WHILE SORTING THROUGH the accumulated flotsam of a long life, I came across a box of color slides including photos from Vietnam - photos, quite honestly, that I had forgotten. I am going to use these photos in my blog over the next year to help stir up the memories.

I sent a few to be digitized but the results were far from satisfying. The service bureau apparently scanned them and there aren't enough pixels to view them at any reasonable size on the computer screen.
I purchased an eighteen inch square piece of rear projection screen material and photographed them with a Nikon digital camera. The results are less than perfect but far better than the alternative.

I wish I had a good camera in Vietnam. The one pictured here in my hand belonged to a friend. I carried a cheap Kodak point 'n shoot camera in an ammo pouch. I wasn't able to attach filters to compensate for the dense humidity that rendered almost all my photos in blue, especially those taken from the air. I have attempted to compensate digitally with mixed results. 
I was sent to Vietnam with orders to join the 185th Military Intelligence Company in Saigon, but that post was taken by another lieutenant who upset the 9th Infantry Division Adjutant General and I was diverted to replace him. I think I replaced him admirably inasmuch as I too upset the AG during my tour of duty.  

The 9th Infantry Division operated in the Mekong Delta region of South Vietnam. Its three brigades and attached regiments were scattered over several base camps that I will visit in these blog postings. I got around a lot. The division headquarters was located at Camp Bearcat to the northeast of Saigon. I estimate that it covered a rectangle of about one mile by two and a half miles. It was very flat with a dirt berm about eight to ten feet high surrounding it. The headquarters building was located midway between the two vehicle gates and faced the berm. It was a prime target for snipers and I distinctly remember taking rounds if I walked outside at night while on duty officer. 

This photo was taken early in my tour of duty. Someone later planted a nice grass lawn in front of it and surrounded it with an ankle-high course of barbed wire to dissuade us from walking across it. Several people tripped over it as the fled the building during a rocket attack one night.

The radio tower was located about a hundred yards away from the headquarters building. I should have asked one of the Vietnamese day workers. Any one of them probably could have told me the exact distance.
Affectionately known as The Aiming Stake, we were certain that the Vietnamese who frequented our base camp every day were pacing off the distance from the radio tower to every major target and noting its bearing.
Of course it was equipped with flashing red aircraft beacons making it perfect for directing mortar fire at night.

I guess that the tower was about 150 feet high. We learned that even at that height, it was not sufficient to maintain radio communication with patrols in the nearby rubber plantation. The signal corps launched a barrage balloon with radio antennae shortly after a patrol was badly beaten there.

My memoirs of Vietnam will probably amuse some and upset others. I have very strong opinions about our role there and my service during that time, opinions that are not popularly expressed. Feel free to comment. You can't insult me any worse than that which I've already heard.

Ultimately, these memoirs will serve as the foundation of a novel that I hope to write right after two others that are already in progress.

I just had another brush with history surprisingly connected with a war long past, my past. I cannot add to it and will let the parties speak for themselves...

Be sure to read Jack's novel, Rebels on the Mountain, available at all major eBook retailers. Click here for more information  

DON'T TELL ME how much you love the soldier but hate the war. They can't be separated. Don't tell me that war is evil. It is fought to end evil. If you can't think of something nice to say to a Soldier, Sailor, Airman, or Marine, don't say anything at all. 

Don't tell me that President Bush sent us to fight an unjust war. Every wartime President was vilified, even Lincoln. Even Roosevelt. Even Truman. Even Johnson. In every case, the war they presided over was Constitutionally sanctioned, and in every case the people tired of the conflict and turned against their leaders.

Don't tell me I'm being belligerent. I already know that I am. I have just finished watching Vietnam in HD and am reminded of the abuse suffered by courageous young men and women at the hands of moral and intellectual cowards. I'm not referring to dissidents in general. We fought for their right to dissent. I'm referring to those who went beyond dissent, and attacked returning veterans.

I had avoided watching the series and then relented. I was proud to see and hear that many Vietnam Veterans are beginning to realize that they served honorably and it was those who abused them on their return who acted unjustly. 

IT SEEMED TO ME in the days of the Vietnam War, that those who served were being judged as guilty of fighting an unjust war as well as fighting it unjustly. After all, as Charlotte Keys opined in an article in McCall’s magazine in 1966, Suppose they gave a war and nobody came, “There is no moral validity to any part of any law whose purpose is to train people to kill one another.” Therefore, the peace movement argued, the government had no right to indenture its citizens to fight in any war, just or unjust, and those of us who served were immoral. Is this argument valid? 

Consider the following example: You are threatened by a man with a knife and you have a loaded gun and the knowledge of how to use it. However, your stricture against killing prevents you from defending yourself, and the man takes your life. Have you acted morally? Or, have you abetted the crime of murder in failing to defend yourself when you had the opportunity and the means to do so? Those of us who believe that murder, not killing, is a crime, would defend ourselves with whatever means and opportunity available to us. Failure to do so is considered suicide.

