"Thank you for your service" - 3rd installment

A gloomy, cold, rainy dawn on Veteran's Day in Jokelahoma. I've already written two blogs on "thank you for your service" and have no wish to post another. I think about my service often, and on this day, which began as a reminder of the date of the cessation of hostilities at the 11th hour of the 11th day of November in 1918 (WW1), I'm especially inclined to look retrospectively on that service. Meanwhile, a day of remembrance of the slaughter during WW1 has evolved into something else.

As noted in my blogs, I have very mixed feelings about my personal service. No gratitude for my Vietnam service was offered to me when I arrived back in the USA in late December of 1970. No one greeted me upon my arrival, but no one hassled me even though I was traveling in my class A dress green uniform. Since then, there has been growing recognition that we can hate the war but that doesn't mean we have to hate the warriors. What I consider to be the elephant in the room is our national neglect of our veterans, especially those who served and suffered from being in combat. Our PotUS clearly doesn't give a damn about the problems of military service veterans.

I can forgo your thanks for my personal service without rancor. Those wishing to thank me for my service should be opposed to unjustified, unnecessary invasions in foreign nations by our military, and be generous contributors to organizations providing support to our veterans. Let us work together to help those veterans in desperate need of our support. To have a national celebration of Veteran's day while many veterans suffer is disgraceful, in my eyes.

I saw something on TV last night ... some sidebar offered this sentiment: "Have a happy Veteran's Day". I consider that to be an obscene lack of respect for veterans and their sacrifices. For many of them, Veteran's Day is not some happy occasion, but rather is a painful reminder of how those who have never served (right now only 1% of Americans have military service) simply can't muster much empathy for people living in cardboard boxes, haunted by PTSD, with broken homes, drug and alcohol addiction, and struggles to overcome what combat has done to them.

 

 Damn! This turned into a "blog" anyway. Sorry, but these are my thoughts on this day. The photo was shot in Dec 1970 outside my home after I arrived back from Vietnam.

"Thank you for your service" - revisited

After some discussions with two of my close friends, I feel the need to expound a bit more on the touchy topic of people thanking me for my service.  As I have said elsewhere, I have very mixed feelings about my service.  I wasn't ever involved in combat in Vietnam, but my service was in a logistical supply unit that kept our troops supplied in I Corps (the northernmost region of South Vietnam).  We didn't shoot people - we provided the means by which combat troops could shoot people.  Our "service" was a critical component of sustaining that war.

As most Vietnam veterans know, we were victorious in most of the battles in that war, including the Tet Offensive in 1968.  That victory, in particular, was the root cause of my tour in Vietnam being so free of combat.  The Viet Cong were crushed in that offensive and the NVA was seriously set back.  The combat troops who fought in that battle made my "easy" tour possible.

Some veterans feel that if you didn't serve in combat, you weren't really in the war.  And there are those who say if you weren't actually on the ground in Vietnam, you shouldn't be allowed to call yourself a "Vietnam Era Veteran".  I call bullshit on both these notions. 

Our combat troops served our nation's military objectives - in a war we should never have begun and had no clear path to some sort of conclusion.  That war ended, not with a massive strategic victory comparable to Dien Bien Phu, but with us essentially abandoning South Vietnam to its fate.  The ability of our troops to fight those battles required massive logistical support and my outfit was neck deep in that support.

The web of support for those combat troops spread much wider than the nation of South Vietnam.  Those who served during that time, but who never made it to South Vietnam, were embedded in a complex system that indirectly enabled that war to go on.  The USA has a military presence in many places around the world.  We can argue about the need for all those expensive installations, but by serving in the military without ever setting foot in Vietnam, our military had to draw from existing units, including the National Guard and the Reserves.  The draft was the only way the military could have enough warm bodies to support our Vietnam campaign.  I was swept up by the draft, of course.  In today's world, it is political suicide to even think about re-instituting a draft, and so our military has been stretched thin, and multiple deployments by infantry divisions are the rule, not an exception.

TV documentaries often refer to the comradeship within military units being the primary motivating factor for troops fighting in actual battles.  I can say nothing about that since I wasn't ever in combat, but what I can say is this:  for us REMFs in Vietnam, we lived in a world many of us deemed to be infected with a form of insanity.  Even non-combat troops clung to each other for support, for fear of becoming as insane as Vietnam seemed to us.  The movie "Apocalypse Now" is not a very realistic depiction of the Vietnam war, but it does capture a semblance of the feeling that I had landed in a place where many people were simply crazy.**

What this all means (to me) is that my service made possible some awful things in a war that I didn't believe was one in which we as a nation should have been involved.  After we bailed out, Vietnam fell to Communism, but it didn't become the start of a massive shift to communism around the world, as the "Domino Theory" held.  What it left our nation with was a smoldering cultural division that has lingered to this very day, long after the end of the Vietnam War.  Hence, I'm not very proud of having made my contributions in support of that war.

