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Vietnam at 30: Remembering the finest men and women I ever knew

By TERRY L. GARLOCK

The fall of Saigon is 30 years past, and yet, Vietnam is still a raw nerve. Vietnam veteran Michael Smith recently waited in line 90 minutes to spit in Jane Fonda’s face at a Kansas City book signing. Vietnam was a contentious issue for John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign.

Why are so many Vietnam veterans still angry? I believe the answer is because the truth about the young Americans who fought that war has never been told.

Many good and decent people opposed the war, but the radical anti-war left went too far, and they did their job well back then, successfully demonizing American troops.

John Kerry served a short tour in Vietnam, came home to join the radical left and pose as an expert and hero while labeling the rest of us as monsters in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

America swallowed Kerry’s incredible lies about us, and America turned a blind eye when Kerry met with the enemy in Paris in 1971 while he was still an officer in the Naval Reserve, and while America’s sons were still dying in battle.

Jane Fonda famously cavorted with the enemy in Hanoi in 1972 and pretended to shoot at American planes on an anti-aircraft gun in photos that gave our enemy a propaganda victory. Far worse were her multiple radio broadcasts from Hanoi calling our president and pilots war criminals and imploring American troops to disobey the orders of their officers.

Upon her return to the U.S. Fonda told the public our POWs in Hanoi were treated well. When the POWs came home to tell the truth about systematic torture she called them hypocrites and liars.

It isn’t Fonda and Kerry, so much, that bother me; there will always be a radical fringe. The deeply troubling thing is the country gave them a pass.

While those of us serving our country were demonized, there was no political courage to take a stand against betrayal and treason. How could that happen?

When we came home from Vietnam to insults instead of parades, when we were stereotyped as violent, mentally fragile and prone to substance abuse, when we thought the country had lost its mind, we were young, we shook it off and we went on with life.

Things are different now. We are older and wiser and less willing to remain silent when old lies about us are revived. This time, our children and grandchildren are watching, and wondering if what they read in their revisionist history books about us is true.

Like John Kerry I served a short tour; I came home early on a stretcher. But unlike Kerry, I learned a deep and permanent admiration for our men and women in Vietnam. I learned from their example the true meaning of duty, honor, commitment, loyalty and courage.

While others dodged and pointed fingers of blame from the sideline, these young Americans served their country when it was not easy.

While a virtuous stand against Communism was screwed up by micro-managing from the White House with a kind-of sort-of half-war that fed our troops to the meat grinder, these troops fought a very tough enemy with honor and skill and never lost a major battle.

While not one general officer resigned over not being permitted to win the war, these young Americans took daring risks in desperation to bring one another home alive.

While the news media ignored the systematic atrocities of our enemy and focused on our mistakes, these troops dug wells, built schools and helped the Vietnamese people in a hundred ways.

Last year the presidential campaign revived Kerry’s old fabrications about pervasive American atrocities in Vietnam. The mainstream media had an unusual second chance to examine the atrocities issue as Vietnam veterans spoke out against Kerry, but the media blew it by dismissing the objections as dirty politics.

How long will Vietnam veterans be angry? I resolve my own anger by telling my children the true story of the men and women who served their country in Vietnam. In a lapse of grammar I describe them to my girls as “The Finest Men and Women I Ever Knew.”

They are, indeed, and what a shame America missed knowing that.