Vietnam on my Mind

Monday, November 12, was Veterans Day, a holiday that, apart from giving me a welcome break from school, has never really signified a whole lot. But this year it felt very different for me. Vietnam was on my mind.

Veterans Day. What does this phrase mean to you? What gut-level response does it arouse? In the past I would have had to answer "not much" to these questions. I know Veterans Day commemorates the men who fought in wars for the U.S. It recalls those people who gave their lives in active support of the ideals of their country. Yet it is hard to get excited about a holiday that pays tribute to the achievements and struggles of people in circumstances so far removed from our everyday lives.

Sure, we're proud of the Minutemen in the Revolution; we're relieved that the Civil War was able to heal the awful internal strife that had divided our country; we note that the Spanish-American War marked the emergence of American power and leadership in the world (despite our misgivings about its imperialist implications); and we more keenly sense the brute horror but ultimate triumph of justice and order in the two world wars. Veterans Day conjures up all of these recollections about America's military heritage. Yet something is lacking and terribly wrong today.

In today's world there is something extremely discomfitting about a holiday which reminds us of how many wars we have fought. I sense in many people a subtle but powerful awareness that the holiday's meaning has shifted over time and now represents a rather different set of ideas and principles.

Apocalypse Now started me really thinking about these ideas. The sheer overwhelming power of the film's depiction of the horror that we call Vietnam left me emotionally drained. The strongest message reverberating through the movie is the total madness with which the Vietnam War was conducted. In the name of democracy and freedom, which we took upon ourselves to defend anywhere in the world, America found itself mired in the tropical hell of Vietnam--fighting a war with no strategy beyond slaughtering as many Viet Cong as possible, deploying awesomely lethal and destructive technology but without the will to wield it effectively. The war was run by "four star clowns fighting in a four star circus" as Colonel Kurz bitterly notes at the film's end.

Yet, all wars involve moral dilemmas; all wars evoke the basest evil in men; all wars drive men to the brink and force them to perpetrate horrors in the name of patriotism. All wars are hell. Vietnam was no different in this respect.

What makes Vietnam unique in the history of American military endeavors is the over-whelming lack of moral commitment the war entailed. The soldiers didn't want to fight there. Our soldiers harbored no personal resentment against "Charlie," a contrived enemy, but they were compelled to fight him by the faceless military command. Our leaders were split--some wanted to beat the Viet Cong lest Communism ravage Southeast Asia and subvert the American ideal of global democracy, while others condemned the war as a futile waste of lives, energy, and national resources. No national policy emerged: we neither fought the war to win not to get out quickly. Instead we let the war drain American lives and national spirit for 12 dreadful years.

The American people were divided on the war. Any democracy should respect, indeed welcome, a diversity of public opinion. But the tragedy of Vietnam was that while America vainly groped for a national consensus, while people invoked political ideals to justify the terrible violence, our soldiers ravaged a foreign land with the most gruesome display ever of the high technology of death. We almost destroyed an entire culture. Why? Does anyone really know?

Hundreds of thousands of Americans went halfway around the world to search and destroy rebels in the jungles in Indochina. These are the veterans whose existence so harshly intrudes on our vague historical reflections about Veterans Day. Their presence somehow goes against the grain of America's feelings about her other wars. Their reality explodes the myth we once held of Right vs. Wrong, Good vs. Bad, Us vs. Them. All peoples cherish this myth, the notion that in the scales of universal justice and morality their struggle, their existence, their purpose is justified and vindicated. All peoples need to have this feeling, otherwise the plodding course of daily life is petty and meaningless.

Vietnam did not destroy our national purpose. But it did severely undermine some of our most basic assumptions by demonstrating the pragmatic consequences of these beliefs. Vietnam has forced us to reconsider out values, to reexamine the role we wish to play in the world community, and to rethink the image we want to project to other people. This is not a matter of isolationsism vs. activism. but of coming to grips with the understanding that we cannot unilaterally impose our will throughout the world, that other cultures and nations deserve our respect, and that self-interest is not always best served through force and aggression. These strike me as the most important lessons to emerge from our tragic involvement in Vietnam.

Vietnam should not (and ultimately cannot) destroy the American spirit. It imposed an enormous strain on our way of life and at times, came close to toppling the whole system. But one of America's greatest virutes, inherent in her people and strengthened by her institutions, is adaptability, the ability to respond creatively and dynamically to a dangerous situation. Vietnam exerted extraordinary social pressures on our country, and the only reason it has so debilitated the national spirit is because we have not confronted the pressures openly enough. Whatever its artistic merits, perhaps Apocalypse Now's greatest achievement will be to force the stark reality of Vietnam into our minds and onto our lips, to demand that we react to the brutal horror it depicts.

We must react if we are to push the war and its aftermath off the mainstage of our national consciousness, not to be forgotten but to be surpassed. We must confront our Vietnam experience and all that it represents; we must respond to it; and then we must move on with a renewed sense of vitality and purpose.

This is why Veterans Day felt so uncomfortable this time around. We all realize how much its meaning has been undermined by our recent military experiences, and we don't know how to deal with the discrepancy. But deal with it we must, for a problem that is not confronted openly and candidly will slowly eat away at our country's moral fiber and national spirit. After you've thought about our earlier wars, in which we performed so well, think about Vietnam and the people who fought and suffered and died while the American public strained to find a moral instification for our involvement. Think about the shattered lives and senseless horror and hopeless agony that goes on to this very day. Don't feel too guilty--guilt will not change what happened, nor will it prevent such a nightmare from occurring again.

Instead think about the ideology that forced us into Vietnam, of the terrible problems that developed while we were there, and of the new attitudes we held once we got out. Think about how these attitudes can change our country for the better, and think of how you can act to help that change along. Most of all,talk about these ideas with your friends, relatives, loved ones, strangers. For a country's ability to change depends entirely on the fortitude and creativity of its people, and creativity cannot flourish in isolation.

Veterans Day will acquire more meaning for us if it does not merely celebrate battles of the past, but becomes a focal point for modifying the present to conform with our hopes for the future.