A Matter of Perspective

 

A Matter of Perspective

(Written while, then president, Donald Trump was urging NFL owners to fire players who dared take a knee in silent protest against social injustice. It contains historical references of which I am sure Trump was, and remains, ignorant)

10/24/2018
        I recently read an excellent piece by a friend, who, as I did, served in the military during the Cold War. The gist of the piece involves the difference between one's "patriotic duties" as a person in uniform and that of a civilian member of a civilly aggrieved minority at a football game. His conclusion was that his responsibility as a man in uniform was different than that of a civilian. He concluded with the observation that, as a white male of the upper middle class, he respects the struggles of those less privileged and supports their right to peaceful protest, compared to say, marching, armed, onto a college campus with bad intent and fomenting physical confrontation, culminating in a death. (can you say Charlottesville?)

        At this juncture, I believe that it bears mentioning that we in the USA, not uniquely, but in a minority worldwide have (largely post WWI)  turned ordinary sporting events into shows of what have become almost mawkish “patriotic” displays. Of course, this is also manipulation by owners and leagues to spur ticket sales. What I find interesting is that the more inappropriate and ill advised the use and deployment of our military becomes, especially over the last 50 years, the more a certain segment foams at the mouth and repeats the totally inaccurate "fighting for our freedom" mantra. What a gross inaccuracy that statement represents!

        No single life wasted on Iraq was "fighting for our freedom." In like manner, as Ken Burns reaffirmed in his PBS Vietnam War series, not one of the 2 million plus (of all combatants) who died in Vietnam was "fighting for our freedom," while the North Vietnamese were fighting for theirs.

 It is critical to distinguish between what those military personnel were told they were there for and why they were actually sent. The abuse aimed at returning vets would have been far better aimed at Washington D.C. Many a brave military member died in a cause for which they had relatively little broad spectrum understanding. Moreover, if they had been well schooled in the history of the region, they might well have thought very differently about being there at all.  It is a massive emotional conflict and strongly against human nature to be confronted with the proof that what one did in good faith was in support of a worthless cause. We can see the results of this moral awakening manifested in the significantly increased number of PTSD cases and suicides among Vietnam and Mid-east overseas adventure conflict participants. 

        I would be the first to admit that I joined the US Navy in 1964 specifically to avoid getting drafted and sent to Vietnam, a war I already, at age 21, felt to be un-justified and ill advised. Why? Unlike many a prospective draftee, I was literate and intellectually curious. Yes, it's just that simple. Having seen racial division spawned and amplified by such scum as Strom Thurmond, and having been raised to know better, I was well aware that being lied to by the national government was a real-world possibility.

         My curiosity re: SE Asia went all the way back to a memory which is as clear today at age 77 as it was at age 8. That recollection is of seeing a newsreel (yeah, they used to show World News before the Saturday double feature westerns, and with a bad serial most times) depicting and commenting on the French army's withdrawal in defeat from "French Indo China." I had no idea what was happening, but, by the age of nineteen or twenty, I had learned much more. Another part of that is the memory of the Army-McCarthy (rabid anti-Communist rhetoric covering for blatant incompetence) hearings on television, the only time(s) I can ever recall my mom doing her ironing in the living room, where the gigantic 23-inch TV lived in its 200-pound console. 

        Vietnam is a difficult subject for my generation in general and could be a bit uncomfortable to teach to high school juniors, many of whom had relatives who had served in Southeast Asia. The reason? A literate and critically thinking person needs little more than objectivity and, to be transparent, some historical perspective, to see that the entire debacle in southeast Asia was avoidable. Had we made the same overtures to Vietnam (not our enemy in WWII) that we made to Japan (definitely our enemy) we could have helped Vietnam build a strong friendly economy in the 1950s and saved (literally) millions of lives, Vietnamese and American. Hell, had we simply allowed the free elections agreed upon by the 1954 Geneva accords the issue would be moot. Dwight Eisenhower himself admitted his belief that, had we done so, Ho Chi Minh would have won 80% of the vote.

           Anti -Communist hysteria, among men who should have known better, precluded any such overtures. Ho Chi Minh's plea to Harry Truman to "not let the French steal his country back" fell on deaf ears, as the Red Scare mentality was prevalent among Republicans who had "suffered" 13 years of FDR and were now saddled with the civil rights supporting Harry S. Truman and willing to do or say almost anything to recapture the White House. Truman, facing the certainty that accepting any overture from Ho was political suicide, was forced to turn a deaf ear.

What is so frustrating about these events is that our actions directly contradicted our own earlier position statements. The Atlantic Charter, agreed to by Churchill and FDR, called for a post war end to colonialism and the self determination of these former colonies. In a similar manner, the United Nations charter does, as well. Ho referred to both of these documents in his February, 1946, telegram to President Harry Truman. Truman didn't answer and the rest, as they say, is history.

        So, before you froth at the mouth and throw about words like "patriotic" duty, try this simple exercise: Consider that the definition is situational, and that loving one's country has little to do with flag or military adventure. Season that with the realization that maybe, just maybe, your flames of "outrage " are being fanned by a malignant narcissist who is, himself, one of the least patriotic men ever to hold the title of POTUS.

         Not all Presidents are bad men. Truman and Eisenhower and Kennedy certainly weren't, yet those three sowed the seeds of the Vietnam war which LBJ liberally watered, and Nixon reaped. Political considerations, not "fighting for our freedom" were the basis for every decision they made in that process, just as Bush 43's insane invasion of Iraq was. We can venerate the actions of those who served, either by draft or voluntarily, while accepting that, sometimes, they are, as are all of us, as much political victim as aggressor.  In truth, all these things were done under the Star-Spangled Banner. In the here and now, racial and in truth social division was, and still is, being fueled by a former President who still is attempting to wrap his white supremacist agenda in the same flag.  The true patriot lives to see his country be better, not worse. "Taking a knee" to acknowledge that concern for the nation's moral well-being is larger than soothing the ego of one orange man with the IQ of low-fat yogurt is a patriotic act in and of itself.