Dear Reader,
I was talking with a writer friend this week, and, inevitably the subject of Vietnam came up. Inevitably, because we are about the same age, and went through similar journeys around the draft. His situation was more perilous than mine, because his birthdate was chosen #15 in the 1972 draft lottery, all but guaranteeing his being called up. No college deferments, no nothin’. My birthdate number, on the other hand, was so high that I don’t even remember it—somewhere around 250, give or take, I think. Once I was out of that woods I never looked back. Yeah, sure.
My friend waited and toyed with a number of options. In the end, he was not drafted, but only because the war effort deescalated that year, and the need for fresh cannon fodder decreased. And as if by some miracle in his life, they stopped calling somewhere short of #15.
No doubt the announcement of Ken Burns’s Vietnam series on PBS brought all of this freshly to mind. I think we were both excited about the chance to get some real history, beyond our own, from the series. I know I also felt deep trepidation about having to dredge up all those old situations and feelings. Burns, no doubt, understands that we have some unfinished national and personal business here. And I am grateful for his effort.
But what concerns me, well beyond what I was feeling in the early ’70s, is that the drums of war are still beating. It isn’t enough that the GW Bush administration plunged the Middle East into chaos, a chaos that is still sucking up American lives and rewriting all the rules on homeland, and emigration, and human dignity.
No, now the current administration is puffed up with hot rhetoric that signals new dangers in Asia. It might just look like a pissing contest, were it not that millions of lives are at stake. I’m just saying, could we maybe learn a little something from past mistakes, and try to get it right this time?
Bruce
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