After Vietnam We Never Thought to Repeat

After Vietnam We Never Thought

In the Vietnam Era my Army Reserve Battalion Commander railed at me. “You have to be here once a week anyway. Why don’t you try to make a go of it?”

My unit had been trained to control angry [American] mobs. On the day they ordered us to quell the mob, I had been in it demonstrating with my fellow leftists.

The penalty for this was 333 days in Vietnam. I thought this punishment was counter-productive to the war effort. Who would want me in the same foxhole?

Well, they couldn’t find a slot for me. They transferred me to a unit already listed to go overseas. Fate intervened. My new battalion was not combat ready and stayed at home. To my utter delight, my old unit shipped out for a year’s tour. Waving a small flag, I saw them off.

Always reluctant to pistol-whip a demonstrator, on that day I became a non-interventionist.

Lacking my experience, most Americans remained as dead leaves blown from gutter to gutter. They rode with the wind from war to war.

They learned nothing.

The three branches of government were so corrupt they didn’t notice the Constitution fluttering to the ground for the mulching machine. The Sons of Liberty became orphans. The Patriot and Military Commissions Acts were obscene obituaries for the fallen founding fathers.