Presence of War,
Absence of Peace
by
Dr. Jeffrey M. Bowen
A Personal Perspective
1945-2014
Topic Sentence
Index
1. War
was all about heroes and games to a kid in the 1950s
2. Full-scale
war remained a festering possibility
3. War
anchors key American beliefs and values
4. American
studies in college highlighted the influences of war
5. We
got involved in Vietnam ,
and then hopelessly entangled
6. We
bet on the wrong side from the beginning
7. We
were accelerating toward violence internally and externally
8. Routes
into the military were complex and confusing
9. A
bureaucratic climax rapidly approached
10.
Indoctrination was an overriding purpose for
military training
11.
Perspective helped me see a bigger picture
12.
I suffered from military assignment shock
13.
This was a period known as “Vietnamization” of
the war
14.
Wartime tested family relationships
15.
Distress and comfort were oddly mixed in Vietnam
16.
I have tried to reconcile ideals with realities
17.
I felt I had to stick with it
18.
I developed psychological coping mechanisms
19.
My military service was far from over
20.
The next three years represented a delay in my
career goals
21.
The face of the military has continued to evolve
22.
The CIA has redefined the meanings of war and
peace
23.
How can we measure the impact of recent decades
of war?
24.
War and the absence of peace are now perpetual
for the U.S.
25.
Here is what I have concluded
26.
The military admittedly has provided silver
linings
27.
War and competition fuel our media entertainment
28.
We make ourselves into our own worse enemy
29.
Poor communication sets the stage for war
30.
I still hope for the best
The presence of war and absence of peace are
dual realities of multiple American generations, including my own -- the baby
boomers. Never mutually exclusive, the
two conditions seem to represent the ebb and flow of one great tide that has
continuously washed back and forth over the entire history of the United States .
The
baby boomers, that is those of us born during the 20 years or so after end of World
War II, know this unsettling dynamic better than most. The impact extends right into the present
day, though the implications are by no means fully understood.
The peace-starved quality of our time has shaped
my personal way of looking at the world. At one time more than four decades
ago, I was an actual combatant. Now in
my late sixties, I have found more time to reflect on and now write about what
I have experienced in my own generation and into the next: namely, half-ended
wars, the constant likelihood of mobilized violence, and chronic illusions of
peace.
My early awareness of American
conflicts dates from the inconclusive end of the Korean War in the early 50’s,
but even a cursory glance at our history shows the country in one kind of war
or another, not including internal conflicts, long before the American Revolution.
The United States has engaged in acts
of war that total in the hundreds.
Professional historians have
exhaustively examined the consequences of our wars. Duplicating their efforts
is not my purpose. My interest lies in
reflecting on my personal encounters with U.S. wars, related military
incursions, and peace that never stays around for long. My interpretations will be from individual
and generational perspectives. I
encourage others to try doing this if only for its therapeutic value.
Military service figures
solidly into my family history. My
father, Victor H. Bowen, was a career teacher and school administrator.
When WWII occurred, apparently he had a choice but not an obligation to
join the military. Because he was an older married man who taught in Framingham , Massachusetts Atlantic
and the Pacific theaters in WWII and was wounded in one and had his ship sunk
by a submarine in the other. My father-in-law,
Warren Warner, became a WWII Navy
draftee at age 36. Finally, my wife’s
grandfather, James Major, was a career British military man who apparently
lived up to his name most likely serving in India .
1. War was all about heroes and games to a kid in
the 1950’s. The Korean War ended before I thought much
about it. Seven years old at the time, I
did know President Eisenhower was a great war hero, and that my dad thought Ike
was wonderful. I was somehow conditioned to lionize our generals. In my childhood naïveté, war meant heroism,
glory, patriotism, and the stuff of legends.
In Laconia , New Hampshire
By the mid 1950s, the tools and
technology of war had begun to fascinate me.
I glued together and displayed a growing collection of model airplanes. My friend across the street assembled
plastic warships, and my plastic aircraft competed with his destroyers and
battleships. The experience taught me about the development of aircraft from the
biplanes of WWI to the still marvelous model of jet propulsion, the B-52.
To this day, I know the aircraft model numbers and how the jet engine
transformed the power and practice war.
In elementary school, I grew aware of the
awesome capabilities of atomic bombs, how they brought WWII to an end, and why
a simmering confrontation known as the Cold War meant we should never feel
entirely safe. To me the Cold War was a heroic battle to stop communism, which
was roundly condemned by our political leaders-- a plague that had to be rooted
out. Back then I never quite figured out
why communism was a curse, but I did grasp the notion that it suppressed freedom
and choice, and was the opposite of democracy. That someone might be a
communist party member seemed supremely important as Senator McCarthy’s
hearings played out on our early TV. T
Looking
back, I understand why spying became such a pervasive preoccupation. In the Cold War atmosphere of the 1950’s, communication
between superpowers was formal and contentious at best. Diplomacy proved ineffective when confronted
by the spectacle of Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev pounding his
shoe on the table at the United Nations and threatening the U.S. in no
uncertain terms. Our troubled relationship
with the Soviet Union was complicated in the mid 1950’s when Captain Gary
Powers’ U-2 spy plane was shot down inside Russia .
The relationship is still troubled. Ensconced in Moscow , former National Security Agency
employee Edward Snowden has publicly released millions of pieces of highly confidential
data produced from technology-enhanced spying by the NSA. The international acrimony this has caused is
two-faced. Every country conducts
espionage. The spy business seems to be the fulcrum on a
balance between diplomacy and military action.
The U.S.
has a globally embarrassing habit of letting our own misgivings about
collecting confidential data hoist us onto the short end of the seesaw.
2. Full-scale war remained a festering
possibility. As a high school senior, the
fester broke into an open sore as our civics class nervously tracked the
sketchy details of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the brinksmanship of our
blockade of Cuba
in response to missiles being installed on the island by the Soviets. About
this time, given all the media coverage, I became more aware of the partitioning
of Germany and the city of Berlin . We got to know “Checkpoint Charlie” and all
about the drama and carnage associated with attempts to escape to the West
over, around, and under the Berlin Wall.
What
we were largely ignoring, according to historian Stanley Karnow, was that by 1963
we were spending $400 million annually on the other side of world to support
the South Vietnamese. Twelve thousand
military advisers were serving there; fifty of them had been killed while I was
still in high school.
