The Vietnam War has been much on my mind of late. Being of a certain age, it is a continuing subject of interest even if it seems tired and trite to those much younger. And now I find that I am not alone.
Recently, the Pentagon created a website to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the War. The service of Vietnam veterans was never properly acknowledged by an American public tired of war and the tissue of lies that sustained it, and there is no doubt that acknowledgment of its veterans is right and proper. Many gave their time, lives, limbs, and minds for the sake of that War. But whether the War itself should be celebrated remains a controversy. It has always interested me that many Americans (veterans and non-veterans alike) are wholly unable to separate the two subjects.
I am not a combat veteran of the War; nor have I ever served in our nation’s military. Instead, I found myself in a federal courtroom in Detroit in 1968 as one of 6 plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against the Selective Service System regarding our illegal induction orders. That our induction orders were illegal is a matter of public record – the judge so found and enjoined our draft boards from processing us.
Reaction to our lawsuit was immediate. Within a matter of months, my candidacy for a position in a Portland, Oregon law firm was stillborn when the interviewer, an older veteran of World War II, walked out of the interview room after I explained my draft situation, including the fact of the lawsuit and the judge’s verdict. I was dismissed approximately 10 minutes into the interview with the interviewer’s demand to know where the restroom facilities were and by his abrupt departure to find them. I accepted his actions and didn’t raise a ruckus in response. After all, I had known there would be consequences to my actions, and could hardly complain when they revealed themselves. So I merely gathered up the interviewer’s copy of my resume in his absence and left, leaving a note in its place wishing him a good day.
Forty years later, I found myself in Ann Arbor at my 40th law school reunion. The Vietnam War was a constant subject of discussion given our ages and the fact that the draft had decimated our ranks. At the initial Friday night cocktail party, a classmate asked me if I remembered the lawsuit “that our fellow classmates brought over the draft.” When I said yes and reminded him that I was the first named plaintiff courtesy of having had the last name beginning with the lowest letter of the alphabet, he thanked me for keeping him out of the Army. His statement was astonishing. I had never understood that anyone else had benefitted from the litigation; I had always believed that I was the sole beneficiary. My fellow litigants had joined the National Guard by the time the verdict was rendered; I had been too stubborn (and, perhaps, too stupid) to have done so. I had also forgotten that the litigation had been filed as a class action.
At the beginning of our formal dinner the next evening, I stood to make a few remarks when another speaker noted my presence and reminded the group about the litigation. The speaker’s intent was to recognize the central role the War had played in our lives. At the time I began law school in 1967, my mostly male classmates consisted of those who were veterans at the time our classes began, those who would be drafted during law school and who (a) would return to law school and graduate long after the rest of us, or (b) never return due to a lack of continuing interest or death, those the draft did not find before graduation, and me and my 5 fellow plaintiffs. When I rose to offer my astonishment that the litigation had benefitted someone other than me, the reactions proved intriguing. The room immediately split into two camps: those in sympathy with my actions, believing the War to have been a mistake and the draft an unholy imposition; and those who rose in defense of military service, believing it to have been of great benefit to them and our country.
In other words, the late Sixties awoke like Smaug in that banquet hall, and all of the old arguments came instantly alive. But we were too old and too tired to go at the discussion with any real animosity or intensity, even though our emotional camps were staked out before the main course was served. We soon went back to being classmates, and some of those for whom my remarks had caused a hostile reaction came by after desert – not to apologize, but to let bygones be bygones (which is how all of us of a certain age have kept the peace over the long years).
Younger people often find the subject of the Vietnam War tiresome. For them, it is yet another Sixties myth that ought to be debunked now that time has passed, passions have cooled, and priorities have altered. My oldest son once said to me that the Sixties couldn’t have been as dramatic and unusual as those of us who were then college age portray them. But the fact is that they were. It is my belief that the Sixties came as close to revolution as the Revolutionary War or the Civil War. In fact, a cultural revolution did take place, just not one achieved by force of arms. Reaction to the Vietnam War, the fires (nonviolent and violent alike) of the civil rights movement, and the invention of the birth control pill were its major drivers. The seeds of our present culture were planted then.
The Pentagon’s celebration of the Vietnam War’s 50th anniversary has once again brought to light the long smoldering disagreements which were never reconciled after the War’s end. Tom Hayden has been heard from again after a long silence, and the Pentagon has made its usual mistake of glossing over (a kinder phrase than ‘lying about’) the facts of the War. It refuses to speak of massacres in the context of My Lai, even though an honest inquiry into what happens when young men are given heavy weapons and sent to a foreign land to impose their will in the absence of clearly specified goals might yet save the country from further military misadventure. I have my own suspicions about why this is so, but will spare them for the sake of sticking to the point of this piece – which is that old arguments about the use of military force never die, even when viewed in the sanctity of the rear view mirror.
My musings about the Sixties pre-date the Pentagon’s latest attempt at whitewash. In the context of a novel I am writing, I have found a need to introduce the Vietnam War as a character. It is hard to bring such an undead thing to real honest-to-god life, to bring it back to a fictional Sixties’ dinner table as the unwelcome guest it then was in the homes of so many – an unwelcome guest that refused to leave even after the three smell-free days Benjamin Franklin allowed to visitors and fish; an unwelcome guest that seemed to have finally gone away at last sometime during the mid Seventies.
But now I find that it never left at all, despite appearances to the contrary. It remains lurking in the deep gloom at the end of a very long dinner table, waiting for me to pass the salt.