Nevertheless, with the passage of time since I was in the military, I'm increasingly proud of having answered my country's call.  Now, when people thank me for my service, I've been holding back my negative reactions for the simple reason that such wishes are made with the best of intentions:  to honor soldiers who were not honored after their return in any way, myself included.  What I really want to say is: "I appreciate the spirit of your gratitude for my service, but that was an evil war that left many veterans of that war with lasting pain and even death.  In addition to thanking me - a person who escaped the worst that Vietnam War offered - the best way to honor my service is to support in a concrete way those veterans who suffer from PTSD, cancer likely induced by Agent Orange, and homelessness.  Thousands of our veterans were killed in Vietnam, but have died here in the USA from disease, drug addiction, alcoholism, and suicide.  Help them in some material way - skip the "thoughts and prayers" garbage - that helps precisely no one.  Do that and your thanks will be truly honoring my service."

And we as a nation should not send our youth to foreign lands to fight in seemingly endless wars that, like Vietnam, offer no plausible end game, short of killing everyone who serves to oppose our incursions.  We do ourselves a great disservice by such wars, consuming our resources with no meaningful return on such investments for anyone other than the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower warned about.  I especially despise "chicken hawk" politicians who lead us into war with no intention of serving in combat - either for them or anyone they choose to shelter from the obligation to fight in our nation's wars.
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[** Footnote - no movie can ever depict any war with absolute accuracy, but some get it more right than others.  I favor "Full Metal Jacket" and "Platoon", to name a couple that include some realism in depicting situations that I witnessed or knew about during in my service.]

A tribute to Fred Goodwin, Jr.

Yesterday morning (14 Aug 2019), I lost another friend:  Fred Goodwin, Jr.  My sincere condolences to his family and his friends (of which there are many, for good reasons).  What I'm saying here isn't a summary of Fred's life, but is an account of how and why Fred and I became friends.

This is one of my favorite photos of Fred, giving a summary of my son Chad's accomplishments on the way to Eagle Scout, at the Ketner farm (see below), during his Eagle Scout Court of Honor.

Thanks to the enthusiasm of my son Chad, he joined a Boy Scout troop (Troop 777, now dissolved) and though I didn't know it nor did I even suspect it, I was about to embark on a great adventure with my whole family - Scouting!  My knowledge of scouting was minimal, since I had quit Scouts as a boy before I even earned my Tenderfoot status - the leadership of that troop was more like a collection of Army drill sergeants and that was not appealing to me.  What I wanted was hiking and camping!  Little did I know that my wish would be granted decades later!

In the process, I was "drafted" as an Assistant Scoutmaster to be a "patrol dad" in the new Eagle patrol that included Chad.  It was via this process that I met my fellow patrol dad, Fred Goodwin, Jr.  I knew nothing about Scouting and Fred was physically challenged as a result of Cerebral Palsy.  He needed some support to stand and was eventually confined to a wheel chair.  But Fred was an Eagle Scout, as was his father, so he used his knowledge and experience to help me learn what I needed to learn.  Together, our combined abilities were one complete patrol dad.  And I found an amazing new friend.  Plus I got to know his boys, John and Fred III, and truly enjoyed the fun experiences we had on hiking and camping trails where my partner couldn't go.  At the end of the trail, Fred would be there with questions about how it went and what experiences we had shared.  He was justifiably proud of his sons, who both eventually became Eagle Scouts - Freddie at the same time as my son.  They were the second and third boys to make Eagle in our Troop.  And the first 777 Eagle scout was in our patrol!

Our patrol had some boys who were challenged by their home situations.  That was common in Troop 777.  Fred told me that for some boys, the experiences they had as a result of scouting could be the only positive experiences they were going to have in a given week.  Moreover, Fred informed me that if Chad needed any correction to his words and/or actions during a scouting event, the other adults in the troop would take care of it.  In other words, I was to back off and shut up!  I learned the wisdom of that and found I have large reserves of patience for teenage young men other than Chad.  I tried to put my ego aside, and to apply that lesson of patience with my own son!  We're in Scouting to help boys mature into good men, to push that process forward however we could.  The troop was zeroed in on the boys, not us!!  It became evident that our leadership included some pretty wise people, including Fred.

Fred and I made extensive use of land owned by the Ketner family in East Norman, who had generously donated use of that land for weekend campouts.  Fred let me know that our job was to help the boys learn how to run the patrol on their own, so we gradually increased the scope of their responsibilities and after a few years, Fred and I could relax and let the boys run things.  They readily accepted their responsibilities and I learned that we had to allow our Scouts to fail as they tried new things.  Failure can be an excellent teacher. 