3. War anchors key American beliefs and values. I took several U.S. history courses in secondary
school. In those days we called it
social studies. In some ways it was
anything but. Wars served as key
chronological hitching posts for economic and civic history. Abundantly
impressed on us in those classes was the idea that American ideals and governance
were morally superior—something the rest of the world should emulate and
benefit from if only we provided the forgiveness and resources to enable the
vanquished to rise from ruins. Our
global leadership to “make the world safe for democracy”, as Woodrow Wilson put
it, was imperative.
This kind of nationalistic passion
inspired the topics I wrote into original oratory I presented at many National
Forensic League tournaments my junior and senior years in high school. My
approach to oratory was to build different characters into my speeches and then
to play their roles in turn, sometimes using their quotes and sometimes using
my imagination. Characters like Hitler and Genghis Kahn found their way
into contrasts I developed to glorify American spirit typically embodied in
characters like Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and Dr. Tom Dooley.
4. American studies in college highlighted the
influences of war. In my first semester as a
junior (1965) at Williams College in Williamstown ,
Massachusetts
One is
that asking WHY questions is a historical challenge because the ground shifts
every time a new historian addresses a topic and looks at it from a current
perspective. The study of these shifts is called historiography. It is treacherous ground. What is
more, trying to get at the truths through original source documents can be
deceiving among other reasons because what the writers really believe and what
they record as facts for posterity may be worlds apart. The lens of the present
always distorts the reality of the past, so over time each war gets interpreted
in an ever evolving sequence.
Second, the meaning of national security,
essentially since the end of WWII, has dramatically changed. During the
last half of the 20th century it no longer was defined as a matter of
protecting our physical boundaries. Instead the U.S. repeatedly intervened in the
affairs of countries everywhere in the world where strategic economic or
political issues presented opportunities to nurture democracy and capitalism.
These days our conception of national
security has morphed again as terrorism threatens our physical well being at
every corner. Disasters like 9/11
and the jihad-warped belief that glory lies in destroying the infidels and
incinerating oneself have once again redefined the relationship between
national security and physical boundaries.
Across the world, our property interests have been expanded by
embassies, American-owned businesses, and territory we view as ours.
The
latest breeding ground of national security issues is social media.
Disclosures of sensitive intelligence data via the internet have generated
hand-wringing and outrage. While disclosures of this kind are an
embarrassment to American diplomacy, they seem unlikely by themselves to
precipitate wars. The point is that national security undergoes iterative
redefinitions, and as it does it makes changes in the reasons and
communication associated with war.
A third important realization from my honors
course and related college major was that novels like John Dos Passos' 1919
and Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead could tell historically
authentic and nuanced stories about war, usually in ways that are much more
interesting than chronicles or supposedly factual descriptions. As a first year
teacher, I would use Dos Passos again to co-teach a mini-course or seminar
about WWI with a fellow English teacher.
We tried to make history and literature complement each other.
5. We got involved in Vietnam U.S.
military action in Vietnam
had spawned growing protests especially on college campuses. Perhaps part
of the collegiate distress had to do with reports of growing numbers of American
soldiers dying without declared war or compelling purpose, but I think another
part was fear among students that they would be drafted and have their future
career plans disrupted. Eligibility became a stressful, complicated
preoccupation. There were 18 different
classifications. The most common were
the following: “2 S” meant you were still a student and not eligible for
the draft; “4F” meant you were unfit for service (usually due to your
medical or health condition); and “1A” signified your availability to enter the
service. Draft boards and eligibility, alternative service routes like the
Peace Corps or Vista, conscientious objector status, the National Guard and the
Reserves, and even escaping the draft altogether and moving to Canada: All of these and more became topics of heated
and urgent discussion as students like me tried to figure out how to pursue
additional college work and delay or short circuit being drafted into military
service.
The compulsory aspect of it irked young
people. Conscription seemed unfair when we were involved in a war that struck
most of us as disingenuous and potentially unwinnable. Supposedly we were
trying to preserve democracy and thwart communism. The trouble was that the definitions of these
terms in a Vietnam
context were unmercifully muddy. General
Maxwell Taylor, in 1965 about to serve as Lyndon Johnson’s ambassador to Saigon , visited our college campus and was met by a big crowd
of anxious, angry students who peppered him with ungracious questions. In retrospect, the students would have wholeheartedly
agreed with Taylor ’s
post-war observations, as quoted by historian Stanley Karnow: “First, we didn’t
know ourselves. We thought we were going
into another Korean War, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn’t know our South Vietnamese
allies. We never understood them. And we knew even less about North Vietnam . Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our
allies and know ourselves, we’d better keep out of this kind of dirty
business. It’s very dangerous.”
The so-called democratic regime we were
supporting was riddled with corruption and incompetence. The communists,
on the other hand, seemed far more committed, well organized for successful
guerilla jungle tactics, and historically validated by successful efforts to
prevent the Chinese and French from taking over, respectively to either advance
their brand of communism, and for the sake of unification. But the
north and south represented all Vietnamese, so evidently we were interfering in
what was civil war. We were expensively propping up a “puppet” regime
predicated on an Eisenhower era misconception that if one country went
communist, the rest would follow across the Far East
like falling dominos.
6. We bet on the wrong side from the beginning. The
North Vietnamese were tenacious, and we underestimated their willingness
to die for their homeland for the sake of capturing and controlling it. It was difficult to determine when or if any
progress toward a resolution was being made.
Our initial involvement reminds me of the bonds the Lilliputians tied
around Gulliver when he was dozing. We were trapped when we finally woke
from our slumber.
Our engagement was based on a vague and
outdated rationale, and staying involved after about 1968 was more a matter of
fighting to salvage peace than anything else.
Our involvement in combination with the noxious mandatory feature of the
draft was loudly resisted by young people who were increasingly distrustful of
adult authority, including generals, ambassadors, and national politicians.
The idea of staging sit-ins and
organized protests to get one’s message across was familiar and effective
because it had been used with vivid results, media coverage, and political
clout by blacks trying to eradicate discrimination throughout the 1960s.
Students on college campuses embraced this strategy as a way to
publicize their opposition to war.
