We failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam

2015 will be the year of a special anniversary for the United States and for me. It will be the fiftieth year since the beginning of our big military buildup in Vietnam and since my service there with the 173rd Airborne. If our nation appears to be mired in endless foreign fiascos it is probably because we failed to remember the lessons of our criminal activities from fifty years ago.

One of our first confirmed kills in Vietnam was a 12-year old Buddhist monk. Our artillery was firing near a village and one round was fired with the wrong data. We didn’t use the term “collateral damage” back then but PR was still a concern. Our unit got a lecture on the desirability of performing our mission with quiet efficiency, as if killing people with artillery could ever be done quietly and efficiently enough to escape the notice of those being killed.

Before the U.S. finally withdrew from Vietnam it instigated the Phoenix program. A policy of torture and assassination that failed then but nevertheless was transferred to Guantanamo and Iraq and probably to wherever the U.S. has the power to flout the standards of human decency. Obama’s failure to prosecute the torturers is probably a good indication that it will continue.

As a combat veteran I have memories and perhaps a few remnants of damage from the stress of warfare. I sympathize with my fellow veterans who have PTSD but I never forget one thing from my service. I inflicted more stress than I suffered. We dropped 8 million tons of bombs on a nation smaller than California.

My wife and I went back to Viet Nam in 2006. This time I was delivering tourist dollars instead of explosives. My reception was remarkably kinder than the one I received in 1965. The lesson is pretty clear. It’s time to punish the torturers and ground the drones. The U.S. will never succeed in building our security on the bloody shreds of wedding parties, on the remains of shattered families, on the graves of children.

So on this fiftieth anniversary year I calculate that the 12-year-old Buddhist would be 62-years-old. Perhaps he would be a wise old man, a blessing to his village, but we’ll never know. His voice was silenced but we can commemorate his death by being honest witnesses. By being voices for peace.

Happy New Year.

Bob Tammen

Soudan, Minn.