Veterans Day 2010.

A movement is apparently under way to finally welcome Vietnam Veterans home.  When we came back - back then - it was different.  Our welcome home from combat was often publicly insulting, sometimes obscene, and then there were devastating private moments alone again with our families that were worse to us than the war itself had been. I spent more than 400 days over there, I was insulted and attacked  every time I came back home from those tours, and 85% of us who served in combat there eventually wound up divorced.  Whatever that means.

I suppose I should be glad to be finally welcomed home, but I feel that there is still something missing.  Let me see if I can explain.

President Johnson told the world a lie about the Gulf of Tonkin.  The Navy at first denied it even happened.  Then the president made it clear that there would be war.  The American people screamed in delight and anger as they gathered up their young men and eagerly threw them into Vietnam.  We all heard the slogans:  “We’re in, let’s win!”, “Our Country - Love it or Leave it!”, “My Country Right or Wrong.”   There were others.   

President Nixon prolonged the war.  It was preferable to him to certain other things.  He used the war - not a problem for him.  He never even thought of trial and imprisonment.  

Johnson and Nixon are dead now and beyond personal justice.  But their memories still shine brightly.  We were the first to engage in an illegal war started by a president who was beyond any worry of punishment and funded by a congress who pretended it had more important things to do.

George Bush plunged the nation into a war in Iraq.  It was totally unnecessary, but George Bush wanted war.  Dick Cheney wanted war.  Rumsfeld wanted war.  Wolfowitz wanted war. “Shock and Awe”, “We can be in Baghdad in a week!”  They got it, but none of them went.   They are not dead yet but live in peace, retired with what ever honor they can muster around them and their disastrous administration.  They are still available for justice.  Justice for their war, their tortures, their treason - if any occurred, perhaps other charges.  But they are not worried about that.  Great American corporations are making lots of money from the war which still goes on, and from that other thing in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan, and in Somalia, and other places.  War has now become very easy in America.  War has become a necessity for some corporations in America.  There are also many young people who have no work available for them; war is an alternative.   War has become easy, it makes a lot of money, it provides employment for young people and no body EVER goes to prison - even if they get caught!  

So war is easy for America - and nothing ever happens to those who bring our nation into war -  what can we do?  Maybe we could just drop any commitment to  prison for deeds already past.   But we Americans  NEED a  Council of  Review.  Let’s just say at the beginning that there will be no sentences issued.  The purpose of this council would be to review the actions taken by American political leaders with a view to holding them to the oath they took with their office, the constitution, and the Geneva Convention rules, among others. No one will go to prison.  The people involved in the events can all come to testify freely, no reason to try to hide anything.   All we will do is to open the prison that is already there and let the TRUTH come OUT.   


Then - we can make it clear that any future actions like those done by Johnson, Nixon and Bush will be brought to trial and they may well face spending the rest of their lives in prison.

Then, we veterans from Vietnam can finally come home.