Published: March 25, 2008 07:05 pm         

LION AND THE LAMB: Welcome home, Vietnam veterans

How many generations of brave and honorable warriors have we prayed for, waited for and promised never to forget? Vowing never to forget is civilization’s recurring broken promise. The truth is that they are forgotten. Flags are lowered. Parades and bands fade away. The wars disappear into the history books and into the land between fantasy and national memory. Only those who fought, and the civilians most deeply affected, long remember.

Those who stay home sometimes need a reality check when they reach too far in proclaiming the meaning of war and why we fight. It has ever been thus. We promise our veterans much to fight for us, and we have too often given too little in return. The cold and hungry rebels of the American Revolution who left bloody footprints in the freezing mud are eulogized as our first generation of heroes. President Lincoln said at Gettysburg, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” The doughboys of World War I fought “the war to end wars.” Those who fought World War II are now called the “greatest generation.” Korea is forgotten, and so one day will be the long, black memorial wall of names in D.C. of those who fell in Vietnam. To our national shame, too many Vietnam veterans were spat upon as baby killers and blamed for the shortcomings of our politicians. Protesters vilified them from the safety of noisy crowds and with lying, hindsight wisdom.

Our servicemen and servicewomen are commonly viewed as the cream of American youth. They step forward to protect our way of life and die in the shadow of the flag in righteous battles for liberty, burned to death in airplanes, drowned in the sinking engine rooms of battleships, and blown to bits charging machine gun nests. Others, who were frightened out of their wits and who had no idea why they were there, or what they were to die for, were also heroes. They were merely less idealistic and probably more concerned with survival than about waving the flag and leading a charge. War and nobility are not synonymous. Why so? What makes us think it is?

Our social development lags far behind in matters of peace. The war lovers of our nation talk about World War III. That should alarm us. Most of us have escaped the direct effects of the wars in the far deserts. It will be different if World War III erupts between the West (mostly Christian) and the Middle East (too much fundamentalist Muslim). If they strike us again and we are desperately threatened, our war lovers may rain nuclear hell down on Muslims, good and bad, saying that violence is the only thing they understand. They indeed are not noted for Nobel Peace Prizes or for many inventions other than the roadside Improvised Explosive Device (IED). Their large social contributions include enslaving women and sullying Islam. But the fallout from our ultimate weapons would affect the whole world. The radicals won’t care. We should.

We are all members of this generation and responsible for how it shall be remembered. Prayers are not enough. God is not a Muslim god, nor a Christian god, nor a Jewish god. Nor is God necessarily on the side of those with the biggest battalions, as some philosophers have said. If God has any interest at all it must be on the side of reason. Making reason work is in our hands. This year’s election is not one to be kissed off. If there are statesmen and stateswomen among the candidates we must chose them and trust them to keep us from adding millions of forgotten war dead to those we promised never to forget.