7. We were accelerating
toward violence internally and externally. I remember vividly that someone
announced the onset of Israel ’s
seven-day war with Egypt
right in the middle of senior-year social history final at Williams. By 1968 the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had
launched a “Tet” offensive that showed they could attack almost anywhere at any
time. Their losses were substantial
compared to ours, but the media used this to convince the American public our
forces were vulnerable and ineffective. Meanwhile,
that same year, Bobby Kennedy was murdered in yet another tragic act of
violence without clear motive. And again
in that same year, while I was studying at Johns
Hopkins University
in downtown Baltimore , my new wife and I
fearfully watched the National Guard patrol streets in armored vehicles as race
riots, fires, and looting destroyed parts of downtown and routes into Washington , D.C.
At the intersection of college graduation
and grad school, we witnessed a flood of overseas war and domestic violent
riots and unrest over race issues.
These simultaneous problems were something that everyone wanted to
condemn, stop, get out of or avoid in one way or another. It would
not be long before Vietnam
would drag me in and pivotally influence the rest of my life.
8. Routes into military service were complex and
confusing. Just among
my closest college friends, one went to officer school for the Army and spent
two years assigned to “intelligence” services. Another went to Woodrow
Wilson grad school at Princeton and ended up working in a quasi-military
capacity in Washington
working in a special assignment that involved setting up the lottery system for
drafting young men. Still another fainted at the sight of blood. He took a physical which validated his
problem and gave him a medical exemption. He ended up going into Vista , the domestic equivalent of the Peace Corps, where
he spent a couple of years.
In
my case, a master of arts in teaching (MAT) program at Johns Hopkins gave me
time to complete one full year of studying history in preparation to teach it.
The following year, a little more than a year after getting married, I
received cancellation of my student classification status and a draft notice to
report within 30 days -- all on Valentine’s Day. Prior to that
prospective drop dead date, serving as a first-year teacher on internship
through the my grad program at Johns Hopkins, I had spent most all my time
trying to stay one step ahead of some pretty sharp high school juniors
and seniors in five different American history classes.
I had discovered my school district’s
prescribed voluminous college-oriented American history text was a poor way to
get articulate and maturing high schoolers involved in dialogue. Like the
textbooks of yore (although much richer in detail), our textbook organized
history into an endless sequence of wars from the Revolution through the Korean
War. Rather than retracing events and
facts that were stuck in the past, I found a better way to motivate my students
was to make topics current, for example by comparing the past and present causes
and effects of war and inviting them to debate the relevant issues.
Also,
I teamed up with a fellow English teacher who was an intern from Johns Hopkins
and volunteered to teach a mini-course that examined perspectives on war
through novels. We were acutely aware of the current war partly because
we were teaching at Bethesda-Chevy
Chase High
School
After I received my draft notice telling
me to report within 30 days, I turned considerable attention to taking
tests to try to qualify for officer candidate school, while also trying to get
into the N.H. National Guard. This last effort failed even though I
importuned my N.H. Senator McIntyre to intervene because, according to
General Hershey, whose office was in charge of the draft, once you received a
draft notice, you could not alternatively enter an inactive branch of military
service -- even though there were plenty of openings.
As for the tests, my math was too rusty
to pass. I vividly remember the five-hour USAF test because I scored well
on all sections except the one that asked us to read topographical maps to
determine if we could be adept at determining where bombs should be dropped.
I failed that part with a zero score! Even now, maps give me
trouble. I like landmarks and ideas much better. I was ready to try the
tests again, but the waiting period was six months, and I couldn’t wait that
long.
9. A bureaucratic climax rapidly approached. Since the teaching was an
internship requirement for my degree, and since I was also receiving a
full-time teaching salary, the situation was complicated enough to convince me
that talking with my local draft board could help my plight. I suspected
that board figured I was just another errant draft dodger whose dad happened to
be the local superintendent of schools.
I made an appointment with the board in Laconia , N.H.
10. Indoctrination was an overriding purpose for
military training. In September, 1969 I began six
weeks of basic training as an enlistee at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio , Texas
11. Perspective helped me see a bigger picture. In
combat situations, simply to manage a group of individuals efficiently and to
keep them solely on task, one has to count on unquestioned authority. Penalties (and parsimonious rewards),
threats, sanctions, symbols (e.g. medals and stripes), symbolic gestures (e.g.
salutes) and always obeying one’s superiors (officers) were essential when
group mobilization became necessary. To
make military service work, you needed far more than weaponry; you needed
powerful psychology.
12. I suffered from military assignment shock. About
three days in, I learned firsthand why recruiters cannot be trusted. In a
group briefing, those of us who were “education specialists” were asked to
raise our hands. The sergeant running that briefing then said (I swear he
chucked), “Ah-ha, this means you will go directly to Saigon
where you will teach Vietnamese to speak English and probably get shot at.”
That very week, the papers reported explosions at the language training
school in downtown Saigon , which was my future
destination. My career field guarantee was a sham. My assignment
was to go to Vietnam to teach future South Vietnamese aircraft or helicopter
pilots conversational English in preparation for their being sent stateside to
learn technical skills that would prepare them to take over the military effort
from the Americans in Vietnam.
13. This was a period known as “Vietnamization”
of the Vietnam War.
This initiative turned out to be a farce, but it was also an escape
hatch. President Nixon, Secretary of
State Kissinger, and Defense Secretary McNamara had figured out how to extract
us from a hugely unpopular war without immediately losing face or worse. Like
the original war itself, the policy was an exercise in futility from the
beginning.
14. Wartime tested family relationships. Throughout this trying period, my wife Hillary earned virtual
sainthood. Married only two years, with just a high school diploma
at the time, she took a series of low-paying jobs to help us get by, learned
how to deal with a cockroach-infested graduate apartment with fellow student
visitors at all hours, and to cook with help from Fanny Farmer. Never
once did she complain or waiver in her commitment to help us get through the
military and Vietnam .
When I sat in “casual control” at Lackland Air Base, waiting for tech
school to begin, she traveled down from N.H. and we rented an off-base
apartment in a low-rent San Antonio
neighborhood and bought a basset hound to keep her company. With daily
permission from my supervisor, I was allowed to go off base to be with her each
night. She stayed with this routine patiently, right through the end of
tech school when we traveled back to N.H. for a brief break before I had to
report for duty and travel to South
Vietnam .
