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Viet' Vets Situation Misstated In Media

By VVAW

Vietnam veterans sure hit the headlines during the National Salute, but riding the tide of "vet awareness" was some propaganda some vets may have missed. And it's just possible that if this propaganda barrage is successful, we may well find the Vietnam veteran and our experience being used to push the next generation into following in our footsteps.

The image of the Vietnam vet has been pretty poor for a number of years. In part this came from the government because vets didn't rush home from combat in Vietnam to lead cheers for the war; instead we told the American people what was happening over there. So vets ended up being pictured as druggies, half-crazed (or more than half), malcontents, hippies, to say nothing of baby-killers in the hope that whatever we said (that the government didn't want said) would be ignored.

Through the "70's the government tried to sweep Vietnam vets under whatever rug was convenient. Always there was the hope that perhaps if the vets disappeared, so would the war, and if people didn't remember the war, it might be easier to get involved in the next one.

The plans didn't work. Vietnam vets continued to be visible reminders of the war we had fought. The problems of vets, whether post-traumatic stress or unemployment of poisoning by Agent Orange, these didn't disappear either, and the demands of vets against the VA (which was supposed to take care of our problems) drew an increasing amount of sympathy from the American people.

A new game plan was needed, and the Reagan Administration came up with one. While Reagan & Co could hardly decide on a VA chief, they could come up with the Vietnam Veterans Leadership Program (you may have one in your city—it's off the ground in some places, just starting in others). The program is designed to "change the image of the Vietnam veteran." Vets who have "made it"—the Vietnam vet millionaires, the lawyers, the people who own their own companies—are banding together to give "opportunities" to the individual vet. Their common goal: 'To honor the validity of service to country."

And that's the bottom line: change the "image" of the Vietnam vet and you can find the vets who will support a massive defense build-up and another war. No Vietnam vet will object if this program, funded through ACTION with our tax dollars, actually finds a couple of Vietnam vets jobs; so far, as best we know, the program has only made a little media noise and started to hire program directors. Next comes the intention of taking on the "negative myths" about Vietnam veterans.

Point man for the bunch of Reagan symps seems to be one James Webb, author of Fields of Fire, Annapolis graduate and self-appointed spokesman for reactionary vets. Years ago Webb made a total ass of himself trying to build Vets for Nixon, and has been rewarded with various little government jobs. His name popped up in some of the considerations for a VA Director but his total lack of qualifications made that move impossible, even for the Reagan Administration. But should the government need a "good Vietnam vets," Webb seems eternally available.

Webb's contribution to the National Salute was an article which appeared in Parade Magazine—you know, the one that gets inserted in your Sunday paper. Parade is hardly big on think pieces; it does, however, reach 25-30 million people, and Webb knows how to try to reach that audience.

Maybe you read the article: a lot of people did. It's the story of a couple of people Webb served with in Vietnam; they were wounded, came back to the U.S. and, after a period of problems, made good, more or less. But the real thrust of the article is to turn the story of Vietnam vets upside down, to show that, except for a few mal-contents (that's us!), Vietnam vets wholeheartedly support their government and whatever plans that government may have.

In the remaking of the Vietnam veteran image, Webb attacks a number of statistics—what he calls the "negative myths" about Vietnam vets. "Membership in Vietnam Veterans Against the War," He says, "never exceeded 7000 of a potential 9 million." Not quite truce: VVAW has its membership rolls from the early '70's with a shade under 25,000 names of vets who had joined the organization. But Webb's figures are worse off than this: there were only 2.7 million Vietnam vets. No doubt being fed his figures from the VA or some other government agency, Webb seems to have taken the two figures and added them together to create this ridiculous 9 million (in fact, of course, since VVAW does not require that our members be Vietnam vets or any other kind of vets buy only to be interested in—and active in—the "vets movement," the potential membership is much, much higher).

Webb has a bunch of other statistics to toy with. He goes on with a Harris poll from 1980 saying that two out of three Vietnam vets say they would serve again even knowing the outcome of the war. The survey got a lot of press when it came out, but what it said is not quite what Webb came up with. Only about 35% of the vets said they would refuse to serve in another Vietnam-type war (and, as vets, these are people who know exactly what "refusing to serve" means). Others did not say they would refuse; but that is one hell of a long ways from saying they would serve. In short, Webb had his researchers working overtime to find the best ways to lie with statistics.

Other of the figures are simply pulled out from hunger. There is no difference in drug use between vets and non-vets of the same age according to Webb. Who the hell knows, and where the hell do such statistics come from? And even if true (which no one can say) are they the same drugs used in the same way? And, finally, how many vets have managed to overcome whatever drug habit may have messed up their lives immediately after returning from Southeast Asia.

Or Webb's prison figures which show, he says, that Vietnam vets are less likely than non-vets to be in prison. Some states don't even keep vet statistics, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons admits to coming up with figures that will keep people happy. In short, no one is really very sure—though the experience of VVAW says that there are one hell of a lot of Vietnam vets still occupying cells in state and federal prisons around the country.

So, who are the Vietnam vets? Are the vets of 1982 wearing their three piece suits, praising Reagan and owning their own companies? Are they proud of what their country did in Vietnam and ready to re-up, or send their sons, to do the same thing all over again?

We know that somewhere around 800,000+ Vietnam-era vets looking for jobs, plus any number who have stopped looking and are no longer carried in the figures. We know that over 500,000 Vietnam vets came out of the war with less-than-honorable discharges (and no doubt many of these are among the vets without jobs). We know that hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Vietnam vets with problems of ptsd or Agent Orange that make living a normal life almost impossible.

There certainly are Vietnam vets who have been successful, by anyone's standards. There are many, many more who are content with their lives—not necessarily wealthy but happy. And there are certainly some Vietnam vets who would willingly volunteer for the next war, or who will insist that their children enlist in the military so they can become "men"!" But to paint all Vietnam vets with this kind of brush is simply a lie. And to thing that a four-day celebration in Washington can replace 10 years (at least) of ignorance and neglect is simply governmental wishful thinking.

Vietnam veterans—except for a favored few—are not willing to buy what the Reagan Administration is trying to sell about vets and the military and the next war. Vietnam vets do have some serious problems and the government is doing nothing to help solve them. One of our problems, however, is not again believing everything that our government and its' spokesmen are telling us; we did that once before and it got us used and then thrown aside. When we say "We Won't Forget," we mean us, and our kids, and our kid's kids. And we're serious when we say No More Vietnams. Vietnam vets have fought before for things most of us didn't believe in—we can put up a hell of a fight for things we do believe in!