There are far too many stories of how Fred helped me in Scouting to tell here.  The Ketner farm was where Freddie and Chad wanted their Eagle Scout Court of Honor.  That ceremony became quite a memorable experience, thanks to hordes of evil chiggers!

It became clear that I wanted to be part of the process that Fred and other adults in the troop were carrying out.  There was a perfect balance between fun and doing what was necessary to achieve rank advancement in Scouting.  We were not a Scouting "eagle factory"- but we did produce our fair share.

Fred accepted many more roles in the troop than "just" a patrol dad.  He was always willing to help if need be, and he helped many more Scouts than the members of our Eagle Patrol.  He trusted me with both his boys during their journey in Scouting as Scouts.  His boys have both become fine young men, with families of their own, and I'm proud of what they've achieved so far.  We loved Fred's parents a lot, and still miss them.  I know Fred was proud of his family, naturally.

Fred's grown-up boys John (left) and Fred III ("Freddie"- right) as we were working on a project at Fred's home.

Fred was "handicapped" with his CP, but in my humble opinion, he did more with his capabilities than most others without such handicaps ever manage to achieve.  He worked for the OU Physical Plant and clearly was an important cog in that machine.  That Fred will be missed is pretty much assured and his deeds achieved good ends that will live on, many of which I probably am unaware.

A tribute to a very special friend - Joel Price

Anyone observant of my posts on Facebook will recognize the name of someone whose shared thoughts here were so very much in sync with my own: Joel Price. I "met" Joel Price, thanks to my friend RJ Evans. RJ invited Joel to participate on his internet radio show, Shocknet Radio's "American Heathen," and later invited my participation. Joel's persona on the show was as "Yahweh" and he dispensed considerable wisdom and insight in his show segments. And the theme song for his show segment was Chris Rae's "The Road to Hell" - a favorite tune for me.  The lyrics to Part I: 

Stood still on a highway
I saw a woman
By the side of the road
With a face that I knew like my own
Reflected in my window
Well she walked up to my quarterlight
And she bent down real slow
A fearful pressure paralysed me in my shadow
She said 'Son, what are you doing here?
My fear for you has turned me in my grave.'
I said 'Mama, I come to the valley of the rich, 
myself to sell.'
She said 'Son, this is the road to hell!'

I think most all the listeners looked forward to Joel's part in the show.  His radio voice was dignified and powerful, making his words seem all the wiser. After RJ shut down Shocknet Radio, I stayed in contact with Joel and always found his FB posts to be of the same caliber as his radio show segments. I've reposted many of his contributions.  He was a relentless fan of the Constitution and our nation, with its mandated separation of church and government.  And, of course, he was an atheist.  There are, no doubt, more accomplishments and wisdom he dispensed about which I know nothing.

Joel was a practicing attorney in Fort Smith, AR, and I can imagine he was a successful lawyer. His arguments certainly reflected his commitment to truth and justice.  His tag line for his American Heathen show segments was:

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
 
- a quote from Thomas Jefferson.  Recently, he informed selected friends with whom he was in touch in June that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer that had metastasized to his lungs.  This morning (30 July 2019) I got word that Joel has died.  Cancer can be really cruel. For someone I never met face-to-face, I find myself seriously grieving over the loss of my friend. His insights and his profoundly rational views (especially concerning religion) will be missed by many, and I will miss him terribly. My condolences to his family and his close friends.

Thoughts on American Patriotism

A friend and colleague has challenged me to write up something about patriotism.  My usual starting point for this sort of musing is the definition of the key word - patriotism - "Patriotism or national pride is the feeling of love, devotion and sense of attachment to a homeland and alliance with other citizens who share the same sentiment."  I make no claims to deep or exceptional insight.  These are just my thoughts at the moment.

Let there be no doubt or confusion - I love my native land.  It's a nation with much natural beauty, dramatic weather, large amounts of natural resources, and (perhaps most important) a set of principles that are inspirational and form the basis for the Constitution.  This lays down the rules for a government that's intended to reward individual initiative so that, by hard work and creative insight, anyone can achieve their dreams here.  Pecuniary rewards and a successful career are not guaranteed to anyone.  Equal opportunity for all, but the outcomes of any efforts are not determined in advance.

The principles of equal treatment under the law, and freedom from discrimination on the basis of race, religion, and gender have not consistently been followed by our elected officials, right from the very beginning, including those considered to be founders of our nation.  That even the founders have not lived up to the noble words in our national documents (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) says that we as a nation still suffer from injustice and discrimination that are direct violations of those principles.  We have a long history of genocidal tactics against the indigenous people who, after all, were the very first Americans.  We have created "legal" exemptions from some of the laws that forbid unequal treatment of minorities and the world observes our hypocrisy as we fail to live up to our noble principles, despite the claims of "American Exceptionalism" by some Americans.

