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Jewish World Review August 4, 2000/ 3 Menachem-Av, 5760

Kathleen Parker

Kathleen Parker
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Consumer Reports


A sharp look back at
the Vietnam War

http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
Ah, the patriotism that ignoreth all recollection.

To follow newspapers, talking heads and chat rooms, you'd think America's streets in the 1960s and 1970s were teeming with renegade Mel Gibsons edging to be on the front lines, instead of rioters poking flowers in helmeted cops' guns and dweeby peaceniks clamoring for grad school admissions and draft deferments.

Dick Cheney went to law school so he's a coward, they say. George W. Bush did rich-kid's guard duty so he's not worthy, they say. "No veteran worth his salt would vote the Bush-Cheney ticket," someone wrote me.

Oh ye of little memory, let's get something straight: Everybody was trying to avoid the draft in those days. We of a certain age remember gathering around television sets with stoned boys waiting for their lottery numbers to scroll up the screen.

That's how it happened. You watched the tube -- Big Brother's Magic 8-ball -- and prayed your number didn't bubble to the top. Most of those who ended up dodging random bullets hip-deep in rice paddies were either too young, ignorant, idealistic, jail-bound or aimless to do otherwise.

But don't take my word for it. Meet a Marine Corps Vietnam vet who is both worth his salt and unoffended by those who escaped the nightmare. Meet my brother, Jack, whose gentle dialogue is to diplomacy approximately what Pol Pot was to democracy. You've been warned.

"Most of the guys in Vietnam were the poor bastards who were either going to prison -- the judges gave them a choice: go to jail or enlist in the military -- or people who had no other place to go."

I reminded Jack that he dropped out of high school to enlist. Why?

"All of us wanted to be John Wayne. Vietnam was all over the news. Seeing tanks, planes, bombs, guns. We were little boys. It looked like fun. Not until we got over there did we realize we could get killed by this [expletive]. Any veteran who reads his letters home realizes what a little boy he was. I never heard a guy get hit who didn't yell, `Mama!'

"When I stepped off a C-141 in Da Nang, I took a look around and said to myself, `John Wayne is nowhere to be found.' It was nasty, ugly, dirty."

What about Bush and Cheney and the others who "avoided the draft?" Do you resent them?

"If you cut out all the draft dodgers from the upper echelon of government, we wouldn't have anybody to vote for. In some way, I think the guys who had enough sense to know how bad it was were smarter than the rest of us. I kind of feel foolish. I didn't know any better.

"Hell, all of us in Vietnam wanted out too, but we couldn't get back." He laughed. "Even there we did our best to avoid military service. Half of Vietnam was stoned, and the rest would have been but they were on guard duty."

What about Gore? He went to 'Nam. "He went as a journalist" he said without a hint of irony. "He was sitting in a Quonset hut with his buddies while the rest of us were dodging bullets. He's still doing that. The last time he took a stand was to pull up his shorts."

So, you don't hold it against Cheney or Bush that they didn't serve active duty?

"If the decisions we make when we're in our late teens and early 20s were the foundation for the balance of our lives, we'd all be hiding in the backwoods of North Carolina by the time we were 30.

"The ironic part is anybody [like Cheney] who can survive three heart attacks and still wants to be in public service is no coward."

Like I said, direct.


JWR contributor Kathleen Parker can be reached by clicking here.

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