Throughout the next year, she worked in
the Laconia High School Nam
to be assured I was alive and well. An attack was always a possibility. We were acutely aware that several of my high
school classmates had died in the war.
One was a debate-team star on his way to a political career. He gambled on going enlisted in the Army and died
in gunfire as he sat in a typing pool in an office on the edge of a base. Before the end of the war, one in 10 who
served there had become a casualty.
15. Distress and comfort were oddly mixed in Vietnam
Thus trained, I embarked on a full year away on the other
side of the world where I taught South Vietnamese enlisted men and officers in
schools in Saigon for four months, and Nha
Trang, midway up the South Vietnamese sea coast, for another eight months.
Eventually that year we learned that ARVN
(Army of the Republic
of Vietnam Vietnam ,
so the solution for instructors was to find catalogues or magazines that would
illustrate word meanings. The Sears
catalogue was a valuable asset. Our purpose
was not to enable expertise in technical terms, but rather to effectuate basic
competence in conversational English.
Unfortunately, once students graduated, many
were delayed for weeks in “casual control” before being sent statewide to learn
the technical side of flying planes and helicopters. During those
lingering weeks still in-country, the students would regress pretty quickly in
their English conversational capability. We never learned how many made
it to the States, but if they got there, learned well at tech school, and came
back to fly or repair our donated aircraft, ironically they were prolonging a
war that could be won only by guerilla tactics, not by our propaganda (trying
to win the “hearts and minds” as our leaders put it) or by dropping bombs and firing
missiles.
Our equipment, supplies, and facilities (air
fields, hospitals, planes, etc.) were incrementally turned over to the
Vietnamese so they could maintain the war effort with our minimal
assistance. Ironically, we had to ask
their permission to use our own jeeps, or to “borrow” movies to watch in our
spare time. This was a strange and frustrating reversal of authority.
Fortunately, we discovered we could hold on to some of our amenities by
gifting the Vietnamese with Salem
mentholated cigarettes, a precious BX commodity which they in turn could sell
and profit from on the black market.
I
spent the final eight months of my year-long tour in a beautiful but war-worn
seaside community halfway up the South Vietnam coast. I understand why the French considered it the
Riviera of the Far East . I can see why. A long sandy beach to which we had access
stretched from our barbed-wire-ringed complex of beach villas into town. Compared to many serving in Vietnam , our
protection from combat and our comparative luxury made life surprisingly
comfortable. The adjoining air base had
been essentially turned over to the ARVN, and our personal contacts with the
South Vietnamese were restrained but very friendly. However, as might be expected from any group
of American servicemen in an unfamiliar war zone overseas, we tended to gripe
and find fault wherever we could.
The food service operation was a sore
point. The air base cafeteria was
managed by the Vietnamese, and we suspected as a result most of the food
supplies and funding were siphoned to the black market, leaving us with meals that
tasted lousy and looked worse. We escaped real deprivation by borrowing
jeeps from our Vietnamese liaisons and driving over to the nearby Army base or
Green Beret base, or even the Navy base, where U.S. military food managers had
somehow connived to maintain control and keep the food supply lines free of
corruption. Their meals were quite abundant and tasty, but it was
difficult to get to one of these alternative bases, and our doing so was
frowned on by the officers.
In some respects, this logistically
sums up how my Vietnam
experience went. You survived or succeeded by maneuvering around the
established system and the rules. Scrounging was practically an art
form. You had to figure out who knew whom, and how you could get them to
give you leeway, a choice, or some device that would better your situation.
Few on my advisory team really expected our USAF supervisors would always
play fairly, or that they were any more committed than we were to preserving
democracy, safety and happiness for the South Vietnamese. Most were career senior or chief master
sergeants. Some tended to resent college
graduates, and all 30 on my team were.
We resented back, but also realized they were constrained by their commanding
officers and the prevailing policy of deferring to the South Vietnamese
military commanders. Everyone seemed to
be making the best of an unavoidable situation, attempting to endure their tour
of duty in a hot and steamy climate as comfortably as possible.
Quite
honestly, after enduring Saigon for four months where we lived in a run-down
hotel in the Chinese section known as Cholon, taught in a school ringed with
opium dens, and at times choked on the stench of open sewers and motor bike
fumes, the lucky few of us who volunteered and were selected for Nha Trang found
it a refreshing change. The weather was
better (monsoon season had ended there, while just starting in steamy Saigon ). There
were plenty of BX luxuries such as classy cameras and stereo equipment for
installation in our beach villas.
Communications from home made life easier as
well, as Hillary and I exchanged audio tapes routinely, and regularly she sent
gifts such as cookies and at Christmas, a little tree with decorations to
boot. Halfway through a year’s tour,
there was an available (but too costly for me) option to take a week-long break
in Hawaii , Japan ,
or Australia .
Despite this, my advisory team and I
complained about hardships. In longer
perspective, it has become easy to emphasize what most people expect--dire conditions
of war and injustice; but in fact, we had it much easier than many would
believe. Undoubtedly we were far better
off physically and psychologically than the Army “grunts” who had to fly into
the interior or wade through the swamps on patrol.
When physical threats occurred at Nha Trang,
they were rare and bizarre. Mortar attacks from the nearby mountains
occurred once in awhile, but all of them were directed at the joint fuel dump
which was located on the other side of the air base from our housing. The
casualties from those attacks were all Vietnamese because the shacks and
shelters built by the population displaced by the war were restricted to land
adjoining the fuel dumps.
One strange evening all hell broke loose up
the road from our housing. It sounded like a major fire fight, so we put
on our flak jackets, grabbed our M-16’s, and took shelter under our beds,
waiting for the all clear sirens. As it turned out, with South Vietnamese
security personnel, stationed near the Navy ship that provided electricity to
the bases clustered in the area, had fired rounds at some imaginary target,
thereby causing other security units to fire back at will -- wherever they
thought they saw the enemy. After a half hour of apparently aimless
crossfire, someone must have said, “Wait a minute! No Viet Cong are
anywhere around here. Let’s stop!” I was quite sheltered from
dangerous acts of war during my stint, but I was definitely exposed to acts of
both American and Vietnamese stupidity.