When the USA was founded, it was recognized that the founders were conducting an experiment, in which the Constitution lays out government procedures among the three branches of government envisioned by the founders and promises the existence of many important freedoms.  It is often referred to as "a grand experiment" which no major nation before us had ever tried.  Freedom and equality are important first principles.  I have long been pleased, and a bit proud, to have been born within this experiment and its continuance is important to me.  

The fact that we're not perfect at following the very concepts we claim to hold dear means that any objective review of our behavior must include a recognition that our national, state, and local governments have failed to observe the rules as documented in the Constitution.  We need to "own" our misdeeds as a nation and seek to learn from our mistakes and seek to prevent further violations of our national principles.  I subscribe totally to the notion that while I love my native land, I often disagree (sometimes  strongly) with the behavior of our government.  Even Abraham Lincoln used the excuse of the Civil War to suspend use of the writ of Habeas Corpus - a writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court, especially to secure the person's release unless lawful grounds are shown for their detention.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt sanctioned the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.

As we saw in the Nixon era, our government can run off the rails for Constitutional democracy into corruption and evil.  Many in our nation are actually opposed to freedom and liberty for all Americans - they are bigots who consider those who are different from them to be somehow unworthy of the support offered by our governments.  Such attitudes often come wrapped in the Bible and the flag, where the adherents to injustice see themselves as patriots as they seek to abrogate the very principles that have made our nation so successful,

While I was in graduate school, I was drafted to serve in the Army.  I had already been reading of the history of Vietnam and I learned they had a long history of stubborn resistance to those who would occupy their lands.  Evidently, the government of America during the Presidencies of JFK, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon felt we could just brush aside any interference from the Communists leading the revolt against the puppet government of South Vietnam.  Apparently, our government felt they could succeed where previous invaders of Vietnam (including the French) failed.  I had a dilemma:  I was being ordered to become part of a war effort that I opposed.  My choices were: 

1. refuse being drafted and go to jail,
2. escape to Canada, or
3. accept the order and go serve. 

As I saw it at the time,  the first two options would mean I would probably never have the career I desperately wanted.  I had to go serve, on that basis, and that's what I did.  I continue to have mixed feelings about my service - during my 11 months in Phu Bai, South Vietnam I never was in any combat, so my good assignment left me free of nightmares, PTSD, and all the ravages of being in combat.  However little I contributed to the war effort, I never made a public stand against the war.  I just wanted to survive it and get back to the USA in one piece.  I'm not necessary proud of my service, but when my nation called, I went and served despite my misgivings and doubts.

The Vietnam war became an albatross around Nixon's neck and was an issue that led to deep divisions in American society.  Nixon was forced to bring the war to an end and perhaps he was the only person who actually believed we left Vietnam in an "honorable" fashion.  The fact is, our asses were kicked by a third-rate power that had the advantage of seeking to remove unwanted invaders and was willing to take many casualties for so long as it took to get the USA to turn tail.  We "won" most of the battles, but we lost the war.

A favorite saying among the conservatives (the so-called "silent majority") who at the time supported the war was "America - love it or leave it."  Well, my view is that that saying is bullshit!  If I disagree with something the government has done, I'm supposed to pack up and leave my native land so that all the rednecks who supported the war wouldn't be challenged to examine the behavior of their government?  No way, dude!  There's no point to all the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution if someone who disapproves of some government behavior isn't afforded those rights.  If we lived in a perfect world, perhaps there would be no disagreements and no clash of principles.  But that's not our world and it's not the way my nation operates.

I've come to the conclusion that public protests (like that of Colin Kaepernick) are the most important element of our national freedoms.  Great love for the nation is exhibited by those who want to work within the system of laws to try to turn something wrong into a positive.  We can't learn from our mistakes if (a) we believe our government never makes mistakes, and/or (b) we ignore or even cover up those mistakes.  A patriot doesn't see America as perfect but works to overcome our errors and misjudgments via the rules and norms of our democracy, and may advocate changing rules and norms to prevent injustice and discrimination.

Right now, we're experiencing a critical juncture of our national history.  Trump and his GOP enablers are seemingly working toward the abolition of the Constitution and the creation of an authoritarian dictatorship.  They're providing encouragement to bigots in our nation, committing a crime against humanity against the migrants seeking asylum and a new opportunity for their families.  My government is being transformed from a Constitutional democracy into a cruel dictatorship.  How can I support the Trump regime?  As I see it, I would rather die than live under a Trumpian version of totalitarianism.  Despite my deep and abiding love for my nation, if its government is recast in the image of Trump and his enablers, I will exhibit my patriotism by being an advocate for the cessation of the Trumpian dictatorship!