Reparations For Viet Vets

What thought crosses your mind when you hear about people who served in World War Two or Korea? Do you think of patriotism, defenders of America, heroes worthy of your respect? What crosses your mind when you think about those who served in Vietnam? Aha! A different reaction, different adjectives likely assail your psyche in attempt to define and describe those veterans.

Too often, it seems, Vietnam veterans are categorized as potentially violent, angry, addictive, homeless, unemployed or, perhaps, mentally unbalanced. Those who are more charitable may pity those same veterans as not being very bright or they would never have found themselves entrapped in that mess in the first place. Unfortunately, all to often, Vietnam veterans are hanging onto the fringe of the very society that conscripted and sent them to fight and die in a war that has become generally accepted as having been fabricated, intentionally escalated by flawed intelligence used by policy makers to justify the invasion of South Vietnam.

Former Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, in his book published in 1995, "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam," wrote, "Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong," in an attempt to allay his function in a war that claimed the lives of 58,156 Americans and an estimated 3.6 million Vietnamese. Being wrong often brings tragedy, but admitting to have been "terribly wrong" that brought such death, injury and destruction cannot be easily forgiven. At least, the former secretary tried, in his waning, reflective years, though all too late to avoid the massive pain and suffering he helped inflict, to express sorrow for his role in intensifying that conflict.

Approximately 3.4 million Americans served in the Southeast Asian Theater (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand). 2.6 million operated within the borders of Vietnam. 58,156 were killed, nearly 304,000 wounded, 75,000 severely disabled, 23,214 classified as 100% disabled. Almost 5,300 lost a limb, 1,081 suffered multiple amputations. The average age was 19 and 76% who served came from lower to middle income families. All participants, regardless of branch of service or assignment, were placed in harm's way by the United States government.

How does this nation, after admitting, accepting and convicting itself that it did, in fact, send young people off to a distant land to fight a war that was based on a lie express regret to those who lost loved ones? How do we seek to make it right to those who suffered life-altering physical or mental wounds? How do we explain to children, parents, siblings, spouses and friends of those who served and died that the war, after all, was a sham? How do we justify a botched national policy to those who served and had their lived interrupted by an unnecessary draft? Perhaps if we continue to ignore our collective shame and guilt long enough, those who were so violently impacted by Vietnam, those who suffered great loss, will pass and Vietnam will become another faint blot on the national conscience.

Not one American who walked on Vietnamese soil paid their own fare or self-authorized their presence in that country. We, The People, sent them, ordered them, and subsequently vilified them. Now we owe them more than our halting words can express. We owe them reparations.

Participants in the Occupy Wall Street movement participate, demonstrate and occupy in protest against what they have termed the "1%." The OWS movement seeks relief from the debt many of them voluntarily assumed for their education or other perceived inequities. Vietnam veterans have not collectively asked for just compensation for the widely accepted injustice, backed by the full power and legal penalty for non-compliance, inflicted on them by their own government. While members of the OWS movement were free to make choices that led them to debt and unhappiness with their present condition, Vietnam veterans were not afforded the same degree of choice that would have empowered them to avoid that war.

Call it compensation to those who have been unfairly stereotyped and mistreated. Call it a stimulus for a select group of Americans. The backlash of a guilt-ridden America has been endured too long by those who believed they were doing what their country, the United States of America, had deemed right and just. Call reparations to Vietnam veterans whatever is fitting. The debt to those who served their country in a cause that brought shame and tears to the eyes of a former Secretary of Defense is due and that payment will be one step toward justice.