As a kid, I didn’t understand the complexities of the Viet
Nam War. I don’t remember when it started. I just remember that at some point
we were just sort of in it. President Johnson talked about it. Nixon talked
about it. Lots of people talked about it. Lots of people were against it. I had
no doubt we would win it, because America always won its wars. As a kid, you
don’t have much of a concept of war. There were war movies and television shows
like Twelve O’Clock High and the Rat Patrol. There were even
comedies like Hogan’s Heroes, or McHale’s Navy. These were not
the sort of things to give a kid a realistic view of warfare. No maiming, no
PTSD, no dead babies. So I was more interested
in the things that kids like me were interested in: toys, astronauts, games
with friends. One of those games was “war” where we would run around the
neighborhood pretending to shoot each other.
When my oldest brother got to draft age, he enlisted in the
Coast Guard. Our communications with him consisted of letters. There were no
cell phones or emails back then. You had to wait weeks for a letter to cross
the globe. Once in a great while we might get a phone call from him
which was a complicated affair that involved a ship-to-shore operator. We
followed his travels: New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Antarctica, and eventually . .
. Viet Nam. Years later when my friends were worried that Ronald Reagan would
get us involved in a war, I remember one of them saying ‘If I get drafted, I’m
joining the Coast Guard because they just stay on our own coast. They don’t go
off to war.” I had to explain to him his error.
Then my other brother dropped out of college and that made
him eligible for the draft. Looking back on it, I realize now that it does seem
elitist and unfair that men in college were exempt from the draft. I didn’t
think anything about it at the time; it seemed like a good thing. I would
imagine the people who could not afford or were not disposed to college would
have disabused me of that notion. Anyway, brother number two got drafted into
the army. My parents were not people who wore their emotions on their sleeves,
but I think there was a tear or two shed when he went off to boot camp. There
probably was with the first brother too, but I was not paying attention to such
things. I was pretty self-absorbed in my
own kid stuff.
I am not sure at what point it was that I started to realize
that Viet Nam was a mess (I am using the nice word “mess” here instead of what
it really was), and that maybe we didn’t belong there. But at some point, even
a self-absorbed egotistical kid like me figured it out. I grew up. It took a long while though, being raised in
a patriotic family. But you hit yourself in the head with a hammer enough times
and eventually you are going to realize that maybe you shouldn’t do that. I think eventually even my parents realized
Viet Nam was a mistake. I am fortunate that my brothers came back intact. Politicians
send young men and women off to war. The warriors do their duty. They are not
supposed to ask if what they are fighting for is worth it. They are told they
are fighting for our country or for freedom. They just do their duty. And the
other side’s soldiers also do their duty. That is what soldiers do. Are they
fighting for country, principle, or just feeding the ego of their self-absorbed
leader?
Kids grow up. Some politicians never do.
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