The problem here is that most veterans since at least the end of World War II have not “put their lives on the line to serve our nation and protect our freedoms.” In my case, and in many others as well, this is simply mythology. Vacuous rhetoric. And ultimately counterproductive and injurious to the real interests of most Americans.
I fought in Vietnam as a United States Marine. I was wounded in combat, received a Division Commander’s Commendation, earned the rank of sergeant at age 19 & ½, also got a Good Conduct Medal and two Presidential Unit Citations, and was honorably discharged. Hurrah for me.
Nevertheless, in spite of my best efforts, it is fair to say that the US lost the war in Vietnam. You’ve seen the famous photo of the helicopter perched on that rooftop in Saigon on the last day of the war. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers, nipping at our heels, entered and took control of what was immediately renamed Ho Chi Minh City. In short, after over three decades of wasted American blood and treasure, dating back to the French Indochina War that the US also supported, the “Commies” won.
But wonder of wonders: American freedoms were not impinged upon in any way. Not in the least. After 1975, Americans could still worship at the church of our choice, say and write whatever was on our minds, and buy the toothpaste we liked best. So American freedoms were not what I was fighting for in Vietnam.
This begs the question: well then, what was I fighting for? What did 58,000 mostly young Americans die for in Vietnam? And what did we spend all that money on? Certainly not in defense of American freedoms.
(I could say a whole lot about that—and have often done so in writing over the years, as have a lot of other people, but here is not the time or the forum for that discussion. You might want to check out my Passing Time: Memoir of a Vietnam Veteran Against the War or Daniel Ellsberg’s Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.)
Moreover, how were American freedoms at stake in Lebanon in 1983 (where we got waxed and ultimately withdrew with our tails between our legs), or Grenada also in 1983 (where the combined might of the US military defeated an adversary with the size and firepower of the Providence, Rhode Island, police department), or Panama in 1989 (I guess you could say we “won” that one, finally arresting big bad Manuel Noriega, who had been on the CIA payroll for a couple of decades), or Iraq in 1991 (and I suppose you might call that one a win, too, though the Shiites in Basra might disagree), or Somalia in 1993 (bigtime disaster, think Black Hawk Down), or our two-decades-long war to transform Afghanistan into a modern country allied with the West (i.e. the US. How did that work out?), or Iraq (again, this time in 2003, and again: how did that work out?).
How were American freedoms at stake in any of these wars? Win, lose, or draw, life in these United States of America went merrily along without so much as a hiccup … excepting, of course, the families who got their kids, husbands, and fathers back in aluminum boxes.
For that matter, how are American freedoms at stake in the war our sitting president has already begun against Venezuela, and daily threatens to turn into a full-scale assault on that country?
Indeed, how are armed combat soldiers deployed on the streets of American cities—Los Angeles, Washington DC, Chicago, Portland, Memphis, New Orleans—serving our nation and protecting our freedoms? What kind of government deploys its armed forces against its own citizens?
In truth, it has been a very long time since the US military was actually used to protect American freedoms. (One might reasonably argue that American freedoms were never at stake in any American war except the War for Independence, the Civil War, and the Second World War, but again that is another discussion altogether.)
Meanwhile, Representative Scanlon only perpetuates the empty rhetoric of militarism, and the abject deification of military service that has taken over this country since 9/11/01, by accepting and repeating the mythology that service members are “serving our nation,” as did those who are now veterans. They are not serving the interests of the vast majority of ordinary Americans.
And if American freedoms are now at risk, it isn’t because of some foreign nation or external threat, but only because control of the government of this country has fallen into the hands of unscrupulous, bigoted, greedy, and hate-fueled people bent on erasing any vestige of diversity, tolerance, inclusion, or democracy itself.
Instead of sending me some claptrap about “collecting, preserving, and making accessible the personal accounts of U.S. military veterans,” almost none of whose service represents what Representative Scanlon claims it represents, I’d like to hear what she and her colleagues are doing to salvage what is left of this nation’s constitutional republic and our rapidly disappearing freedoms.
William “Bill” Daniel Ehrhart is an American poet, writer, scholar, and Vietnam veteran. He received the Purple Heart Medal and the Navy Combat Action Ribbon for his service in Vietnam. He holds a PhD from the University of Wales at Swansea. Ehrhart has been called “the dean of Vietnam war poetry” and is the author of more than 30 books, including Vietnam Perkasie: A Combat Marine Memoir, Passing Time: Memoir of a Vietnam Veteran Against the War, Busted: A Vietnam Veteran in Nixon’s America, and Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems. His most recent book is What We Can and Can’t Afford: Essays on Vietnam, Patriotism, and American Life(McFarland, 2023).