Same War, Same Sides, Just Different Tactics .....

It was a steamy summer night in July, 1968 when I stood in a room with a dozen other guys of my age, faced the flag, came to attention, raised my hand and uttered the following words:

"I, (state your name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

It was a solemn moment.  I wasn’t really happy about it.  I had a steady job, a beautiful girlfriend that I knew I was going to marry sooner or later and a brand new Camaro Z-28.  I didn’t want to leave them.  It was 1968 for heaven’s sake.  A wild time.  Peace, love and rock and roll.  Crazy things happened.  I had plans for my life.  I wanted to finish my engineering degree, become a Naval Aviator, get married and then become an airline pilot.

But, there was a hitch.  The tiny, wide spot in the road high school that I graduated from barely prepared its better graduates for entry into a backwoods teacher college much less engineering school.  It was particularly deficient in math and science.  The day I enrolled in college, I was two years behind the other students and I never caught up.  In 1968, if you weren’t making “satisfactory progress” (making passing grades in class level courses for your major) you were subject to the draft.  And, this was back in the day when you had to actually demonstrate proficiency in difficult subjects like calculus, organic chemistry, physics, thermodynamics, etc. to pass.  I couldn’t cut it in college and a letter from the local draft board was in the works when I enlisted. The fact that a year or so of remedial courses would have put my academic career and life back on track meant nothing.  Thirty years would pass before I finally earned a degree.

And, I wasn’t happy about the war.  I had no moral or ethical objections.  I had planned to serve in the military after I finished college.  I was far from being a hippy.  But, along with many of the better minds at the time including a chorus from inside the military, I knew in my gut that Viet Nam was a terrible mistake that would kill a lot of fine young men and still not end well for the U.S. or change much in the region.  I had read General Douglas MacArthur’s warning about getting involved in a land war in Asia and thought it made a lot of sense.

A lot of people avoided the draft.  Some broke the law and went to Canada.  Some tried the conscientious objector route.  Some faked injuries.  An amazing number of high school and college athletes were physically unfit for military service even though they had just played a season of their sport with taped knees, shoulders and ankles.  Some produced evidence of mental unfitness with the help of a sympathetic psychiatrist.  A few claimed to be homosexual.

Others found a “third way.  Some favorite sons with influence would hold a “frat party” where they would allegedly get drunk and do something stupid like joyride a conveniently placed vehicle.  There would be a quiet plea bargain (nothing in the papers of course) and a felony conviction that would later be expunged by a cooperative judge as a “youthful indiscretion.”  Some guys even went to seminary.  One these would be ministers I knew of, while still attending seminary, got drunk as a lord on a Saturday night and shot out most of the street lights in his hometown.  

But that was not for me and there I was standing before a U.S. flag literally swearing my life away.  Why did I do it?  Because it was still my country and my country was at war.  It was one of those rare binary decision moments where conscience requires that you choose a side.  I chose duty, honor and country.

The effects of that choice were soon overwhelming.  After boot camp, I was temporarily assigned to a destroyer on the west coast.  At the time, Naval Regulations still required that enlisted men leave the ship in uniform.  Unofficially of course, we were warned that it was not safe to walk around Long Beach, California in uniform so the command would “look the other way” concerning civilian clothes.  The implication hit me like a ton of bricks.  The Viet Nam war was being fought right here in the streets of the U.S as well as in Southeast Asia.  The folks who “opposed the war” by demonstrating, burning draft cards, and beating up military personnel were every bit as much the enemy as the Viet Cong.  It was the same war and the same sides just different tactics for a different place and moment in time.  

A few months later, I was in San Francisco.  You never forget the first time you pull real guard duty.  I was assigned to walk a section of shore on the Treasure Island Naval Station in San Francisco Bay.  Constant shore watches were necessary because the peaceful hippie types over in the city were given to rowing over and trying to burn down buildings, damage equipment and generally disrupt operations at the base.  I remember a conversation with a huge black Marine who was back from Viet Nam and now assigned to security at the Naval Station.  He told me, “You cain’t have no mercy on dem punks.  If dey come across yore line you gotta get dat stick goin’ and take their asses down.”  Same war, same sides, just different tactics for a different place and moment in time.

A year later, I was home-ported on the East Coast.  One of the first missions I was involved in was landing Marines at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station a few days after the vicious race riots there.  A group of militant blacks had mutinied, beaten a bunch of people up, destroyed a lot of property and generally disrupted operations at the base.  Same war, same sides, just different tactics for a different place and moment in time.

My ship’s “alternate home-port” in winter was San Juan, Puerto Rico.  Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory.  This was very pleasant duty.  But it had a real dark side.  Puerto Rico has always had a strong, communist backed “resistance movement.”  Americans tend to forget that Puerto Rican terrorists once shot up a bunch of congressmen in Washington D.C. and were plotting to assassinate President Truman.  FALN terrorists promised to kill one sailor or marine from each U.S. ship that docked in Puerto Rico every time they docked.  They often made good on their promise.  So, we went on liberty in groups and always watched the alleys and shadows.  Same war, same sides, just different tactics for a different place and moment in time.