16. I have tried to reconcile ideals with
realities. To this day I find it difficult to reconcile
the policy and conduct of the war with my beliefs and observations. I felt a
duty to serve, but I thought the Vietnam was an absolutely stupid
intervention at the same time. I couldn’t convince myself that I honestly
objected to war on moral grounds. I looked at the paperwork a potential
conscientious objector had to complete. I could not muster a firm moral
objection to what I was doing. But I
strongly objected to it on other grounds.
I just thought it was just tragically shortsighted, and downright
devoid of strategic or economic value.
I was unwilling to avoid service,
or more specifically a stint in Vietnam ,
by escaping to Canada --or
into some alternative kind of service. I thought serving was the
honorable thing to do. I couldn’t quite forget I had solemnly
promised by draft board I would do so. A patriotic impetus of some sort
motivated me, maybe derived from my history of high school oratory, my college
studies of American Civilization, or possibly little more than an appreciation
of the benefits and opportunities of American life. I tended to
resent draft resisters and felt they were disingenuous at best, largely because
I knew most, like me, were paying only lip service to moral objections, and
instead they were simply trying to escape an undesirable fate, not because they
truly believed war was immoral.
17. I felt I had to stick with it.
Yet I felt betrayed, at times obviously lied to; supervised poorly and at
times manipulated by guys who were enlisted career military (aka “lifers”) but
who were nowhere near as intelligent, educated, or as thoughtful as I was;
treated in unbendable ways by a system that did not recognize the real values
of advanced education or professional qualifications; unheeded by a military
establishment and political decision makers who did not play by honorable
rules. Our civilian leadership supported transparent dictators, and
allowed our resources to be grossly abused, stolen, or squandered. They made
excuses, lied or were simply terribly misinformed by senior military staff
(generals) about the progress of the war and how things were going. The
waste of human and material resources was just appalling, but still I felt I
had to endure it so as not to compromise my integrity as well as my future
career. I was not rebellious. I didn’t even try to think through
how I might either reverse or take revenge for my military misfortune.
At most I hoped that others with clout
or influence might honestly and truthfully come to their senses and cut the
losses of American life immediately. I realized the American public
deserved to know what a fraud we were perpetrating, a face-saving game we were
inevitably going to lose. But then I thought the folks back home probably
already knew because the stateside reports we received in Nam were chronically negative and
bitterly opposed to the war’s continuation . I knew that many
Americans believed we were following the best course to extract ourselves
gracefully, but I also saw the daily body counts and knew most
Americans had no idea how absurd it was to think that a largely rural, mostly
uneducated, peacefully inclined, unorganized and certainly small-time
agricultural people would ever handle the sophisticated weaponry,
logistics, facilities and strategies necessary even to preserve the status quo,
let alone change it. After all, we were continually on the
defensive based the efforts of our own personnel and our naive efforts at propaganda,
so how did we ever really expect that the South Vietnamese could triumph
against their own relatives?
Like all of my USAF advisory group members, I
knew that opposition to the war at home would make any positive statewide
welcome unlikely. In obvious contrast to the hero welcome given to
today’s veterans, when we arrived at the Seattle
airport in 1970, we felt rather embarrassed and over-exposed in our military
gear, so we stuffed our boots and fatigues into bathroom waste baskets and got
into civilian clothes as quickly as possible. We wanted to be
inconspicuous. No one wanted to be reminded of the American tragedies in Vietnam ,
including ourselves.
18. I developed psychological coping mechanisms. The one I fashioned during and after
my Vietnam
tour was to rationalize that life would always throw me nasty curves and
produce potentially negative choices. But for every curve or negative
option there was something positive that I could learn and take away --
something that on balance would be a long-range gain. The key was to
focus on whatever good could be scrounged, salvaged, and treasured in every
lousy situation. In other words, the cloud always has some silver
lining, you just have to look for it and learn from it, and grow stronger. You
had to expect that no one would give that to you as a gift. It had to be
earned and re-earned every time an adverse circumstance appeared. Really,
ever since then, I have looked at life this way.
19. My military service was far from over. The lowest
point came toward the end of my year in Vietnam when everyone on my
advisory team received a so-called dream sheet. It allowed each of us --
and all of us were college graduates -- to list up to 10 bases we preferred to
be stationed at when we returned. Also, we were told that when we
returned stateside, we would have one of three positions, and we could choose
one of them. The three choices were: corrosion specialist (rust remover),
painter, or military police. On behalf of our team of 30 college grads,
two of us went to our enlisted “lifer” supervisor, a senior master
sergeant. To paraphrase, we said, “You have got to be kidding! This
is nuts!” Surely you can give us better choices than this! We
are all college graduates and we can do more for the USAF in some field that
will use our education and qualifications!”
Ultimately the argument was recognized
to some extent, and my accepted choice from a revised list was to become an
on-the-job training coordinator in a base hospital. This meant I would
keep records on the squadron’s physical fitness, weight, and maintain records
of their completion of on-the-job-training in various levels of their hospital
specialties. I was a paper pusher, although the military’s OJT learning
system surely is one of the best and most effective that I have ever encountered. The real deus ex machina in this work (again
a matter of trying to be resourceful and find my own way to a comfortable
landing spot within a massive system) was getting placed in a hospital where I
knew there would be air conditioning. Most of the bases stateside were in
hot, dusty locations where the terrain was flat for aircraft. I wanted to
stay cool, and do something administrative, simple as that.
I also hoped one of my choices for a base
would be in the Northeast where my wife and I had aging parents. Only one
of my 10 choices was elsewhere because I couldn’t find a 10th base in the
northeast. I made my 10th and last choice as Beale AFB, a SAC
base located in California ’s Sacramento Valley
There was also a squadron of B-52’s and
two squadrons of KC-135 tankers to fuel them.
I knew these well from my childhood model-building days. Not long
after moving into an off-base garden apartment, we met and became lifelong
friends with one of the pilots, actually the youngest aircraft commander in the
USAF at the time. Jack Johnson and others in our apartment complex were
officers, but that meant little to ourselves and our wives off base or
interpersonally. Jack’s officer pay did
enable him and his wife Jenny to afford
a two-bedroom apartment, whereas we had to scrape by to pay the rent for a one
bedroom.
