Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own military service in Viet Nam in 1966-67 and service there as a Government contractor in 1967-68 as compared to that of the World War II (WWII) generation of soldiers.
Theirs was the last generation of warriors where the subjective and objective perspectives on what occurred were in sync – in other words, their perception of their service coincided with our Government’s objectives in defeating the German, Italian and Japanese fascist aggressors. In war, the intentions of the makers of policy and designers of strategy are what count most in actuality, for they determine, in large part, what happens during and after the war. In WWII, personal and policy/strategic intentions were the same for our Government and its warriors.
After WWII, when American policy and strategy became – both by design and in their effects – an imperial policy, the subjective perception of those serving may have still been, in most cases, one of defending “peace, freedom, and democracy” but the objective reality was that the Korean war, the First and Second Indochina wars, two Iraq wars, two Afghanistan conflicts, and other proxy wars (primarily in Africa, Central and South America, and the Middle East) were no longer, in truth, about securing peace, freedom or democracy for the U.S. citizenry or other peoples; they were about securing and expanding the power of the American Empire and its elites.
Nowadays – if we wish to be honest with ourselves – we have to say, unlike in the case of WWII, Honor the warrior but not the war, and we have to work toward helping those deluded about what they have been involved in – and the citizenry in general – learn that, although their personal intentions may have been honorable, their Government’s purposes were far from honorable. In my generation the Vietnam Veterans against the War took up that task, and now we have Iraq & Afghan Veterans against War doing the same.
In a very real sense WWII was the last “Good War” – if such a benign adjective can even be used with the horrific noun that stands for such mayhem, untold suffering, and mass murder.
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(c) Gregory V Driscoll 2012
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