post, Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Max Cleland,
D-Ga., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., wrote: "Many people have been forced to do
things in war that they are deeply ashamed of later. Yet for our country to blame
the warrior instead of the war is among the worst, and, regrettably, most frequent
mistakes we as a country can make."
And so the lies
live on.
Theoretically, soldiers were drafted for the
Vietnam War, and soldiers suffer grievous penalties for disobeying orders. Reality
was much different. If you were white and fairly well-off -- as was the 25-year-old
Bob Kerrey -- there were countless alternatives to slogging around rice paddies
carrying an 80-pound pack. You could get a college deferment, as did Bill Clinton.
You could become a weekend warrior in the National Guard, keeping the cornfields
safe for democracy, like George W. Bush and Dan Quayle. You could ask a liberal
doctor to write your draft board a note saying that your asthma, hammertoes or
whatever made you unfit for duty. If your dad golfed with a guy who belonged to
the same Elks lodge as a member of the draft board, you were off the hook. And
if all else failed, you could do what all the draft-eligible 18- and 19-year-olds
from my rock-hard Republican suburban Ohio town did -- head to Canada.
No
wonder that wall in Washington is black: African-Americans, along with some poor
white folks with no cash and fewer connections, were the only ones who went kicking
and screaming to Vietnam.
Films like "Rambo,"
"Missing in Action" and "Born on the Fourth of July" reinforce
powerful and utterly fraudulent myths about the war: Naive, inexperienced idealist
finds himself in hot, stinky
jungle surrounded by hostile locals he's trying
to help and hobbled by wimpy generals unwilling to let him win. The next thing
he knows, he's being called "baby killer" by dishy hippie chicks as
he
retrieves his limbs from the baggage carousel.
First
and foremost, the vast majority of reasonably well-off white guys like Bob Kerrey
who went to Vietnam decided to go because they were right-wing wack jobs. They
believed in the domino theory.
They believed in Nixon's silent majority.
They thought the tens of thousands of student protesters raising hell on college
campuses were commies, wusses and commie wusses. Of course, no one sane believed
that America would be saved from godless communism by propping up a corrupt dictatorship
on the opposite side of the planet. But these were guys who enjoyed the prospect
of blowing holes into slant-eyed gooks.
What happened
next is well-documented. Even the most ardent backwater moron discovered upon
arrival that the Vietnamese didn't want us there, that the South Vietnamese government
was about as
democratic as Stalin's USSR, and that we were getting our asses
kicked fair and square by a bunch of short tunnel-dwellers in black PJs. A classic
war documentary from the era depicts a lieutenant being advised over his radio
that the V.C. are to his right. He orders his platoon to the left. They're on
the move all day and all night, deliberately avoiding combat. When the sun comes
up they've ended up where they began. According to many veterans, this experience
wasn't uncommon -- service in the Vietnam War involved staying alive until the
end of your tour of duty.
Guys like Bob Kerrey, on the
other hand, were gung-ho. He was the commander of a unit in the elite Navy SEALs.
Kerrey, and those like him, knew -- or should have known -- that they were fighting
a
dishonorable war for a dishonorable cause. They didn't have to be there,
and once they were there they didn't have to do what they did.
Kerrey
lost a leg fighting that war. According to his comrades in the war and in the
Senate, he has demonstrated personal courage. Despite the fact that he may have
done so for less than pure
motives, his willingness to discuss what happened
32 years ago is admirable.
But none of that changes the
truth: Everybody knew that Vietnam was stupid and wrong. At the time. That incredibly
stupid, brutally wrong war could never have transpired without the enthusiastic
participation of people like Bob Kerrey, who knew better and went anyway.
Ted Rall, 37, is author of two
forthcoming books: a graphic
novel, "2024," and a collection of
cartoons, "Search and Destroy:
Cartoons by Ted Rall." Both books
will be published this month.
Copyrighted 2001 Ted Rall
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