Vietnam - metaphor for a mindset
I have been thinking lately more about Vietnam. Seems like that comes naturally everytime one of our esteemed political leaders sends in the military. Brings back memories of that quitessential conflict of my 20's. Will it ever be thus? For a lot of us, I bet, it will since it had a lot to do with helping to form who we became as citizens and our attitudes towards politics, war, chauvinism and American arrogance.
(which I thought was pretty hard to top until President Codpiece proved that he could not only be more arrogant about the French and the rest of the world, but more arrogant than the French, or at least their popular image).
My own Vietnam odyssesy involved every effort I could muster to stay as far away from the military as possible. Indeed, I was married, in school, had some quaisi legitimate physical complaints and, at the end, my only sibling was in a mental hospital. I had a peripheral activity in helping a few souls also dodge the draft, as I was in law school and took great interest in reading, understanding and using the draft regulations to defeat the system. And I helped a few others to do so in a minor way.
I don't feel proud at all about that record, and have looked back over the past 40 years at times and almost lamented "missing" the experience of the military. When it seemed like they were closing in on me at times I contemplated, what then was, the choice between taking 2 years as an enlisted man (in whatever service) or 4 years in Navy JAG. Fortunately, I say, I never had to make that choice as my deferrments eventually carried me over the magic 26th year.
All this is prelude to trying to coalesce some of the conflicting principles that afflicted my generation and continue to afflict us and perhaps all who contemplate war, unjust or not. And Vietnam, in my view, was misconcieved, dishonestly sold and prosecuted, by about any measure.
So here's a starter list, conceived in light of the current political season and climate. Feel free to add you own dichotomies via comments:
micro/macro
leaders/peons
wheels/cogs
power/impotence
Calley/Kerry
Cheney/Kerry
Military policy/front line grunts
communist stooge/nationalist movement
do one's duty/oppose moral bankruptcy
America right or wrong/America wrong when wrong
draft inequality/self-preservation
America,love it or leave it/Hell no! we won't go
body count/body bags
(which I thought was pretty hard to top until President Codpiece proved that he could not only be more arrogant about the French and the rest of the world, but more arrogant than the French, or at least their popular image).
My own Vietnam odyssesy involved every effort I could muster to stay as far away from the military as possible. Indeed, I was married, in school, had some quaisi legitimate physical complaints and, at the end, my only sibling was in a mental hospital. I had a peripheral activity in helping a few souls also dodge the draft, as I was in law school and took great interest in reading, understanding and using the draft regulations to defeat the system. And I helped a few others to do so in a minor way.
I don't feel proud at all about that record, and have looked back over the past 40 years at times and almost lamented "missing" the experience of the military. When it seemed like they were closing in on me at times I contemplated, what then was, the choice between taking 2 years as an enlisted man (in whatever service) or 4 years in Navy JAG. Fortunately, I say, I never had to make that choice as my deferrments eventually carried me over the magic 26th year.
All this is prelude to trying to coalesce some of the conflicting principles that afflicted my generation and continue to afflict us and perhaps all who contemplate war, unjust or not. And Vietnam, in my view, was misconcieved, dishonestly sold and prosecuted, by about any measure.
So here's a starter list, conceived in light of the current political season and climate. Feel free to add you own dichotomies via comments:
micro/macro
leaders/peons
wheels/cogs
power/impotence
Calley/Kerry
Cheney/Kerry
Military policy/front line grunts
communist stooge/nationalist movement
do one's duty/oppose moral bankruptcy
America right or wrong/America wrong when wrong
draft inequality/self-preservation
America,love it or leave it/Hell no! we won't go
body count/body bags
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