Response to Oct 3rd
The amount of protest during the Vietnam war was something that will go down in history forever. The already infamous war sparked much controversy of why the United States was actually involving themselves with countries on the other side of the world. There was also another debate of what was actually happening inside the war itself. There were no rules in this bloody conflict. One of the many forms of protest was the Movie, 'Winter Soldier', and it was veterans who served in Vietnam and were speaking out against the wrongdoings the government is making them do. They were forced to throw people out of helicopters, mutilate women and children, and blow up hundreds of innocent villages. They depicted very haunting stories of how violent and ruthless the war in Vietnam was. There was an unnecessary amount of bloodshed when soldiers were taking villages and murdering people as what it seemed to be like a game. The debate that went on throughout the war was the true intentions of the United States getting involved in another countries politics when they were struggling with their own politics on their own soil. The United States was dealing with a mass civil rights movement from many African Americans and they were very hypocritical of themselves when they said they were fighting for the freedom of the Vietnamese people. This debate began to show how the involvement in Vietnam became less and less apparent and the United States began to pull troops out of Vietnam in 1969 and the last troop left Vietnam on March 29th, 1973.
After reading chapter five from Longley’s Grunts, it is clear that our veterans deserve better treatment. On page 160, it describes how the veterans returned from war expecting to be recognized as heroes, but people acted as if they were never gone. In the next paragraph, Longley explains that some veterans were even spat on or had tomatoes thrown at them. This is insane. These people went to fight for their country, and risked their life only to be treated this way when they returned. Another example of the poor treatment of veterans is on page 169, where an African American, wearing his uniform and medals, was asked why he was in a restaurant because he was black. He expected better treatment returning from the war, but the racism still remained. Even though these veterans fought in an “unjust” war, they were not the problem. Many veterans were drafted into the war. The ones who wanted to fight didn’t decide to go to war with the northern Vietnamese. They didn’t make the decisions. They followed the orders that they were given, and they risked their lives for their country. Although they might have done some terrible things to the Vietnamese, it was kill or be killed, and they were somewhat brainwashed by what they were told by their authorities. My uncle for example is a Vietnam veteran, and I know that he doesn’t deserve to be criticized, let alone spat on for defending the United states. He was drafted, he served his country, and he deserves respect for his duty, just as every other Vietnam veteran deserves respect for their service.
ReplyDelete"The VA deserves some credit for attempting to meet veterans' mental and physical health needs. Nonetheless, veterans still struggle with and are frustrated by an underresourced and overwhelmed system, one that has at times chosen fraudulent behavior instead of the significant institutional change that would be required to meet the growing demand" (page 270). Dr. Kieran's chapter focuses on the difficulties that veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars face returning home from combat, and the questions that the country must ask itself in regards to what are the veterans owed for their service. It is frustrating that the military is used so often with little thought given to the effect that their continued service would have on the individuals participating in these wars. The VA and other organizations have been overwhelmed by the amount of veterans requiring their services, and aren't equipped to help them. It was shocking to read that several veterans had to wait several months just to get a diagnosis from these organizations, let alone treatment. The chapter also highlighted the several mental illness issues veterans face, and how their relationships with their families have been strained due to their service. Reading this made me think about how some members of society seem hypocritical when they say that not standing up for the national anthem disrespects all veterans, yet never talk about how several veterans are in need of help returning home from war. The various issues veterans face aren't talked about enough in my opinion, and I think this is also reflected in many of the war movies that come out today. Vietnam war movies from the 80s' such as Platoon touched on how war affects soldiers, what is required of them, and how their service changes them. More modern war movies such as Lone Survivor, American Sniper, and Thank You For Your Service seem to focus more on making the soldiers heroes, and thanking them for their service. War veterans do deserve to be seen as heroes for their sacrifices, and should be thanked for their service, but this is the absolute bare minimum for what they really do deserve. Many Americans seem content to just thank veterans for their service, and not try to understand what war does to veterans, and ways that they really can support them. I believe that too many Americans don't care enough about the constant wars that the small military is forced to fight in, they simply just thank them for their service.