States are nothing more than aggregations of individuals and, as such, have the same moral rights and obligations as individuals. International law agrees that the head of state – the President, in the case of the United States – has the right and obligation to protect the lives and property of his citizens wherever they may happen to be in the world. Indeed, heads of state may act to provide such protections without declaring war. In fact, such acts are not considered to be war.

Thus, if the state has the same right to self-protection as do individuals, do the individuals have the right to empower the state to indenture them in service to kill? Simply, yes. “We the people” surrendered a portion of our individual rights to form a government for the purpose of “providing for the common defense.” We gave them that right “to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” We surrendered our right to refuse such service so that we could survive both individually and as a nation.

Well, we were called and most of us went. Some went more readily than others. We went happily in the early days of the war, prepared to hold the line on Communism. Later, when American resolve began to flag, we went reluctantly. Still, most of us answered the call. Others, like Mrs. Keys' son either went to Canada or went to jail. Interestingly, these latter citizens had alternative forms of service available to them as conscientious objectors, but some refused to serve even in this limited capacity. They preferred to enjoy their liberty without making the sacrifice. Even worse, they damned those who made the sacrifice on their behalf. Theirs was hubris of epic proportions.

JUST AND UNJUST Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations was written by Michael Walzer, a peace activist during the 1960s. I recommend it highly because it is the perfect foil to my assertions in this blog, that the War in Vietnam was misjudged by the people like the good professor – well-intentioned people intellectualizing away the fundamental truths about humanity to create a moral construct that has no application in reality. Unfortunately, when they prevail, as they did in concluding America's involvement in Vietnam with an ignoble retreat, people suffer and we learn that the road to hell is truly paved with good intentions.

I invite you to join me reading Professor Walzer's opinions and, hopefully, we will better understand war and peace. There are choices to be made and we should arm ourselves with truth so that we are better able to make the correct ones. How much wisdom is to be found in his book? We will see.

The Issues

In his preamble to Just and Unjust Wars, Professor Walzer enumerates five central issues:

1. “What is the value of sovereignty and territorial integrity to the men and women who live with a particular state's territory?
   
   
2. “How much killing is 'systematic killing'?
   
   
3. “If a war is justified, who should fight it?
   
   
4. “If a state or group of states (or the United Nations decides to intervene how should the intervention be conducted?
   
   
5. “In planning and conducting the intervention, what kind of peace should the invading forces seek?”
   
   

I propose to review Professor's Walzer's commentary on each of these issues in succeeding postings to this blog. 

Idiot's Guide to Arguing

Before we begin, I think that it would be instructive to look at his basic premise. Walzer tells us, “I want to account for the ways in which men and women who are not lawyers but simply citizens (and sometimes soldiers) argue about war, and to expound the terms we commonly use.” This is a most ambitious goal. Despite the fact that I debated in college and was trained in the art of legal arguments, I have had little success arguing with anyone throughout my 68 years.

Also, I can't wait to see how the professor intends to expound on the terms we commonly use in arguing about war. However, I must admit to a certain admiration for Professor Walzer's strategy. After all, he who defines the terms controls the debate. 

Ex Post Facto

For me, Professor Walzer's most illuminating premise is when he talks of crimes, he is “describing violations of general principles or of the particular code: so men and women can be called criminals even when they cannot be charged before a legal tribunal.” That explains why Vietnam veterans were treated as criminals even though they had not committed any crime, why we were prisoners in our own homes and communities, why we were excoriated and assaulted relentlessly. I believed for many years that we were all being tarred with the same brush wielded against those who actually committed actionable crimes in the combat theater. Now I learn from Professor Walzer that we were guilty of acts that the peaceniks felt ought to be crimes. They felt that we ought to be punished and they were more than happy to provide the punishment. Their judgment went beyond the principle that a person could not be charged with a crime ex post facto – one that was declared criminal after the act was committed. They felt we could be charged with a crime even though the act was criminal in their opinion only.

Let me state emphatically that I would fight to the death to defend Professor Walzer's right to his opinions. I may even agree with him on many points – as may yet be seen in succeeding postings on this subject. However, I vehemently oppose anyone's right to inflict their opinions upon another as the peace activists of that era assailed us.

This should be interesting... 

"Our dead revolutionaries would soon wonder why their country was fighting against what appeared to be a revolution" - Carl Oglesby 

November 13, 2011 - He was an eloquent speaker who led the campus organization Students for a Democratic Society. His most famous speech Let Us Shape the Future denouncing the war in Vietnam as well as the free enterprise system was widely quoted. 

Unfortunately, it appeared to be a revolution only to those who were ignorant of the true nature of the war in Vietnam. 

Rest in peace.