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Notes from the Boonies

By Paul Wisovaty

A few months ago, I picked up my Veterans of Foreign Wars magazine (don't ask), and read that, as John Zutz pointed out in the last Veteran, the VFW has worked itself into a "frenzy ... on the Richter Scale" about a proposed Canadian monument to Vietnam War resisters who went north. As John quoted a VFW spokesman, that organization feels that the proposed monument is a "tribute to cowards."

Since John has already penned an excellent column on the subject, I didn't see any reason why I should waste your time and Veteran space covering the same ground. The only explanation for my decision to go ahead and do that may be that, as "Boonies" readers are aware, I sometimes get so hung up on a topic that I don't know when to let go of it. It is one of the more salient, if occasionally boring, characteristics of this column.

With all due respect to the VFW's selfless obligation to explain to the rest of us who are our real American heroes and who don't make the cut, I would suggest that getting your draft notice didn't necessarily mean you should start writing your obit. As a draftee, you had better odds of winding up at Fort Hood, Texas or Bumfuk, Egypt (we're there too, you know) than going to Vietnam. And even if you got the 'Nam slip, you had a better chance of landing behind a desk at Cam Ranh than, say, in the 3/5 Armored Cavalry Regiment.

The above reads back as a little more flip, or insensitive, than I meant it. After all, a lot of guys in 'Nam started the day behind a typewriter and ended it in a body bag. So try this: Newsweek reported, a few years ago, that eight percent of draft-age males, during the Vietnam War, went to Vietnam. Those are pretty good odds. If I'm one of those draft-age males, and I want to go to college or join the ironworkers' union, or—imagine this—don't want my World War II-era parents to be ashamed of me, why in the world would I not just roll the weighted dice, take the two years, come home and sign up for the GI Bill? I could join the American Legion, even if I had spent my tour in that exotic resort town in Egypt. Option number two would be moving to a foreign country where I don't know one damned soul, trying to get a job, and not knowing when or if I'd ever be allowed back within the confines of Christian County, Illinois. Throw in knowing that Taylorville High School is not likely anytime soon to name the gym after me, and this is not exactly a prescription for prudent career planning. If I am the laziest and most chickenshit individual on the planet, I would also have to be one of the stupidest to take that second option. Unless, of course, I just believed that war was wrong and I had the proverbial courage of my convictions.

Perhaps it's time to take a look at the mindset of our mainstream veterans' organizations.

The necessary disclaimer is that one should avoid generalizations. I am certain that there are VFW and Legion and AMVETS members who agree with everything I have just said, just as there are members who realize that our current Iraq fiasco is based on one Bush lie after another. However, I'm pretty confident that if you polled all of these guys (and a few women), and certainly if you canvassed the leadership of these organizations, you would find overwhelming support for our invasions of both Vietnam and Iraq. If our government decided to invade some off-the-wall, entirely non-threatening country like, say, Mexico (oops, done that already), I suspect that the mainstream veterans' organizations would fall right into line in support of it. And I will never, if I live to be a hundred, understand why.

I suppose one reason may be that, organizationally and individually, they need to feel that they literally "served," in the sense of doing some good in the world. This is natural enough. I have my own fear that I'll wake up one morning and realize that, after twenty-six years as a probation officer, I could have had more effect on my clients' lives by giving them tips on horse races. I suppose where this breaks down for me is the realization that, as an enlisted man (or a lieutenant, or even a general), I wasn't responsible for the war in the first place! I am responsible for decisions I make; I am not responsible for decisions others make, even if I get dragged along into it with them. (Well, not exactly "with them.") But if I'm not responsible for it, I damned sure have no obligation to defend it.

This is where my argument runs into a snag. I may not have an obligation to defend it, but I have a right to. My guess is that the vast majority of men and women in mainstream vets' organizations really believe that the Vietnam War was just, and that those who opposed it—especially those who went to Canada—were wrong. I acknowledge their right to those beliefs. What I don't understand—and have trouble forgiving—is their rush to label them as cowards. That's cruel, it's sanctimonious, and it's wrong.

I hope to be in Nelson, British Columbia in 2006, for the dedication of the war resisters' memorial. I hope you can make it too. We can all gather round for a group photo, and send one to this country's best-known draft-dodging deserter, George W. Bush.