Around Christmas one year, we docked in a large South American port.  We had an unusual cargo, several large pallets of reconditioned toys from the Marines Toys for Tots campaign and tons of surplus C and 10 in 1 rations that were to be distributed to charitable organizations in country.  We were also training the local counter-terrorism forces in amphibious and riverine warfare.  I had shore patrol duty.  We were stationed around town at strategic places where it was deemed safer for our sailor and marines to enjoy their liberty.  We were transported around town by the local military in former U.S. Army six-by trucks with the canvas covers pulled tight so the locals couldn’t see us.  Unfortunately, on a Saturday night word got out about what route would be taken and we found our passage blocked in a town square.  We were quickly surrounded by a couple of thousand shouting, cursing, demonstrating locals.  Luckily, we were “escorted” by a squad of dead eyed, submachine gun armed local security troopers who kept the crowd from killing us.  Same war, same sides, just different tactics for a different place and moment in time.

During that same week in that same port, my partner and I walked into an upscale European style hotel bar to rest for a moment.  A well dressed, obviously wealthy young man offered to buy us a drink.  We were about the same age.  We cautiously explained that we were on duty and could not consume alcohol.  He then offered to buy us a coke and explained that he just wanted to visit with some Americans and practice his English.  As we chatted, he told us that his family owned a large estancia (agri-business ranching operation) up in the highlands where there was an unpublicized but bitter little shooting war going on with communist backed FARC guerillas.  The terrorists were given to doing horrible things to people of his social class.  Unlike Americans of his class, this man had seen communism first hand and he hated it and the people who espoused it with a white hot passion.  As we left, he said he just wanted to thank us for being there and training the local security forces.  It was genuine gratitude we would often not receive in the states.  Same war, same sides, just different tactics for a different place and moment in time.  

And then one day it was over, or at least I thought it was.  I was back home in civilian clothes, trying to put a life put on hold back together again.  But while I was gone.  America had changed.  The war on the streets of America had not ended simply went into a different phase.  The guys who had had avoided service outright or found their “third way” now had degrees and jobs and positions of power.  They were professors at the colleges returning GI’s had to attend and managers in the businesses where they sought jobs.  The hippies were now socially acceptable and even favored. 

The attitude of the nation had changed.  Veterans were looked upon with fear and avoidance and sometimes even shame.  The “establishment” (meaning at that time American culture and values) was now the enemy.  Just as we had lost the land war in Viet Nam we had also lost the culture war on the streets of America.  My generation of veterans would not receive the same welcome or get the same boost in putting their lives back together our fathers had enjoyed.  We sneaked home through airports, changed quickly into civilian clothes and tried to act like it had all never happened.  We hid our veteran status and avoided conversations about our service.  We basically just went to ground.  Same war, same sides, just different tactics for a different place and moment in time.

It took me a while to realize that I had changed too.  I had been driven into hiding on the streets of my own country simply for wearing my country’s uniform.  I had been forced to take up arms against fellow Americans who hated me for protecting them.  I had walked the streets of a U.S. Territory knowing that there were people in the shadows who would kill me for simply being there.  I had walked the streets of foreign countries surrounded by people who hated all Americans, particularly the American military, for nothing more than being Americans.

If I learned nothing else, I had learned to spot my enemies both foreign and domestic.  When I heard an American college professor spouting Marxist bullshit I knew that he was just a front for the guys who burned villages, killed priests and castrated village leaders in other parts of the world.  When I saw pretty college girls who spit in soldier’s faces and called them baby-killers I knew that they were just useful idiots enabling the punks in the alleys who lay in wait for uniformed service people.  When I saw the professional athlete who converted to Islam and refused to serve in the military I knew that he was nothing more than a propaganda tool of the worldwide Marxist movement.  They were all the same.  Same war, same sides, just different tactics for a different place and moment in time.

You see, the Viet Nam war never really ended.  Viet Nam was only an outbreak of the larger cold war pitting Marxism against American style constitutional government.  The Marxists are patient.  They have waited, working quietly, producing a generation of Americans who are so stupid that they can be manipulated into a lynch mob by simply uttering code words and phrases coupled with meaningless accusations.

As I write, it is happening all over again.  America is being torn apart by a group of over-paid, badly behaved, under-educated, professional athletes who don’t even know what they are protesting only that they are black and need to protest something.  They and the idiots who support them don’t realize that they are being used by people with far different motives and that they are nothing more than the socially acceptable propaganda front for the street thugs killing cops, burning neighborhoods and destabilizing the whole nation.  And the team owners, the media and a lot of America are desperately and even militantly seeking yet another "third way" compromise that will prevent them from finally having to choose one side or the other in the long and never ending culture war for nations and souls.

In the last generation the enemy was the military and they destroyed it.  We will never again have a citizen military like the one that served our country faithfully for generations.  The Viet Nam years made it impossible.  The enemy now is the police.  With amazing speed, these Marxist pawns are now destroying our local police departments.  And all I can say is …… same war, same sides, just different tactics for a different moment in time.