‘Would You Rather Fight Them Here Or In Pasadena?’”
From: Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam
, by Christian G. Appy, U. Of North Carolina Press, 1984
The justification of the war that new soldiers found most persuasive was a version of the domino theory that emphasized the threat to the United States if communism triumphed in Vietnam.
The focus was not so much on the potential threat to other nations.
Instead, the soldiers were most drawn to interpretations that stressed the necessity of the war to prevent a direct attack on American security.
Moskos found these common responses: “The only way we’ll keep them out of the States is to kill them here,” “Let’s get it over now, before they’re too strong to stop,” “They have to be stopped somewhere,” and “Better to zap this country than let them do the same to us.”
John Sack quotes this statement as typical: “The communists win in Vietnam it’ll just be Laos, Thailand, the Philippines, and then we’ll have to fight in California.”
In 1968, Michael Herr found such views most pervasive among the top brass, who were fond of asking skeptical journalists questions like, “Would you rather fight them here or in Pasadena?”
(“Maybe we could beat them in Pasadena, I’d think, but I wouldn’t say it,” Herr writes.)
Many “lifers” - career officers and NCOs -- did their best to indoctrinate their troops with this either/or proposition; either you fought in Vietnam or the entire U.S. population would be attacked.
Soldiers were to believe that even though they were on the other side of the planet, they were truly fighting for the folks back home.
Frank Mathews had his first experience of killing in 1966. After looking at the Viet Cong corpse, he vomited and remained sick and depressed for several days.
An “old salt” sergeant tried to lift his spirits with these words: “Just figure it this way -- that [man you killed] could have been the one that was in the States screwing your mama, or your wife, or your girlfriend, and that’s the reason you killed him.”
This psychosexual version of domino theory “made a lot of sense” to the young soldier.
He was a gung-ho combat volunteer and remained so through the remainder of his tour. While his motivation centered on avenging the deaths of buddies who had died -- a desire to pay back the enemy -- whenever he looked for a larger rationale for the war, he always returned to the sergeant’s promise that the war was protecting American women.
To The Very Nature Of American Intervention In Vietnam”
“Given The Policy Of Fighting A Counterrevolutionary War On Behalf Of A Client State Incapable Of Winning Widespread Support Among Its People, American Atrocities Were Inevitable”
From: Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam, by Christian G. Appy, U. Of North Carolina Press, 1984
One might argue, as I have, that atrocity was intrinsic to the very nature of American intervention in Vietnam; that given the policy of fighting a counterrevolutionary war on behalf of a client state incapable of winning widespread support among its people, American atrocities were inevitable.
In truth, American soldiers were not responsible for the war. Most were not even old enough to vote. (The voting age was not lowered from twenty-one to eighteen until.
1971.)
Harper's own views about the war, as he readily conceded, were confused. In the same breath he could denounce limitations on American bombing and the initial U. S. intervention in Vietnam.
That is not necessarily a contradictory position. In effect he said, we should have won the war or stayed out.
A simple enough argument to state, but one that evades the questions of whether the war could have been won or whether it was worth winning (that is, a just cause) and the further question of why it would be right to continue trying to win a war in which the original intervention was wrong or misguided.
When those questions are broached, Harper's conflicted feelings and those of many veterans are drawn to the surface.
A 1979 Harris survey found that a vast majority of veterans (89 percent) agreed with the statement, “The trouble in Vietnam was that our troops were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would not let them win.”
Yet a clear majority of veterans (59 percent) also agreed with a completely contrary viewpoint: “The trouble in Vietnam was that our troops were asked to fight in a war we could never win.”
The general public shared this contradictory view (73 and 65 percent agreeing with each statement, respectively).
Of course, both formulations have a common appeal: they put the onus of responsibility for the war and its outcome on American leaders, not on ordinary soldiers and civilians.
They also pose the same attractive alternatives suggested by Harper: win or stay out.
As for the moral legitimacy of the war, Steve Harper struggled to defend U.S. intervention. The United States, he said, was helping the people of Vietnam, people who “wanted us there” and who “wanted their freedom.”
Hard as he tried to sustain that view, however, his memories of the war kept contradicting it.
He could not forget how the Vietnamese almost always seemed to be helping the Viet Cong (“they take all the Americans have to offer and give us nothin' and give the VC all they have”).
Nor did he try to disguise his disdain for the Vietnamese military and government, which he saw as riddled with corruption and unable and unwilling to fight successfully against the Viet Cong (“they'd turn and run, from their officers on down”).
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Exposure to a severely traumatic event can cause nightmares, flashbacks and difficulty sleeping. For most people, these post-traumatic symptoms disappear over time. For others, the symptoms become chronic and lead to PTSD.
