4 February 2005
Stephen T. Banko
Blood does not sanctify blood
In 1995, I hosted a visit by the Moving Wall, the traveling half-scale replica of the Vietnam Memorial. A young female reporter showed up to cover the event and asked to be filled in on some of the specifics of the Wall and those enshrined on it. She also asked why the recent book by former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was causing such a stir among Vietnam vets. I took her over to the east wing of the Wall and stopped at Panel 5. This is about the point, I told her, where McNamara now says he realized the Vietnam War was a mistake and probably unwinnable. I pointed to the rest of the 65 panels that ran the length east wing and drew her attention to the 70 panels of the west wing. That is how many Americans died after McNamara¹s epiphany, I told her. Those are the names of those who died for the nation's “mistake.” Fully two-thirds of the Vietnam War casualties died after McNamara knew he was sending them to a flawed crusade.
I thought of that moment, on a recent night too real for sleep, watching Ted Koppel's January 27 “town hall meeting” on Iraq on “Nightline.” Bitter tears welled in my eyes when I heard people on both sides of the Iraq War debate saying that immediate military withdraw from Iraq would not be proper. I choked on those tears when I heard an audience member saying such a withdrawal would “dishonor” the sacrifice of the 1300+ Americans already dead in the current national mistake. From whence do we derive this flawed, suicidal notion that only future bloodletting can sanctify past bloodshed? Who thinks up this perfidious twaddle? Surely, it doesn't come from the mind of anyone who has ever been in combat. It is obscene and perverse to believe that anyone grieving the loss of a loved one in war is comforted by the fact that others will die.
To believe that the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq would dishonor the heroism and sacrifice of those who have suffered and died already is to doom American men and women to a war without end. That's what guerrilla wars are wars without end. Guerrillas fight until the foreigners go home. It also misinterprets the motivation of the men and women fighting and dying. Politicians love to throw out a bunch of tired clichés, especially around patriotic holidays. They spit out the words like so many Spill and Spell words that are supposed to give special meaning to the killing and the dying their political decisions cause. But in my war, we didn’t give a rat's ass about “Vietnamese democracy.” We fought for what Americans have always fought. We fought for neither wealth nor glory; nor for fame nor honor. Our nation could honor its Vietnam veterans only in death. We fought for each other. We fought for mean survival, for our own and for our buddies’. We were sent off to a country few of us ever heard of prior to 1966. The specious notion that our participation had anything to do with our desire to spread democracy to Southeast Asia ended up killing more than 58,000 of my generation. We fought with honor not because of our cause, but because of our courage and our commitment. That commitment was to each other; to trying save each other and enough of our humanity to get back to “The World” and pick up the pieces of lives broken by war.
On December 3, 1968, I was hunkered down behind a foot wide anthill with bullets and rockets whizzing around me. The barrel of my machine gun had been blown off by a rocket-propelled-grenade. I was bleeding and scared and defenseless against the onslaught of the 368th Viet Cong Regiment that had surrounded my rifle company of the 7th Cavalry. A guy named John Noble Holcomb recognized my plight and charged across fifty meters of that bullet-swept battlefield to bring me another machine gun. He knew that if he didn’t do it, I would die. For recognizing my danger he was killed; shot four times as he saved my life. John Holcomb received the posthumous Medal of Honor for his actions that day and I was proud to provide eyewitness testimony that was used to award the Medal. Holcomb's name is on Panel 37W of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, about 33 panels away from the name of the last casualty of my war. Does anyone think the future of South Vietnam was on either of our minds that day? Does anyone believe that the blood of those brave Americans on the remaining 33 panels of death and honor in anyway make Holcomb's sacrifice more meaningful? Does the fact that a communist government rules Vietnam today diminish the courage or the dedication or the commitment of those died? Hell, no it doesn't! Is the country poorer because so many brave men and women died? Hell, yes it is!
The country said we went to Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction and found none. The country said that we would be welcomed as liberators and the liberators are now the targets. The country said we needed to spread democracy to the Middle East using our blood. Does any of this sound familiar? Does any of this remind anyone else of Vietnam: the lofty ideals hoping to expiate the brutality?
More blood will not sanctify blood already shed. More death merely means fewer good and decent and dedicated citizens to live in this land and more killing of those in the host country. I know John Holcomb would not have wanted anyone else to die in Vietnam. I know this because he died to keep me alive. Death is made meaningful by the lives of those who live on, not by more death.
Copyright 2004 by Buffalo Report, Inc.