Foregotten in The USA

Sound familiar? It should. It's the everyday story of an everyday Vietnam Vet. Remember him? The recalcitrant American hero with a styrofoam cup in the one hand and a medal in the other. The unfortunate American warrior with nothing to show but a stump and a collection of food stamps. He, who's trust was simple, immaculate and heartbreaking. He, who went off to go kill the yellow man...

Apart from the stars and (spurious) stripes, there's a common thread among Vietnam vets, and it isn't necessarily the thousand yard stare.

Buried beneath the ashes of America's ever so wounded psyche, are its living Vietnam Vets... despised, denied, curiously forgotten. Sanctified upon the pedestal of America's ever so obsequious benediction, are its dead Vietnam Vets... revered, rewarded, posthumously decorated.  Never the twain shall meet (not in this life anyway), and this befits today’s US military just hoochie-coochie fine. Dandy even, not to mention hypocritical.

Because Vietnam was a hot war in the midst of a cold war, America’s military was led into many a throe of temptation; most notably, the delusion that it could whip communism. It didn’t. It inadvertently invested in a mighty, mighty, futuristic reason, for never again having to get involved in another war (unless absolute success was guaranteed aka Grenada). Therefore, not only does it today still have the grounds to holler at being the world’s sole remaining superpower (due more to its size and wealth as opposed to a Machiavellian fortitude), but it has the validity to no longer send US troops into a real war, such as Bosnia.

Yet, as today's U.S. military blows its vacuous trumpet, the spectre of Vietnam still looms. Whether it’s in the soup kitchens of downtown America, the recently downed pilot Scott O’Grady over Bosnia, or, more importantly, the painful truth as told by Vietnam vets themselves.

These are the sort of words that America has declined to acknowledge, ever since the last helicopter took off from the roof of the U.S. embassy on April 29th 1975. They’re just not spoken, and if they are, it’s behind closed doors - between a father and son, a husband and wife, or a couple of vets. The reason being, America doesn't want to hear it - because it is after all, a very violent society.

To infringe upon this silent dictum (aka the silent majority), is to appear weak. And weak, like the word gay, or socialist, or poor, isn't part of the American vocabulary. American society detests being weak (or gay or socialist or poor) - especially its men. This explains why the Austrian born Arnold Schwarzenegger is regarded as an all American hero.

Talking to England's NME’s Dele Fadele last December, realist rapper Ice Cube intoned: ‘’America is rooted in sex and violence, is founded on sex and violence; it’s embedded in our chromosomes. We wanna see what's the baddest. A wreck? Motherfuckers will stop church to look out and go view a wreck. Cop shows. All those Terminator movies - Arnold Schwarzenegger is a big star because America made him one.’’

America had no other choice but to make him one.

It’s failure in winning the Vietnam war was truly a profound blow. The nation's long, proud tradition of military victories, from the Revolutionary War through the century-long battles against the Indians to World Wars I and II, had finally come to an end. Politically, the defeat in Vietnam meant that the post-World War II era of overwhelming American political and military power in international affairs - the era that in 1945 Time magazine publisher Henry Luce had prophesied would be the ‘’American Century’’ - was doomed after a mere thirty years.

No longer could U.S. diplomacy wield the sword of military intervention.

Twenty years on from Vietnam, and a significant part of the American public are still reticent in military intervention abroad - and the rest of the world know this, including today's Serbia. This is why toward the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, America’s soul was crying out for a distraction, a tonic, a hero. This it found in the guise of a president: Ronald Reagan, and an actor: Arnold Schwarzenegger - along with Sylvestor Stallone, Chuck Norris and more recently, Jean-Claude Van Damme. The latter of whom are all vacuous, pumped-up muscle heads; all of whom appeal to a lot of American men.

So when Vietnam vets reveal a certain disdain regarding the vileness of war, they're scorned, shunted aside like cripples and ultimately, ignored. This is because a) men are fascinated with war, and b) the Vietnam vets lost one.

In his excellent book Warrior Dreams - Paramilitary Culture In Post-Vietnam America (Hill and Wang), James William Gibson talks about film director John Milius (1982's Conan the Barbarian and 1984's Red Dawn): ‘’He thought of war as a kind of peak experience in which men reach an ‘extremely vital state in order to kill each other.’ Even the most ordinary men, the ‘plodders,’ he observed, are ‘often forced to achieve great endeavours in times of war.’ War was men’s ‘greatest fantasy,’ and its appeal was that it served as an outlet for all sorts of frustrations. Indeed, Milius was a crack shot and a passionate fan of warrior culture, and an admirer of both the Japanese samurai tradition and the Western, and, like Nixon, fond of quoting lines from Patton. 'We are lucky war is the hell it is, lest we love it so,' was a particular favourite.’’

With Richard Nixon ‘’fondly’’ quoting such an odious line, is it any wonder that he - along with his Rasputin like figure Henry Kissinger - dropped more bombs on Vietnam than was dropped throughout the entire Second World War? And is it any wonder therefore, that a great number of Vietnam vets are still haunted to this very day?

So much for his much touted fable ‘’peace with honour.’’

What fuckin honour?

Where's the honour in denial?

2.6 million Americans served in Vietnam of whom 2 million returned. It’s taken 20 years and countless movies (Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket), books (Letters Home From Vietnam, Dispatches and Homecoming) and songs (Machine Gun, Shut Out The Light and Cherries), for them to be - finally - accepted with civility.

Furthermore, what was honourable in the death of five million Vietnamese, many of whom were civilians. What was honourable in the death of 56,000 Americans? What was honourable in the pathetic slaughter of 200 old men, women and children by William Calley's infamous Charlie Company? And what was honourable in spraying the Vietnamese countryside with so much Agent Orange and Napalm B - the stuff made from benzene, polystyrene and gasoline, which sticks to the body and is impossible to get off - that to this very day, it's still inflicting incalculable suffering?

More importantly, where's the honour in being ostracised by the United States government for simply following orders?

In his brutally honest yet never despairing fifth book In Pharaoh's Army - Memories of the Lost War (Knopf), former Vietnam vet Tobias Wolff writes:
         

Naturally, war and logic don't mix, but upon returning home from Vietnam, the only thing most vets wanted to do was continue from where they'd left off. But, economic conditions - among other things weren't particularly forthcoming. The rates of unemployment among all American workers in the years 1969, 1970 and 1971 were 3.5%, 4.9% and 5.9% respectively. As the withdrawal of American troops from South East Asia began and continued, unemployment rates among Vietnam Vets increased sharply and remained far ahead of the rates for non-veterans. The 1969 unemployment rate for veterans aged 20-29 was 4.5%; the rate rose to 6.9% in 1970 and 8.8% in 1971.

To a degree, so it has continued right up to the present day. Hence, the guy in Springsteen’s ‘Born In The USA,’ and the reasoning behind some of the styrofoam cup brigade.

Next time you stumble upon a Vietnam vet, whether he's in a wheelchair outside Macys, drinking heavily, or trying to find a name on the Wall in Washington DC, spare a thought (or a word) for the enforced method behind his madness. On the one hand, he's had to forsake his teenage years to go fight a disgusting war in a place he's never heard of; on the other, he's had to forsake the rest of his years for having done so.

And for what?