GUEST(S):
Thomas Uhde, M.D., Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Penn State College of Medicine's Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and a specialist in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Philip Bressler, Ph.D., psychologist with the James E. Van Zandt VA Medical Center in Altoona. He leads the Center's PTSD support groups.
Listen to the show - MP3
LINKS:
National Institute of Mental Health
Dept. of Veterans Affairs Altoona - James E. Van Zandt VA Medical Center
That's how Brad Hamlett,guest columnist and serving in Iraq, titled his editorial in The State out of Columbia SC.
He starts it out with this:
"The partisans can only imagine how we soldiers must feel over here because few have ever been to any combat zone.
Those who have served, especially in our failed foreign policy conflicts, will understand where Brad is coming from, if you visit and read his whole editorial.
A political line they love to use to quash opponents’ views always says something about “slapping the troops in the face.”
It's nice to know that those who Serve haven't changed, even in our present day Professional Military, from our day's, I guess we were Unprofessional, illegal conflict.
For the record, we soldiers don’t care. Let me clarify: Frankly, my dear, we don’t give a damn.
And you know what, he's right. Except, as now, back in the 70's many went from apathedic about the politics of to activism to change our failed policies. It's happening again, and like everything else about this present day debacle, Vietnam on Speed, it's happening faster. The understanding of what went wrong, right from the beginning!
Take a trip over and read what Brad has to say.
And for those going to see the opening of "Sicko" tonight you might want to catch this short interview with Michael over at Rolling Stone:
Exclusive: Michael Moore Talks Sicko With Rolling Stone
Documentary filmmaker Moore stopped in at the Rolling Stone office this afternoon to grab lunch and talk health care — and then he chatted with Deputy Managing Editor Eric Bates about how the U.S. health-care system fares compared to the rest of the world, and which nation’s impressive health care even covers spa treatments.
Read Peter Travers’ Sicko review.
Iraq Vet Seeks Out the War's Hidden Wounded
by Joseph Shapiro
All Things Considered, June 27, 2007 · Many troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq will struggle with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Some will drink too much and use drugs. They'll lose jobs. They'll drive away friends, family, spouses and children. Most of them won't ask for help.
Mike Colson is a mental health counselor for the Department of Veteran's Affairs in Washington state. He believes that with the right medications and counseling, these veterans can learn to live and function while dealing with the mental health problems common to war. His job is to get traumatized veterans into care before it's too late. He jokingly refers to himself as the "dog catcher for trauma."
Listen To Report
War Experiences Come Home
One day, a Navy psychiatrist noticed Colson's "thousand-mile stare" — the distracted and distant gaze that marks those dealing with PTSD.
Stigma Can Cost Lives
He says that in the military, "Readjustment issues, and concerns, and PTSD and that horrible word, you know, mental illness, that's something you never tell anyone and that stigma can cost people their lives."
Vet Trauma.org
National Center for PTSD
Ask your Senator to Cosponsor the Cluster
Munitions Civilian Protection Act of 2007 (Landmines)
Urge your Senator to Cosponsor the Cluster Munitions Civilian
Protection Act of 2007
Like landmines, cluster munitions are weapons that keep on killing.
While the U.S. has not used antipersonnel landmines since 1991, it has
used cluster munitions (sometimes referred to as cluster bombs) in
recent conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Former Yugoslavia, with
often disastrous consequences for civilian populations. A cluster
munition consists of a canister designed to open in mid-air and disperse
smaller submunitions, often referred to as bomblets or grenades. While
they are designed to explode on impact, many of the submunitions
initially fail to detonate, leaving behind large numbers of hazardous
explosive "duds" that are akin to landmines. These "duds" injure and
kill civilians and contaminate the land long after conflicts end. For
example, the cluster bombs the U.S. dropped 40 years ago in Cambodia,
Laos, and Vietnam are still killing people today. These bomblets are
found while farmers sow their fields, when they fall from tree canopies,
or when they are disturbed by children walking along paths. In some
cases the bomblets, which often resemble toys, pose an even greater
danger than left-behind landmines.
The Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act of 2007 (S. 594), recently
introduced by Senators Dianne Feinstein (CA) and Patrick Leahy (VT),
would ban the use of cluster bombs in or near civilian areas and
prohibit the use, sale, and transfer of almost the entire existing U.S.
arsenal of cluster bombs. A prolific exporter of cluster munitions,
having sold them to at least 27 countries, and a frequent user, it is
time for the U.S. to ensure that cluster munitions neither harm
civilians indiscriminately during hostilities, nor continue to threaten
civilians long after conflict subsides.
Contact your Senator now, and urge them to cosponsor the Cluster
Munitions Civilian Protection Act of 2007.
