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During that devastating decade,
millions of ordinary Americans became totally alienated from
both our elected leaders and the political process, many doing
their level best to turn the United States into an anarchistic
banana republic. Yet even though a surprising number of the
“You can't trust anyone over 30” generation are now the
graying power brokers running our country and calling for
regime change in Iraq, they ironically have been among the
first to demonize any and all citizens opposed to the military
solution, labeling them turncoats and charging them with
turning their backs on our president, our flag and this
republic.
Retired four-star Marine Gen.
Anthony Zinni – one of my all-time heroes – was recently
publicly termed “that traitor” by a top Bush aide when Zinni
dared to exercise his freedom of speech by sounding off
against war with Iraq.
And as was the case during the
Vietnam War, those opposed to a duel in the desert are just as
meanly attacking the nearest and dearest of serving defenders,
as well as the soldiers themselves. Even supposedly pacifist
university faculty members are aggressive toward pro-war
students if they suggest “rallying around the flag.” An Army
ROTC college student says one of his professors went so far as
to threaten to flunk him. “Stop spouting your pro-Iraqi War
diatribe in my classroom,” he was warned.
In 1964, before U.S.
conventional troops were deployed to Vietnam, my professors
laid the same message on me when I was vocal in my belief that
LBJ was right regarding the Vietnam War. Both the president
and I turned out to be dead wrong, but so were my professors'
threats and the actions of the dissenters on both sides of the
war-and-peace issue, then and now.
So once again, both the hawks
and the doves are all too frequently accelerating the debate
from jeering and name-calling to full-on close combat,
actually clashing on the streets in bloody conflict – even
though a major lesson learned from the Vietnam War was that
our nation couldn't win without the full support of its
people.
Another hard lesson we
obviously didn't learn well enough was not to attack our
warriors or their families. Sure, it's the democratic way to
openly agree or disagree, but it shouldn't be the American way
to vent on the defenders of our land or their loved ones. Just
as the war in Vietnam wasn't of the troops’ making, neither is
the war with Iraq.
Our soldiers enforce policy,
they don't make it. Attacking all-volunteer troopers who
joined up to defend America won't resolve whether war with
Iraq is moral or immoral, but as with Vietnam, it surely will
reduce their fighting spirit and throw them off their
life-or-death game.
In the ‘60s it was “Hell, no,
we won't go!” Now it's “Hey, hey, ho, ho, we're not fighting
for Texaco.”
Back then, our heroes were
routinely shamed en route home from the battlefield, spit upon
and called “baby killers” for answering their country's call.
Those stalwart fighters, caught up in a wrongheaded conflict
where they fought with great guts, still haven't fully
recovered from the emotional scars inflicted upon them by
unthinking citizens who blamed them for our duly-elected
politicians’ bad war. Nor have they yet to be truly welcomed
home or thanked and honored for their noble service “on behalf
of a grateful nation.”
So if you agree with the
president, let him and his gang know you're right there behind
them. And if you disagree with the war, by all means lean on
your politicians and try to make democracy work.
But lay off the troops, their
kids and their families.
Hawk, dove or somewhere in
between, we must learn from the Vietnam experience to always
support the members of our armed forces and their families
“all the way.” |