The biggest fringe benefit from
our location was that it was just over the Sierras from my sister who lived in Reno , Nevada Cambodia , the area to
which the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong escaped when they weren’t attacking
inside the Vietnam
border. We watched out for Jack’s wife while he was gone. While
they have long since retired from the Air Force (Jack as a colonel) and moved
down south, we will always remember the bonds of friendship we forged in
wartime and under duress.
20. The next three years represented a delay in
my career goals. I
wanted to get into school administration or college teaching, or even return to
high school teaching. But in the
meantime there were plenty of good times, with trips to San
Francisco , Reno , and camping up the California coast.
In our off-base apartment complex, we became friends with many USAF
families, including tanker pilot Al Hill and his spouse Ellie, both of whom
went on afterwards to Stanford
Business School
When the time came for an early release
from active duty, I got an honorable discharge as a four-stripe staff sergeant,
along with an Air Force meritorious service award for the overseas teaching
stint. I had applied for and had been accepted with a full
fellowship in a doctoral program in educational administration at the State
University of N.Y. at Albany .
Meanwhile Hillary was on her way to delivering our first child -- Carrie,
in Albany ,
1973. One of the military’s silver-lining gifts was the GI bill which
paid me a modest monthly living stipend through the next two years of
schooling.
21. The face of the military has continued to
evolve. Two years later,
when Saigon fell, it hardly surprised us.
The intensity and immediacy of war had long since abated for us. But the summary of numbers remains
staggering. Within my generation, as
reported on multiple web sites, 9.7% are Vietnam vets. From 1964 through 1975, about 9 million GI’s
served. From 1965 on, about 2.7 million
did so within the geographical boundaries of Vietnam . The number who died in action topped 40,000,
while another five thousand died of their wounds, and nine thousand died in
related accidents. More than 200,000
military personnel were injured.
In a comprehensive demographic review
of the military in 2004, published by the Population Reference Bureau, authors
David and Mady Segal point to the far-reaching economic implications of
abolishing the draft in 1973. For the
first time, the military entered the civilian labor market, and competitively
became the largest single labor force in the nation. The transition to a military that dominates
employment in certain city locations across the country, and is a major factor
in at least 30 states, has intensified ever since. In the early 2000s we were home to about 26
million vets. Today we recruit
approximately 200,000 men and women annually.
Stateside only their total exceeds 1.1 million. Their
combined influence is a driver in our domestic economy, while continued
presence overseas is striking. We maintain
a far higher proportion of our military overseas than does any other country in
the world. They are stationed in 150
different countries, more than 75 percent of the total worldwide, and the
active-duty count is about 164,000. This makes the current-day American military
more of an expeditionary force than the home-based forces found in other countries.
On a
more personal level, by the mid 1970s our attentions had turned to doctoral
dissertations, two babies (Seth was born in 1976), and gainful employment. The military did come back to visit us
periodically, as several USAF advisory team friends and my hospital squadron
commander, Lieutenant Rubenstein, paid us visits. We always suspected the
Lieutenant was bisexual, and I think he visited us from NYC just to be sure we
realized this. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was
the silent rule we followed throughout my service. It was a comfort to
the Lieutenant that we suspected his life style well in advance, and assured
him we were definitely OK with it. It
has taken years for the military establishment and the general public to
condone bisexuality in the military.
War percolated up on our national horizons
and in our concerns throughout the following decades. What we witnessed
was an evolution in the types of wars the U.S. engaged in. It was
episodic, typically involving evacuations, logistical support, rescues,
training, deployment in support or in conjunction with multinational
initiatives, restorations of other governments’ “sovereignty” (Lebanon, 1982),
restoration of law and order (Grenada, 1983), interceptions of hijackers,
escorting threatened oil tankers, safeguarding the Panama Canal (1988),
wars on drugs, repelling coups (Philippines, 1989) and many more purposes.
Interventions spanned Central America,
Africa, Bosnia ,
and by 1990-91, a war with a name -- the Gulf War or Operation Desert Storm.
By 2001, the horrifying act of terrorism that brought down the Twin
Towers in NYC and damaged the Pentagon, killing several thousand Americans,
precipitated combat preparedness by the U.S. on a global scale, as President
Bush acted under authorization by the “War Powers Resolution” to “prevent and
deter terrorism”. This turned out to be the mother of all open-ended
commitments. In October of 2001, the President reported that U.S. armed forces had begun combat operations in
Afghanistan
against Al Qaida terrorists and their Taliban supporters. Thus began a
decade of “global war on terrorism” with pus-oozing highlights such as the wars
in Iraq , Afghanistan , Kosovo, and Libya , among other countries.
Studies cited and annotated by S. Brian Wilson
present some startling statistics. Based mostly on U.S. public government reports, it is
estimated that some 70 nations hosted U.S. bases and installations at the
end of WWII. Since then, amid ongoing nuclear-infused antagonism
between ourselves and the Russians, Chinese, and others, U.S. military bases have been used to support
more than 200 military interventions in the Third World, and that is just
through 1991 (Gerson, J. and Birchard, B. eds., (1991) The Sun Never Sets).
22. The CIA has redefined the meanings of war and peace. When
President Harry Truman signed a national security directive in 1948 that
authorized covert operations, followed by the inception of the CIA the
following year, it triggered and still is used to validate thousands of covert operations
by the U.S. ranging from what S. Brian Wilson catalogues as “assassination
attempts, government overthrows and paramilitary operations, propaganda
efforts, interference in free elections, and economic destabilization
campaigns.” As reported by prominent retired CIA Director John Stockwell,
and tabulated further by Mr. Wilson, between 1947 and 1990, the U.S. “conducted
about 3,000 major and as many as 10,000 minor covert operations...killing at
least 6 million, with some estimates claiming 20 million, and even 50 million
deaths due to small wars within the Cole War since the end of WWII.”
23. How can we measure the impact of recent
decades of war? The numbers alone are big and
revealing. We are home to just approximately 22 million
war veterans, though thankfully our youngest ones (18-35) are far smaller in
number (1.8 million) than our older veterans (over 65 like me) who add up to
9.6 million, upwards of half of all American vets. As overseas war
casualties have mounted, especially from the Persian Gulf Wars, post traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) has proliferated -- a phenomenon not clearly identified
clearly until after Vietnam .
