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Date: Wed, 16 May 2001
Subject: Mail From Hack, 2001-05-16
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Mail From Hack, 2001-05-16
HOME TO WAR
Viet and Gulf Vets...a book worth reading....
Hack
HOME TO WAR: A HISTORY OF THE VIETNAM VETERANS' MOVEMENT by Gerald Nicosia,
Crown Books, 690 pages, $35.00. Can be ordered from Random House
1-800-793-2665, amazon.com, or barnesandnoble.com
Home to War is the first book that attempts to chronicle and put
in perspective the whole experience of Vietnam veterans returning from a
war the nation in large part didn't want, and which the government itself
tried to wash its hands of. There are really three main points to
Nicosia's book: 1) that Vietnam veterans were put through an experience
that most people outside the war, even their family and friends, could not
fathom; 2) that upon their return, Vietnam veterans suffered worse than
neglect, and were in fact attacked and berated for their service to their
country and made to bear the brunt of the country's negative feelings about
the war; and 3) that Vietnam veterans turned to one another, used the same
resourcefulness that had kept them alive during the war, and created
perhaps the most significant and successful self-help movement in the
history of the United States.
Nicosia begins with the story of Vietnam Veterans Against the War
(VVAW), and shows how veterans revived the flagging and much-splintered
civilian anti-war movement. He narrates in great detail VVAW actions such
as Operation RAW; a march from Morristown, New Jersey, to Valley Forge,
Pennsylvania; during which veterans performed guerrilla theater to show
local people what an American military company might do in similar
Vietnamese towns; the Winter Soldier Investigation, where hundreds of
veterans came to Detroit in 1971 to testify to various atrocities and
brutal acts they had committed against the Vietnamese people; and Dewey
Canyon III, which brought thousands of veterans to Washington in April,
1971, to tell Congress and the President that the war had to be ended
before any more lives were wasted and to return their medals in front of
the American people.
Very quickly, the veterans against the war realized that other
issues were going to keep their movement alive long past the war's
conclusion. Vets found that the war had screwed up their heads, their
ability to trust and relate normally to other people, and in some cases
kept them from holding down a job and other necessary social
functions. Jobs were scarce in postwar America anyway, their GI bill was
miserably inadequate, and checks were delayed for months; over 700,000
vets came home with "bad paper" that tagged them for life as losers. A
large number of vets began to fall sick from "old age diseases" like
prostate cancer that they shouldn't have gotten till decades later -- the
product of dioxin poisoning from Agent Orange. The unexpected penalties of
having served in Vietnam continue to this day with thousands of vets now
manifesting symptoms of potentially fatal hepatitis C, which had lain
dormant in their bodies for 30 or more years. Once again, the VA is doing
little to warn veterans of this health risk to which many were exposed
during the war.
Nicosia's book follows the thread of a great many groups: the
Vietnam Veterans' Working Group on Stress Disorders, the Vietnam Veterans
in Congress, Agent Orange Victims International, the National Veterans'
Legal Services Project, Bobby Muller's early Council of Vietnam Veterans
and its later reincarnation, Vietnam Veterans of America to show how work to
help Vietnam veterans has benefited many other groups of people (victims of
natural disasters or of violent crimes, for example) who suffer from delayed
stress as well as those, which is most people on this planet, whose bodies
have
been poisoned by the toxic by-products of industry.
At the end of Home to War, Nicosia discusses the issue of some
200,000 Gulf War veterans who are apparently sick from one or more toxic
exposures they suffered during their war, and he reveals that the disgrace
of a nation turning its back on its own courageous warriors is once again
being replayed and once again for the same reason: to save money at the
expense of those who have already done their jobs and aren't needed any more.
Home to War is a story that needed to be told. One can only hope
that someone besides the veterans themselves is finally listening.
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