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ReplyDeleteBased on the readings for Wednesday, the one that stuck out the most to me in particular and interested me most was “Grunts” by Kyle Longley. This reading really goes hand in hand with “The Winter Soldier” documentary. Both focused on the true feelings and untold stories of Vietnam Veterans when they returned home from the war. I think that the chapter “coming home” in Longley’s work is very important for us to understand because we often hear about how the soldiers returning home from Vietnam were mistreated but don’t hear or read about what some veterans have to say about it. From personal experience, my freshman year FYS was “American experience in Vietnam” where we talked alot about the way Americans viewed and treated returning soldiers after the war. Despite hearing about all of the spitting stories and physical harassment, a more frequent issue these returnees faced included the depression, loneliness, fear, and isolation that occured when trying to transition back into American society. These problems are outlined in the reading and we do also learn that many veterans did transition back into society smoothly without complications. The ones who could not re-adjust to life after the war were left in a darkness where they felt no one could understand them. A quote that I found very important was “We went to Vietnam as frightened, lonely young men. We came back, alone again, as immigrants to a new world. For the culture we had known dissolved while we were in Vietnam, and the culture we lived in so intensely for a year made us aliens when we returned”(162). To me, this quote is really powerful and speaks volumes about how some of these veterans truly felt when trying to return to normal life. The fact that he says they felt like “aliens” is disturbing in itself because it's almost like the only environment they are used to is one filled with violence, death, and constant fear like Vietnam during this time. It is clear that for
ReplyDeletesome of the men speaking, their daily lives are forever affected by what they had to see and live through in Southeast Asia. A passage that I picked out was when the soldier described how his family served a rice dinner when he returned home, and to them it was just rice, but he had lived off of it for months and ultimately saw death because of it. It's the simple things that we see as normal in our society such as food, conversations, and daily priorities that gave these soldiers trouble when they tried to become apart of society again after the way their whole mind state had changed from being in Vietnam.
The Department of Veterans' Affairs "does not have sufficient capacity to meet the needs of new combat veterans" (Kieran 267). In this chapter, Dr. Kieran focuses on those who returned from Iraq and Afghanistan and the lack of benefits and treatments that they received. These veterans often came home to welcome parties and families, and this was drastically different from the veterans who returned from Vietnam, as pointed out in Kyle Longley's "Grunts." Dr. Kieran makes mention of how these veterans returned from Vietnam and were mistreated or spat on. But he also makes the point that these were mostly apocryphal. Veterans come home and are faced with the task of readjusting to their lives and finding the direction that they need to go. Many come back struggling with mental disorders such as PTSD and must learn how to cope with it. But as stated by Mr. Stegenga above, it is extremely frustrating to hear that those who put the military in action have little or no regard for those who fight these wars and what happens when they return. To leave organizations like the Dept. of Veterans' Affairs so overwhelmingly understaffed is unfair. Those who need treatment and assessments and assistance are wait-listed, and often left as is for months. These soldiers come back to a poor economic system where jobs are few, and they are just cast aside. Veterans certainly deserve more recognition and assistance than they have received thus far, and the American people are the ones who need to step up and show their appreciation. Too many people today are too blind to see that they take everything we have for granted. We get caught up in our selfish desires and forget to see what is happening in the world around us. Freedom most definitely isn't free, and those who fight for it have every right to not only be celebrated by our communities, but to be cared for by them
ReplyDeleteIn Dr. Kieran’s chapter in Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he highlights the failures and inefficiency of the VA, arguing that poor funding and bad management are the culprits. I would agree, citing the report saying “the VA does not have sufficient capacity to meet the needs of new combat veterans” (267). As Kieran points out, this leads to hospitals being understaffed, resulting in a bad, overall, quality of care for returning vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. To me, it is disappointing, to say the least, that in some instances, like the controversy in Phoenix, veterans have to wait to up to four months before they can get an appointment (269). Furthermore, you see these new veterans coming back with some serious injuries, such as TBI, PTSD, severed limbs, and other injuries that, if not diagnosed in a timely fashion, can lead to serious problems out in the civilian world, like not being able to work or acting differently then they normally would that would be detrimental to the workplace. However, there is a kind of irony about it because, compared to Vietnam, as we see in Grunts, where veterans would come back, un-welcomed, spat at, and threatened, there was this sense of “we must support our troops” for the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. So how must we support our troops? I believe that giving them the proper medical care they need and deserve is a good way to start. Knowing many veterans myself, the shared sentiment about the VA was that it was “ineffective, cumbersome, and slow”, said by (RT) Sgt. John Martin, former Green Beret.
ReplyDeleteWhat struck me during the opening chapters of this book was the scene describing a doctor and a corpsman attempting to revive a pilot. In this scene they attempt and fail to restart the man's heart but while they are struggling to do this they are laughing and talking about football. Making it seem as if this horrific tragedy of a man losing his life in front of them was something that was not upsetting but a part of the average routine. For these men in the military witnessing death and injury was like waking up and seeing the sky it was a constant reality. The consistency of this terror seemingly caused those in the military to become desensitized and complacent regarding death and injury. While the doctor and the corpsman stand over the corpse of the pilot while laughing about such a mundane thing like football it is easy to see that while this was not a good part of their reality they accepted it nonetheless. This complacency and acceptance of these horrific things is what allows the horrible crimes against people such those that Kovic witness in Vietnam to happen. While Kovic did have a slightly different situation in that his wasn’t a completely malicious attack against the children and that this does truly haunt him for others for others they view this as a part of the reality of war. Some within the military are so desensitized that needlessly killing these innocent people is just seen as something that everybody deals with almost another everyday part of the routine.
ReplyDeleteResponse for readings of Oct. 10th.