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The Bracelet
A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
My father never went to Vietnam. He went from deferment to deferment, being a student when there were student deferments, rushing to get married when there was a married deferment, and having my older sister when there was a child deferment. My father said that he didn't believe in the war's cause and saw too many friends and relatives die. My parents were young parents, raising children, so they didn't exactly spend much time protesting, but their heart was certainly there. My mother, while visiting me recently in Austin, saw protestors with signs protesting this new, unjust, irrational war. She smiled at them, and turned to me and said, "that is one of my biggest disappointments. I was not part of the peace protests because I had young children. I always thought I could have done more, and maybe a few more young men could have returned to their families." My father said to me today in a call from France, "This is how it felt when Nixon was President."
This brought back a memory of my childhood that I had forgotten. Along with memories of birthday parties past and the rules of freeze tag, I had forgotten one summer afternoon in the early 1970s.
I recall it now like it was yesterday. As a small child, this summer day I was digging through my parents' jewelry box and coming across a Vietnam Veteran's POW/MIA steel wrist bracelet. I didn't understand the significance, and so I wore it around all day, playing with it as if it were a superhero magical steel bracelet. At some point my mother came into the room, and I was curious about the markings on the bracelet. She explained to me that the steel bracelet was a donation she had made to a Vietnam Veterans' POW/MIA fundraiser, and explained to me how many young men, some young men she went to high school with, were killed in a war in Vietnam. I asked her why we were fighting, and she replied with what I thought was a most curious reply, "I don't think anyone knows." She was pretty choked up when she described some of her friends and boyfriends she knew from high school that died in Southeast Asia, and explained to me that many of their bodies were never found or returned. She also explained how much suffering my uncle had sustained in that same conflict, coming back from Vietnam addicted to various drugs that he took. She explained that my uncle, prior to enlisting, was once an all state star athlete, excelling in all the major sports. She explained further how I was not to talk to my uncle about this as he was likely to become very upset. (My uncle cleaned himself up and has been sober for over 20 years but still has difficulty getting work due to his criminal history with drugs and his dishonorable discharge).
I remember spending the rest of the afternoon not playing with the bracelet but reading the name and vital information about this young man who was very likely dead, feeling the grooves on the engraved letters on the bracelet and thinking about how horrible war must be. I thought about the pain my uncle was in on a daily basis, and what horrors he must have seen to have been that affected that he couldn't stand to face the day sober. It was a very long afternoon.
How I felt that day and how I feel today are strikingly similar. We are engaging in an unjust war, with no reasonable explanation, and no international support. Today I turned 33 years old, and I've never been so depressed on a birthday. I used to share a birthday with Hal Linden and Mr. Rogers. Now I share it with the "coming out" party of US Imperialism.
I hear constantly the left pundits discussing that this is an "unprecedented" act of pre-emptive war. I have to differ. The only justification for Vietnam I have ever heard was the attempt to contain, or "pre-empt", the spread of communism. The similarities are there. I know what it is now like to live in a Johnson/Nixon government, where you can't trust the government reports from the front, and where dissent (like that made by the Dixie Chicks) is scalded like it is an attack on civilians, when it is exactly that holocaust the dissent is trying to prevent. I hope that the Internet allows free speech to prevail, and allows dissent like that coming from BuzzFlash to continue to exist.
But above all, I hope this will not be a long conflict, or one that requires the selling of bracelets.
True story from me, a BuzzFlash Reader.
A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
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