Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 18 May 1995 — Page 11

The Muncie Times, Thursday, 18 May 1995, Page 11

► CML RIGHTS JOURNAL ◄ McNamara book rekindles Vietnam War debate

Twenty years ago Saigon fell. Twenty years ago this nation was torn apart after nearly a decade of war in Vietnam and the deaths of 58,000 young American men and women. Now Robert McNamara, former U.S. Secretary of Defense has written a book admitting that he knew the Vietnam War was unwinable. Twenty years ago my cousin, Charles, died before his 30th birthday. I don’t know what the death certificate listed as his cause of death, but it should have read Vietnam War. Because although he didn’t die in combat, Charles was surely a casualty of that war. His name should be on that wall at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. And 5 years later, almost to the day, Charles’ mother died. And while I am sure her death was attributed to pneumonia, I am just as sure that her death was caused by a heart broken because of the death of her only child. Her name should be on a wall, too, as should be the tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans who are the walking dead — some still addicted to the drugs they came to depend on while in Vietnam, some addicted to alcohol, others so troubled by what they saw during the insanity of a war that they have never recovered mentally, emotionally or spiritually. McNamara and the other leaders of this nation who sacrificed these young people for an unwinable was have a lot to be sorry for. It’s too bad more of them didn’t admit that. It’s too bad they don’t admit that the was was disproportionately fought by children of color and the children of working class white Americans. Not too many middle class or rich children fought in the Vietnam war—somehow they were exempted from combat. The Vietnam War devastated the African American community, as thousands of my contemporaries were called into service, never to return or to return never the same. As young women, we talked about how the war had cut drastically the pool of marriageable black men. As a community we saw, for the first time, large numbers of black men walking the streets on drugs when they returned from the war. McNamara’s book has opened old wounds—wounds which were never properly healed and suddenly feel raw again. He seems somewhat surprised by the controversy surrounding his book, by the negative newspaper editorials and the probing questions. Asked why he didn’t say back than that the was was unwinable, when he might have been able to save thousands of lived, he tries to say that he did say it—to his col-

Bernice

Powell

Jackson

leagues. I can’t get past my cousin, Charles, who went to Vietnam in the infantry in 1967, at the height of the war. When he returned, he was never the same again. For months afterward he slept sitting up and despite the injury he had sustained over there to his liver, he was constantly drinking. He wasn’t able to keep a job and his marriage crumbled. Too soon we were sitting in that Baptist

Church in Warrenton, Va. listening to his eulogy. If only Robert McNamara had the courage to say then what he is saying now—strongly and publicly. Maybe my cousin, Charles, would have been celebrating his 50th birthday this year. Maybe that memorial wall in Washington would have been only a few hundred names. McNamara says he wrote this book to keep us from making the same mistakes again. He points out that 160 million people have died in wars in this century alone. 160 million people. That’s probably what historians will remember about the 20th century—the warcaused deaths. That’s probably what historians will remember about Robert McNamara—the war-caused deaths during the Vietnam War.

I just remember my cousin Charles. ❖

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