What
You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter
HOW HADITHA HAPPENED; WHY IT WILL
HAPPEN AGAIN
"You
live like an animal. You learn to like killing. .. Hate civilians.
Can't trust the bastards. You hate taking prisoners. You'd rather
kill them. Why?" Read Vietnam vet Marc Levy's extraordinary
Primer on the Whys and Wherefores of PTSD and understand what
is happening in Iraq. PLUS
Andrew Lack on the incredible frauds of the bottled water industry.
Why you should drink tapwater out of a glass and save your money
PLUS Jeffrey
St Clair on the deadly secrets of America's oldest bomb factory
PLUS Chris Reed on Eros
and Militarization: how Japan's sexpot schoolgirls fit into the
right's Re-Arm agenda. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers
each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the
subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription
to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find
anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions
are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
A recent radio report from western Iraq
included interviews with soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 506th
Infantry. When I heard it, my mind drifted back to another time
and place, another time of blood, death and fire and another
place far from home and deep in the bowels of hell. That hell
wasn't desert, however. It was jungle; thick and impenetrable
and mountainous and the Currahees of the 506th were among the
toughest and the bravest and the bloodiest of American soldiers
deployed to Vietnam.
When the pages of the emotional
diary that recounts my days in Vietnam start to flip, I never
know where it will stop. But when I heard the words of this new
breed of combat soldier detailing the butcher's bill they are
paying for their deployment, the album in mind stopped on a page
that found me in the hospital, the 34th Evacuation Hospital in
Vung Tau as I recall. I had been shot twice in the right knee,
one bullet breaking my leg and the second bullet arriving two
hours and two inches away from the first, shattering my kneecap
and exposing the joint to a raging infection. Still, I was one
of the lucky ones in my rifle company. An enemy battalion had
ambushed us and five hours later, my company ceased to exist.
Virtually, ever soldier was killed or wounded in the battle.
Gen. Barry McCaffrey (US Army, ret.) was a company commander
tasked with reinforcing us that day. But helicopter rockets fired
in support of our company started the grassy meadow on fire,
precluding any support from anywhere. Then-Capt. McCaffrey would
later say that listening to our battle on his radio would make
that the worst day of his military career.
In the bed next to me was a
village police chief from a town in the Mekong Delta. He had
been shot four times in the torso and once in the leg during
a gun battle with the communists in his village. Five bullets
tore up his body but they did nothing to destroy his spirit or
deny him a sense of humor. Indeed, his spirit did a lot to keep
me from falling into a black hole of despair as I contemplated
the possibility of a future without my right leg. We communicated
in a jigsaw of his scant English and fluent French juxtaposed
against my even scanter Vietnamese and high school French. I
had long ago given up hope that the war that was destroying the
lives of so many Americans (on both sides of the ocean) would
end well. But as I listened to this wonderful guy talk about
his country, his war, and our friendship, I was beginning to
have second thoughts about my pessimism.
That's why I was stunned three
days into our budding friendship when "The Chief" dropped
this bombshell on me. "Time come for GIs go home,"
he said. I thought he must have been joking. Here was a guy who
had sacrificed so much to rid his country of "it's enemies;"
a guy we Americans were all so invested in helping. He couldn't
possibly believe we should leave with the outcome of the war
still in doubt? When I questioned him about his contention, he
was adamant that the continued presence of Americans was the
trigger for the continuing violence. When I reminded him that
if the GIs left, his side would lose the war. Probably, he admitted,
but the fighting and the killing and suffering would stop.
I think about that exchange
a lot these days when I hear people talking about how "an
arbitrary deadline" for American withdrawal from Iraq would
embolden the enemy.
I thought about it when I heard
those brave soldiers from the 506th talking about "finishing
the job" in Iraq.
I think about it as I think
about how much blood will be shed while we searched for a common
definition of "finishing the job." I think about it
when I remember that Americans died in Vietnam, officially, for
14 years. We were told that our mission was to prepare the Vietnamese
army to defend democracy. And I remember that after almost a
decade and a half after the lost of more than 58,000 American
lives after the wounding of more than 300,000 GIs and after
the death of more than a million Vietnamese, the army we trained,
equipped and supported crumbled and disintegrated in a matter
of weeks when the enemy attacked.
Today, after all the lies and
deceit, all the killing and suffering, all the death and destruction,
Vietnam seems to be doing quite well with Vietnamese in control
of their own country. None of that cheapens the courage, the
commitment and the dedication of the soldiers who fought in Vietnam.
But it does make you wonder about the quality of those who led
us into war and into an open-ended commitment that bled us of
money, materiel and men.
The NCO interviewed on the
radio scoffed at the notion that it was time for Americans to
come home, saying "it is easy for people sitting in air-conditioned
offices; people who have never been on the ground here; to make
those decisions." That comment is pretty ironic when you
realize that many of those who have had their boots on the ground
in combat are saying "bring them home," while the guys
in the air-conditioned offices making the decisions think they
were born to command but were loathe to serve.
Stephen T. Banko served in the 1st Cavalry Division
and was wounded in combat four times. His decorations for heroism
include two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, the Air Medal and
four Purple Hearts. He has long been active in veteran's affairs..
He can be reached at: banko@counterpunch.org
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