Take Action Now
* View the Action Alert and email your Senators
* If you would rather make a phone call, you can call your
Senators at the Capitol switchboard at 202 / 224-3121. If you don't know
who your senators are, you can find out with your zip code here
Learn More About Cluster Munitions
The U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines recently expanded its mission to
include advocacy toward a prohibition on the use, production, and
transfer of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. The
Campaign's website has been updated accordingly. On the site you can
find information on:
* Cluster Munitions and the issues they pose
* U.S. policy on cluster munitions
* COMING SOON: Solutions, Timeline of Use
FOIA Electronic Reading Room
The CIA has established this site to provide the public with an overview of access to CIA information, including electronic access to previously released documents. Because of CIA's need to comply with the national security laws of the United States, some documents or parts of documents cannot be released to the public. In particular, the CIA, like other U.S. intelligence agencies, has the responsibility to protect intelligence sources and methods from disclosure. However, a substantial amount of CIA information has been and/or can be released following review. See "Your Rights" for further details on the various methods of obtaining this information.
Veterans as refuse
Why do they make up a quarter of the nation's homeless?
There are more homeless veterans in the United States than active-duty troops deployed in Iraq, including those deployed as part of the "surge."
"We are a nation that will keep its commitments to those who have risked their lives for our freedom," President Bush said last Veterans Day. He urged veterans to wear their medals that day, and Americans to walk up to them "and shake a hand and give a hug, and give a word of thanks." Would they do that with a homeless veteran? Would he?
Perhaps the exact route from service and possible combat abroad to streets, parks and bus stations back home is intractable. How the Army turns individuals into soldiers, what happens to soldiers in combat, and what the Army does to soldiers once they're discharged, isn't intractable at all. It reads like a blueprint for social dislocation.
To prepare soldiers for combat, the Army demolishes the individual and reconstructs him as a killing machine. It makes no secret about the method or the goal. That's what basic training is about. In combat zones, soldiers adapt to sets of rules that have a coherence all their own but no application in the civilian world. What soldiers experience in combat is a life-changing experience severe enough that a third of soldiers returning from combat will develop mental-health issues such as post traumatic stress disorder, suicidal tendencies, and/or an inability to cope with the "normal" life they once knew, including family, friends, spouses. After so many years' experience with war zones and veterans (25 million as of 2006), you'd expect the Army to have developed the means and will to deal with its returning soldiers.
It hasn't. The Washington Post in February revealed how conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for soldiers being treated for wounds sustained in Iraq and Afghanistan sometimes have more in common with ramshackle facilities in third world countries than with what soldiers should expect from the nation's most important military hospital. Yet the physical and bureaucratic shoddiness exposed in February pales in comparison with the poor to nonexistent mental health care soldiers can expect, especially after they leave the service.
Once discharged, a soldier might as well not exist for the Army. No follow-up calls, no attempt to gauge what services or support the soldier might need. (The Army is only now focusing on those evaluations for soldiers returning from combat, but only while they're still in the service.) Despite spending $2.8 billion on mental health, the Department of Veterans Affairs has no consistent, scientifically based evaluation for post-traumatic stress disorder and, therefore, no consistent way of giving veterans the care they need. The VA has a backlog of 400,000 claims of all kinds and a proclivity for losing records. Thousands of claims that are processed are denied because of Byzantine requirements. For example, to qualify for PTSD compensation, a former soldier must have not only witnessed a traumatic event such as the death of a comrade or a roadside explosion, but must prove it, too.
It's not necessarily a positive experience when services are approved. The Army's licensed psychologists' ranks have dropped by a fifth in the last few years from the strain. Those who remain sometimes use therapies better suited for alcoholics or marital trouble than PTSD. The availability of counseling is a haphazard affair. And at least two Pentagon reports have called for an overhaul of the military's mental-health system. Homeless advocates are bracing themselves for a coming wave of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who no longer feel they belong and aren't finding the help to mend their way back.
The numbers, the lost lives and broken promises to veterans ought to be a national shame for a country so gushy with "Support Our Troops" rhetoric toward men and women who supposedly "live in honor among us, or sleep in valor beneath this sacred ground," as President Bush described them in a speech from Arlington National Cemetery last Veterans Day. That so many veterans end up in more proximity to gutters than honors shows to what extent the rhetoric is less than what it seems with its $2 yellow-ribbon stickers on the back of cars and a veterans' mental care system stuck in the middle of the last century.
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If they were sent to fight, they are too few. If they were sent to die, they are too many!
Is 'Funding' Really For Troops?
What Happened To Funding and Oversite For Military/Veteran Care In Previous Congresses?