Since 2001, the Department of Veterans
Affairs reports, we have sent more than 2 million soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan . The cost of
treating all veterans, including those with PTSD, amounts to an estimated $48
billion. Suicides are one of the nastier side effects of our
constant state of war. Recently, based on survey estimates
involving less than half of the states, suicides among military veterans
have reached 22 per day, a rate of one every hour. The highest rates of
suicide are among Vietnam
veterans, who reportedly are the least likely to seek help because they tend to
be extremely distrustful of government. From personal experience, I don’t
wonder why.
Partly due to our economic troubles, and
partly because career opportunities are amply available through our military,
more and more females have been joining the ranks. The number is
comparatively modest (1.6 million veterans compared to the 21.2 million
total), but increasingly, as they take on combat roles, they are encountering
and pushing against barriers of sexual discrimination.
24. War and the absence of peace are now
perpetual for the United
States America ’s
military motivations in recent years. For this century alone, “war in
perpetuity” could be called an American slogan. Just recently, at 14
years old, our intervention in Afghanistan has been declared our
longest foreign war. Throughout my life,
the military has been big business. The economic benefits of remaining on
a war footing have motivated business interests, allied with political and
military leadership, to keep us inextricably involved in testing, producing,
marketing and using the weaponry of war. Indeed, war has been and
continues to be a dominant factor in our government purchases,
investments, and taxation; in our international diplomacy; in our medical
and social services; in our efforts to maintain civil order or to address
natural disasters; in our institutional education (e.g. career
opportunity) and entertainment (e.g. Army-Navy football game); and surely
in the disruption and anxieties it has spawned in American family life.
How have all these interventions affected my
family and me? Thankfully, since my four years in the USAF, not too much, as my
son, son-in-law, and three nephews had no draft to contend with, and their ages
and lack of interest in the Reserves or the National Guard helped them avoid
our Persian Gulf wars and additional military
engagements.
In 2013-14, now retired from a career in
public educational administration, I have spent some time reflecting on the
floods of war and the temporary ebbs of peace that have influenced our lives.
25. Here is what I have concluded. American cultural traditions and our policies
and practice, really since 1798, have revolved around wars -- preparations for
it, diplomacy linked to it, and all the equipment, technology, and violent
predispositions that must often make us an intimidating and unpredictable force
throughout the world. Americans are capable of amazing acts of kindness
and generosity, but it is no coincidence, in fact it is a constitutional right,
that we own a huge array of weapons and use them frequently to fight wars
against others and to commit crimes against ourselves.
Our ongoing sequence of our wars, the
continuous unpeaceful brinksmanship associated with maintaining devastating
weaponry, and our chronic involvement in smaller-scale interventions have
implications that extend far into the future.
One of the most dramatic is the use of nuclear power. At the birth of my awareness of war lingers a
horrific coup de grace, a sudden end to a worldwide war delivered by atomic
bombs that killed some 220,000 Japanese and injured 100,000 more. Through my life, and certainly now, the
capability to make an atomic bomb and the international attention given to
stockpiles and conditions that might cause a nuclear holocaust are tense
concerns for multiple generations. On the other hand, positive peacetime
applications of nuclear power include huge sources of low-cost energy with
commensurate reductions in carbon-based pollution. Unfortunately, nuclear
energy has produced intractable problems represented by diplomatic maneuvers of
the scariest kind and potential radioactive contamination that could last for
centuries.
Continuing in a positive vein, historically,
military service has ameliorated racial and ethnic discrimination. Today
11.3 percent of our veterans are black, and 5.7 percent are Hispanic, according
to the 2012 American Community Survey. Related technology, and even the
poison gasses we currently so condemn in Syria , have led to medications and
treatments that have significantly blunted the effects of cancer and other
diseases. War has demanded technological innovations to fight more
effectively. Americans tend to be resourceful inventors, so adaptations
in electronic communications, for example, have made us worldwide leaders in
the global economy. As for transportation, the civilian Hummer vehicle
symbolizes the extent to which military technology has found its way into our
automotive industry. GPS locator systems and many different radar and
sonar applications are military in origin but now are a routine, sometimes
lifesaving feature of our lives.
Only 11 times in our history have we formally
declared war on other nations. This entailed five separate wars.
But our nearly countless undeclared wars and covert operations, and our
cooperative forays with other allies, are a constant reminder that our
strategic interests -- our military bullying if you want to call it that --
span the world and victimize especially those Third World
countries that cannot do much about our interference.
Terrorism has demanded constant vigilance and
security-mindedness. We remain continually ready to protect ourselves and
our allies almost regardless of our physical boundaries. However,
hundreds of years before anti-terrorism became our declared mission, the U.S.
was perpetrating warlike acts with surprising frequency.
We have played a leading role in developing
institutions like the League of Nations and
the United Nations to preserve and hopefully control international peace. The mechanisms we have developed to maintain
international diplomacy and prevent open war are no less impressive than our
direct investments in keeping American soldiers in a well equipped state of
combat readiness. Tragic implications for the future can be found in our
chronic tendency to pursue avenues that lead us to war internally, and with
other countries, and on an everyday basis as our citizens murder and maim one
another with weapons really designed for nothing beyond military use (i.e. killing
people).
26. The military admittedly has provided silver
linings. There are compensating factors for what
otherwise sounds like utter condemnation of American militarism and violence.
One is our extraordinary effort to honor those who have fought for us in
wars, and to support their families. We try to make sure they are
remembered as heroes, even though many are buried due to senseless acts of
violence in faraway lands. Our government provides free medical care,
reduced prices at BX’s, and other on-base-related benefits to the extent that
living on an American military base is a comparatively comfortable experience.
As for those who are no longer active, all kinds of counseling and social
support systems such as the VA and VFW are abundant. Our charities,
schools, and other nonprofit entities seek all kinds of donations that can be
sent to service men and women especially in the Middle
East .
Finally, my first post-military silver lining
of VA educational benefits was followed by a second one that was just as
valuable: a VA mortgage with no down payment on our current home in Delevan , N.Y.
There were some interesting war-related
revelations when I recently attended my 50th high school reunion in Laconia , New
Hampshire Vietnam
engulfed us. More of my classmates than I realized had served in that war
and during that time. All in all, most everyone trudged into or around
the bureaucracy and paid their military dues, once in a while making it a
career, sometimes simply using GI Bill educational benefits to advantage, but
ultimately moving past the war and into successful careers and domestic life.
