That's 20 years ago. I hope to make this monthly but no guarantees. I may go a day either side of the 1st of the month if I really dislike what I wrote.
We were wrong
Not a little bit wrong, but so terribly, terribly wrong. It is thirty years since the American Embassy in Saigon was evacuated and so ended a miserable piece of history. Obviously I can remember some of the Vietnam war, but I can't really distinguish between my memory of it and what I have learned since.
Did I say 'ended a piece of history'? Well, not quite. The photo on the front page of yesterday's Age shows it is not really over. The repercussions continue. The picture is of a disabled 25 year old son of Vietnamese soldier, a victim of Agent Orange, in a roofless cage.
But it is not just the physical. Mostly for mental reasons, 43% of Australia's Vietnam veterans are on TPI (totally and permanently incapacitated) pensions. These pensions are not given out easily.
If anything good came out of the whole nasty business, it might be Vietnam and Australia now have a close connection. Well, maybe.
The real good is that never again will young Australians be conscripted and sent off to an unjust war by politicians. Yes, I expect we would fight to protect our country, but we won't interfere in someone else's. We will leave that for the politicians and professional soldiers.
Did I say 'ended a piece of history'? Well, not quite. The photo on the front page of yesterday's Age shows it is not really over. The repercussions continue. The picture is of a disabled 25 year old son of Vietnamese soldier, a victim of Agent Orange, in a roofless cage.
But it is not just the physical. Mostly for mental reasons, 43% of Australia's Vietnam veterans are on TPI (totally and permanently incapacitated) pensions. These pensions are not given out easily.
If anything good came out of the whole nasty business, it might be Vietnam and Australia now have a close connection. Well, maybe.
The real good is that never again will young Australians be conscripted and sent off to an unjust war by politicians. Yes, I expect we would fight to protect our country, but we won't interfere in someone else's. We will leave that for the politicians and professional soldiers.
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I had no idea that agent orange caused birth defects or that there were so many disabled children born as a result of what the US did in Vietnam. It's heartbreaking and sickening. Have human beings learned nothing? Are we not capable of kindness and empathy as a species?
ReplyDeleteI am too young to remember that time in much detail...and was too far away...but P's Melbourne friends at that time had been called up and served their time there. One of them, he said, was a very different person when he returned.
ReplyDeleteIt was an ugly war on every level, before, during and the aftermath.
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ReplyDeleteAll of my brothers were called up for that war. Fortunately none of them served.
So many were against it, yet they blundered on. It happens again and again.
ReplyDeleteA sad reminder what we do to our own citizens for other people's wars
ReplyDeleteMy older brother was conscripted . It was my mother’s worst nightmare , he was sent to Vietnam for a year and she didn’t open the front door for a year. He was one of the fortunate ones he came back alive and went on to lead a successful life , however within that successful life he has had periods with mental health episodes and is a TPI . Veterans Affairs has on the whole looked after him. He was fortunate in that he was a public servant so came back to a job a wife who understood trauma and is able cope with it. So many have different horrendous lives including suicide homelessness and dysfunction. Conscription is like forced labor or indeed slavery. Some young men ended up in prison because they refused. How can anyone be sent to kill other people and not be totally traumatised?
ReplyDeleteThank you for your personal remembrance of a time of nightmares.
DeleteProxy wars have a horrible history. Grrr... So does so-called 'nation building', another political scam. I wish you all the best, my dear.
ReplyDeleteAgent Orange would be a very suitable nickname for the current US President.
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell did they think they were fighting for in Vietnam? Does anybody know? I am glad that Great Britain kept out of it but 521 Australians were killed and 3,129 wounded. Agent Orange dodged the draft.
I went to the link to see the picture, but could not. I guess that I'm glad. I don't think I could bear any more sad things. I did find a story about Le Van Minh, an Amerasian child who was abandoned by his father. By the time he was 10, crippled by polio, he was thrown into the street by his mother. A photographer took a picture and the picture moved a school who fought to bring him to this country in 1987. He had surgery but his legs were permanently damaged. He's about 60 years old now. He has two children. He works. I can't imagine how stressful these days are for him and his family.
ReplyDeleteI met my ex-the-first soon after he came home from that war, at first I didn't know he'd been there, he didn't tell me, but someone else did and that explained a few of his behaviours. Looking back, it also explained why he was constantly drinking, a functioning alcoholic.
ReplyDeleteI worry Greenland could be the next Vietnam.
ReplyDeleteSad time in our time Andrew. Should never have been.
ReplyDeleteI remember one evening in Switzerland. My in-laws had invited two American couples in for a drink. One of them gleefully started telling how the planes brought down the Vietnamese enemy. Con just stood up and quietly asked them to leave, though they were good friends. I have always kept that thought in my mind. Speak out against blatant cruelty, as all war is.
ReplyDeleteWhen I wrote essays and journal articles years ago, I wasn't terribly interested in keeping them for posterity. Only my thesis was bound in leather and a copy sent to each university library. Everything else ended in the rubbish bin.
ReplyDeleteEven if your early writing turned out to be wrong, or even if you have changed your mind on key issues since, it is great that the posts survived.
Twenty years passes in the blink of an eye.
ReplyDeletePretty much everybody was wrong about Vietnam. Including the Vietnamese.
ReplyDeleteThe war was about to end when my brothers got draft numbers. One wanted to go, my younger brother. The older brother is and always was a peace loving gentle kind soul and would not have survived the brutality of that war. Fortunately he did not pass the physical when called up. Then the war ended and my younger brother had received a high number and was never called up before service became voluntary.
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