From the Lion's Den: An Open Letter (and Invitation) to Vietnam Veterans

[unhappycamper]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-a-ashwill/vietnam-veterans-travel_b_3176912.html

From the Lion's Den: An Open Letter (and Invitation) to Vietnam Veterans
Mark A. Ashwill
Posted: 04/29/2013 1:01 pm

"Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground, Mother Earth will swallow you, lay your body down..." Listening to this '70s antiwar anthem on a recent afternoon, 38 years after the American War in Vietnam drew to a quick and blessed close, I am staggered by the emotional realization of something I have known on an intellectual level for many years.

In few countries do these words ring truer, purer and more poignantly than in Vietnam, where over 3 million men, women and children died a martyr's death in a war of national liberation. In America, the cost of freedom can be found on the battlefields of Concord, Gettysburg, and Normandy. It also echoes throughout the mountains, valleys, and deltas of Vietnam.

A generation of young Americans went to Vietnam, willingly, unwittingly or by force of law, as pawns of a policy elite, itself a prisoner of a Cold War containment and exceptionalist mentality, ignorant of Vietnamese history and culture and, like those before them and those to follow, utterly incapable of seeing the world through other peoples' eyes.

When all was said and done, the U.S. government walked, or rather, scurried away, leaving behind a shameful legacy of death, destruction and human suffering on a Draconian scale that haunts Vietnam to this day. The ghosts of the American War in Vietnam continue to haunt the U.S., as evidenced by the number of veteran suicides, considerably more than the number killed in action, the broken lives of so many survivors and the country's costly inability to come to terms with its past as prologue.

[upaloopa]

1. I have often wanted to go back to Vietnam

The cost is prohibitive
.

[unhappycamper]

2. I was stationed in Cu Chi during my second tour.

After I got back from my Cambodian 'adventure' (about five or six weeks) I ran MARS station AB8AJ for the remainder of my tour.

I'd like to go back and see the tunnels underneath the Cu Chi base as well of some of the buried war materials in the Iron Triangle. I'd like to see the view from the top of Nui Ba Dinh a.k.a. the Black Virgin Mountain. Hue, Hanoi and the Ho Chi Minh Trail are some other sights I'd like to see.

Alas, $$$$$ also stand in my way.

[JustAnotherGen]

3. One more thing that haunts our Vietnam Vets

The Agents - my father was one who post humously had the Fed go back and declare 100% disabled as he should have been when he came out in 1978.

Please folks -if you are a vet of this war or the relative of one . . . don't ever take a bad cough diagnosis as pneumonia. It's not just the Orange - it's the blue, pink, white, green, etc. etc.

They were deliberately and maliciously poisoned and when the chemicals implode - it is a horrible horrible death.



unhappycamper - Hope you don't mind the addition. But I watched my dad go in August of 2012 - and I'm not dropping this bone until every single Vietnam Vet has complete, total, unfettered access to the tests and biopsies they need if they so much sneeze funny.

[Victor_c3]

4. I'm hesitant to post this in this thread, as I don't want to try to steal the thread

but this thread made me think about my war experiences in Iraq and the possibility of revisiting some of the places I saw when I was in
Iraq.

I did a quick google search and found this article: http://www.icptr.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Social-Implications-and-Possibilities-of-Post-War-Tourism-Development-in-Iraq.pdf

It is kind of a dry read (I've read a lot of scientific journals for a living and the format isn't that bad to me), but I thought it was insightful.

I'd imagine that Iraq would be at least 30 years off from being safe for an American to visit. I'd love to go back.