These days the United States restlessly stands on
the precipice of war because of terrorism seems rampant. This reality dramatically
contrasts with the widespread perception of invulnerability we enjoyed some 50
years ago. The immediacy of violence is a signal feature of contemporary
American life. Suicide bombing, drones, and projectiles fired from
military-style weaponry have turned acts of violence into an omnipresent
phenomenon. When murders are committed in this country, with
frightening frequency they have military implications either because veterans
are involved, or because military strategies and weaponry are used.
27. War and
competitions fuel our media entertainment. An ever changing schedule of
films and tv shows based on thwarting terrorism and war, and athletic
competition like hockey, football, and mixed martial arts, convincingly demonstrate that we have a
serious addiction to watching violence as entertainment. This is nothing new. Remember all those cowboy shows of the 50’s
and 60’s? One difference is that nowadays there are so
many more visually striking ways to dramatize the use of weapons and resulting
gore, death and mayhem.
28. We make ourselves into our own worse enemy. I have
lived through the wake of the Korean War in the 1950’s, academics in high
school and college, military service in the late 60’s and early 70’s, and
professional and family life thereafter.
All the while, whether wars have been declared or not, the U.S. has been
engaged behind the scenes in covert operations and smaller-scale interventions
and incursions across the world.
From
my perspective, like the cartoon character Pogo of many years ago, I have seen
the enemy, and he is us. We are blessed with abundant resources with
which to live comfortably and at the same time to wage war, and fueling our
dual capability is our overweening pride and an often inflated opinion of
ourselves and our type of governance.
One of the more vivid and impactful
illustrations of our obtuse unwillingness to admit fault on the roadway to and
from war belongs to Robert McNamara, our Secretary of Defense under Presidents
Kennedy and Johnson, from 1961-1968. It
took him 25 years after the Vietnam War ended to admit publicly that the “fog
of war” had clouded his judgment about continuing to prosecute war in Vietnam
to a disastrous conclusion.
Journalist Tom Brokaw observes that McNamara
finally, almost tragically, acknowledged what the foreign minister of North Vietnam
told him when he visited the country years after the war. As McNamara recalled, the minister pointed
out that if he had read any history book, he would have found the Vietnamese
were not pawns of the Chinese or the Russians.
“Don’t you know we’ve been fighting the Chinese for a thousand years? We were fighting for our independence and we
would fight to the last man.”
There is historical truth in an observation
that grew out of my years of coursework in American Studies in college,
especially in political science. Americans often take risks, resist
authority, act independently, and can be pig-headedly uncooperative. This
tends to happen essentially because such behavior and attitudes are
constitutionally and lawfully sanctioned by our form of democracy.
Stubborn independence and rugged individualism are American character
traits. But so too, as Alexis DeTocqueville observed in his American
travels in the 1830’s, Americans are among the first to voluntarily and
politically organize themselves. They were and are a nation of civic
joiners.
Historically, up through the 19th
century, the citizen soldier model prevailed, where a militia came together
quickly when a real threat to their security became evident. Americans
have always had a high boiling point partly because formal governing decisions
have tempering deliberation built in, with plenty of checks and balances, but
when certain moral or ethical thresholds are crossed, U.S. citizens always knew
how to bring out their rifles, invest their resources, and prepare themselves
to fight.
Again, historically, when an imminent threat
dissipated, or when it became clear there would be no definitive victory, or
when our intervention became an unwelcome intrusion, U.S. citizens have lost their
passions and unity quickly and have essentially deconstructed their
military.
The citizen-solder model has changed
dramatically as our huge standing military has become a multi-purpose
institution. As David Segal described it
a decade ago, the American military is viewed as “a form of national service,
an occupation, a profession, a workplace, a calling, an industry, and a set of
labor markets.”
As for our wars, disengaging without a
clearly defined victory has been the prevailing outcome. One of the results has been the stressful
absence of real peace. Vietnam stands
out because it cost some 58,000 combat and non-combat American lives but ultimately
produced virtual failure. Nonetheless, Vietnam ultimately showed us that in
the aftermath of awkward, humiliating defeat, memories do fade and life regains
vitality. It should come as no surprise
that Americans now regularly rent or purchase expensive condos where they
thrive and work in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon ). There
remains much to be learned from the lessons of the Vietnam war as we seek to
reduce our commitments to Iraq ,
Afghanistan , and possibly Syria .
29. Poor communication sets the stage for war. While
we have made great political and social strides toward ameliorating
discrimination and protecting the rights of the disadvantaged, we struggle to
understand and communicate well with other countries where democracy may never
thrive. Terrorism has made us
chronically fearful about national security. It may not risk be outright or
full-scale war, but it certainly defines the meaning of the absence of peace. Despite worldwide internet accessibility and
mind-boggling channels of international communication, our national leaders and
our citizenry generally see globalism as just as much a threat as an
opportunity.
Let’s face it. We
are poor international communicators. We
continue to wage wars entrapped by our ignorance and lack of sympathy for the
cultural, religious, ethnic, political and strategic imperatives that motivate
factions elsewhere in the world, especially in the Middle
East . Ironically, in some
respects, even Vietnam
still highlights our international blindside regarding motives. Surveys continue to show that 75-85 percent
of the American public remain convinced that the war there was lost not because
of arms but because of a lack of political will. The lessons of Nam may never be fully
absorbed.
30. I still hope for the best. Future
U.S.
declared wars may have some reasonably long respites. When we do unavoidably
face war, hopefully we can find ways to short circuit the inclination and
conduct win-win diplomacy where all parties can save face. War is such a
tragic waste in countless ways. So too
is the absence of peace, which undermines our sense of well being, while
chewing up gargantuan amounts of taxpayers’ dollars in an effort to reinforce
security. We must strike a flexible balance between violence and
protections against violence, and learn to listen carefully and receptively to
those who seek de-escalation and durable peace – instead of impugning their
reputations and motives.
Above all, I fervently hope that Americans will
develop the habit and skill to step back from the brink of war and muster enough
courage to demand alternative solutions and an assuring peaceful way to live. Throughout my life, we have worked hard at
threatening and waging war. May we learn
to wage peace with even greater commitment.
Dr.
Jeffrey M. Bowen, Delevan , New York 14042
Email: jeffreybowen7@gmail.com
January 2014
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