How do I not be

A veteran?

My identity defined by my life’s shame?

Unremittingly blamed

By myself

For being the sum of my experience

Ignorant of events

Until survival made knowledge irrelevant

I feel like a brittle leaf

Pinned on a twig by the wind

Rustling helplessly to be freed

Before I crumble in the breeze

It is a tender spot

Healed and cushioned by time

‘Til it becomes a mere plot

In some dope-induced war story

But it smarts at the touch

Of rough-skinned rhetoric

And it aches a warning

Of impending storms

I am a prophet by pain

I have the wisdom of the afflicted

I’ve posted this diary in several forms in several places over the years.  It still seems relevant, particularly on Veterans Day…

Ok, let me get my reservations out up front.  As can readily be seen from my blog-moniker, I am someone whose self-identification is based on a period in my life of two years ten months and twenty-two days duration that ended some forty years ago. So, yes,  I have used the fact of being a Vietnam veteran to give myself some small amount of status in the blogoshpere; after all, “Leftvet” has a bit more potential cache than, say, “Leftout” or “Leftbank” or “Leftfield”. Perhaps what I like most is that what I have to say often presents a contrast to what most people expect to hear from veterans. Veterans in American society, after all, have traditionally played the role of cheerleaders for the next war. I, for one, have always refused to pick up the pompoms.

STREET MEETING

He confronts me

Smiling shyly, head down

Embarrassed at the charade

Brother

I see by your jacket that you was in Nam

I was there too —

Shows me the scar to prove it —

How ’bout a quarter for a fellow vet

To get some wine?

He shuffles — niggaring —

Wincing at the expected blows of righteousness

I give him a dollar and say nothing

You see

We both have come

To the same

Conclusion

I like to think of myself as a realist. That doesn’t mean that I don’t subscribe to ideals, or that I don’t work hard in my own way to bring those ideals to fruition. In my youth, the way I worked was different, perhaps best described by lines from the song:

Once there was a silly old ram

Thought he could punch a hole in the dam

No one could make that ram scram

He kept buttin’ that dam

‘Cause he had high hopes…

Somewhere along the way, however, I kinda realized that the tag line to the song wasn’t quite correct; that old million kilowatt dam never did go kerplop, and all I had for my efforts — both figuratively and literally — was a bloody head.  

On this day of green awareness and torture diatribes (not meant pejoratively), I wanted to focus on a subject that has seemingly fallen off the blogospheric radar screen recently — the dangerous, futile attempt by the Obama administration to introduce the failed military tactic — but eminently successful PR strategy — of “the Surge” into Afghanistan.  I will not try to document all the political, military, and foreign policy mistakes embedded in this decision; others are much more adept at such analysis than I.  I’ll offer a more personal side.  Perhaps it will provide insight, perhaps not.

Back in 1988, I was part of a delegation of Vietnam veterans who went to the Soviet Union to meet with Soviet Afghanistan veterans — the Afghantsi.  I wrote an article about the experience that appeared in New York Times Magazine in 1989.  How strange that in those days, the Afghantsi were seen as the Vietnam veterans of the Soviet Union; now, the sons and daughters of Vietnam veterans are about to become the new Afghantsi.

There was a part of my article that the Times chose not to publish.  The following is that exerpt: