LETTER TO GEORGE V. LAUDER FROM THOMAS NUSBAUMER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000100530001-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 43
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 16, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 23, 1985
• Content Type: LETTER

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A POLITICAL AND CULTURAL JOURNAL EXPLORING ISSUES
OF WAR & PEACE AND THE VIETNAM EXPERIENCE
STAT
May 23, 1985
George V. Lauder, Director
Public Affairs
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, DC 20505
In the spring issue of Foreign Policy you say that "a major
CIA initiative in recent years has been the dramatic expansion of
its contacts not only with academics but also with think tanks
and the private sector."
My personal experience, however, has been otherwise. Recently
I contacted your office requesting an opportunity to have a meet-
ing. This was denied, in what I consider an arrogant fashion.
I am the editor and chief of INTERVENTION journal, which deals
with military and foreign affairs from a noninterventionist per-
specitive. Do you only talk with interventionist minded people?
Is that the extent of the CIA's "dramatic expansion"?
I travel rather frequently, and have contacts with a variety
of people outside the United States. however, not STAT
only declined my offer to talk--at least I think so, since she has
not really given her final decision, but the negative was the last
I heard after calling her--but has done so in an unappropriate
fashion.
One can make allowances for ignorance, but an arrogant manner
should not be tolerated.
Sincerely,
INTERVENTION Tom Nusbaumer, Editor 545 W. 111th St. Suite 9M New York, New York 10025. [phone]
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A
Ill?'fe1irA1T1nA1
II, I LII VLIV I WI!
A JOURNAL ON WAR & PEACE & THE VIETNAM EXPERIENCE
DEFENDING THE
PERSIAN GULF
BYfAR! C. RAVfNA!
THE OVERLOOKED
VICTIMS OF THE
VIETNAM WAR
A REPORT
FROM
AFGHANISTAN
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P ..
Letters
WHY INTERVENTION
Dear Editor:
Thanks for getting out a publication I
wish we didn't need, I hope will soon be
outdated, and I fear will be essential for
some time. I am very glad someone will
help remember Vietnam so we can see
the tragedies of great power interven-
tions with the help of the past, and not
steadily rediscover the wheel.
David McReynolds
New York, NY
Dear Editor:
Your statement of purpose, "Why
Intervention?" was a well written, elo-
quent, and largely clear-sighted docu-
ment. For the most part it seems to
indicate an openness to exploring ideo-
logical, economic, racist, sexist, and
militaristic roots of interventionism....
You expressed a determination to uproot
the "culture of war" in all its forms and
"to delegitimize military force as a tool
for foreign policy and to substitute a
genuine concern for human needs and
human rights." Yet your very next
sentence was a jarring move backward
down the slippery slope towards closed
minds-and another Vietnam War. By
recognizing "the need for a military
force to defend our vital interests and
national security. . . " you have em-
braced a concept that surely is one of the
roots of interventionism.
Sam Diener
Brooklyn, NY
rN>MII~
Dear Editor:
You traitorous bastards can go straight
to hell!
R.E. Phelps
San Angelo, TX
11
Dear Editor:
Those who have objective information
on this issue [MIAs in Indochina, Spr.,
'84] will dismiss this article post haste
and appropriately as uninformed....
The article is rife with selective thinking
and erroneous facts....
Ann Mills Griffiths
National League of Families
of POW/MIA
Wash., DC
Walter F. Wook responds: I do not make
it a practice to write unsubstantiated
articles. I check my sources and docu-
ment my facts. Conversely I'd like to
take this opportunity to call your atten-
tion to a piece of information touted by
the League of Families as fact. In your
organization's POW/MIA briefing,
dated 5/8/84, it is stated that "The U.S.
has very credible intelligence data that
the remains of over 400 U.S. servicemen
have been recovered and are being
withheld." The allegation is yet another
variation of the Vietnamese mortician
story, also touted as fact. According to
information obtained from the Defense
Intelligency Agency and the Joint Casu-
alty Resolution Center, the gentleman in
question alleged having seen the re-
mains of approximately 400 American
servicemen in Vietnam. An initial poly-
graph examination of this person was
Dear Editor:
Please consider devoting at least one
page per issue to alternative visions,
positive images of how different folks
would will their future and their chil-
dren's future. Visions of an exciting
peace, a stimulating peace full of the
fear and joy of life on this lovely planet,
not full of rage and numbing dread.
Visions of a vast, intricate web of life-
affirming technologies that fit into a
shining and sustainable vibrant peace of
our self-fulfilling prophesy of the future.
Tom Hastings
Webster, WI
conducted in Hong Kong by a non-
Department of Defense agency. The
results of that examination "revealed
indications of deception regarding the
mortician's responses about having seen
American remains." Subsequently he
was "brought to Wash., D.C. for several
days of intensive interviews conducted
by DIA's POW/MIA experts and a
senior U.S. Army mortuary specialist."
In a subsequent DIA polygraph, the
mortician "responded to all questions
with no indication of deception." But,
according to JCRC representatives, he
was not polygraphed for the portion of
testimony of having actually seen Ameri-
can remains. To translate this informa-
tion into "very credible intelligence" is a
classic example of "selective thinking"
and "erroneous fact."
Editor & Publisher
Tom Nasbaumer
Associate Editors
Ernest Drucker and Bruce Weig
Contributing Edi ors
Jan Barre. John Balaban, linty Bogert. '.
Jeff Edwards, Bill Ehrh,-:s-::::~:s0soso.
Art Director
Gina Davis
Contributing Artists
1=rancinc Bnnair, Mimi Harrison,
Nina Kamprnann. Francine Kass,
Marcy Kass, Charlotte Smit. Hugh Stiltt i
Associate Publisher:
Witter
John Autin
Viceroy
Advisory l
Richard Barnet
Peter Davis
Thomas Downe
Daniel lallsber
Gloria Emerson
Randal Forsber
Dr. H. Jack Geiger
Studs Terkel
special thanks to Communicators
dear Disarmament and Danny Kalma t
COVER:'' David Suter
Intervention is published I y the Milit
exempt organization with' editorial liii~ and
business offices at 545 *m 11 i St : ll~l
please include a SoA S.F.
Subscrl lion rates: one y+ r 1 Tv
i ri SSe hat'1 .. ,
Ill
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1A1Tre1irA1r1nA1-
IIWILIIYLI1IIVIV
Letters
2 Why Intervention ...... MIA's ...... Visions.
Editor's Comments
4 "Rehabilitating" Vietnam ...... A Non-Intervention Network...... Non-
aligned Europe?
20
24
Articles
THE LEAST WE CAN DO, by Danny Schechter
Nearly a decade after the crash of Operation Babylift-the U.S. evacuation
of Vietnamese orphans-154 child survivors still fight for justice.
DEFENDING PERSIAN GULF OIL, by Earl C. Ravenal
What is the financial cost of defending the oil rich Persian Gulf and can this
be more expensive than the value of the oil?
THE 4TH R, by Ernest Drucker
Military recruiters have opened the doors of our high schools and gained
considerable influence; unknowingly they may have created an opening for
peace groups.
DISPATCH FROM AFGHANISTAN, by Dr. Chris Blatchley
A British physician provides an unbiased report on what he witnessed
during a medical tour in the guerrilla-controlled mountains of Afghanistan.
DEATH IN VIETNAM, ANGUISH AND SURVIVAL IN AMERICA, by
Heather Brandon
Salvator Cammarata was killed in Vietnam, and now his wife, combat buddy
and father speak eloquently of wounds which will not heal.
Poetry
The Ghost Inside, by Bruce Weigl ...... White Farms, Salvador, by Mari
30 Lonano...... Just Waking Up, by Quinton Duval ...... Dick and Jane and
Spot the Dog Get Their First Zen Lesson, by Bill Cooner......Somoza
Unveils the Statue of Somoza in Somoza Stadium, by Ernesto Cardenal.
Fiction
Routine Questioning, by Enid Harlow
32 One woman's confrontation with the masculine culture of war.
38
33
Books
Meditations in Green, by Stephen Wright, reviewed by Bruce Weigl..... .
Witness to War: An American Doctor in El Salvador, by Charles Clements,
M.D., reviewed by Ernest Drucker...... Blue Dragon, White Tiger, by
Fran Van Dinh. reviewed by John Balaban ...... Brief Reviews.
Commentary
Beyond Heroics: Some Thoughts on "Rosy-Glowism," by Adam Hochschild.
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40
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Editor's Comments/ /J/4i4#xII"
A NON-
INTERVENTION
NETWORK
For a century the national debate over
United States' foreign policy has been
essentially restricted to isolationism and
interventionism, portrayed to the Ameri-
can people as a choice between the
dangerous policy of complete U.S. with-
drawal from the world and the supposed-
ly much safer policy of U.S. leadership
and guardianship of the free world.
Obiovusly a rigged debate. A third al-
ternative, noninterventionism, wherein
this nation would remain active in world
affairs but not intervene militarily in
other countries, has been ignored, or
misidentified as isolationism.
Still, the vast majority of Americans
harbor deep-seated anti-interventionary
feelings. Most people simply don't want
to pay the economic and human costs of
military intervention, and often they do
not believe that intervening in a foreign
country will accomplish anything good.
These beliefs, however, are easily sup-
pressed by interventionists who inun-
date the public with warnings about.
our "lack of national will," the hazards
of a "loss of U.S. credibility," and well
formulated appeals for the demonstra-
tion of our military might. As one dis-
abled Vietnam veteran recently said, "to
have a violent foreign policy has become
patriotic. "
The major organized opposition to
interventionism, solidarity and anti-
imperialist groups, too often romanticize
foreign revolutions and insist that the
United States is the only country pur-
suing military intervention. These or-
ganizations have a serious credibility
problem with the general public, Con-
gress and the media, which has greatly
assisted the interventionists as they
rolled-over the "Vietnam Syndrome" on
the way to Grenada, Beirut and Central
America.
Anti-interventionary organizations,
not only solidarity and anti-imperialist,
but also peace and religious groups,
focus almost exclusively on halting U.S.
military intervention in one particular
geographical area. Central America, of
course, is the area most groups currently
concentrate on, with less emphasis on
the Philippines, Korea and the Middle
East. Stopping particular interventionary
acts is extremely valuable and com-
mendable, but these successes will not
add up to a policy of nonintervention. It
is necessary to examine the generic
problem of intervention and develop new
guidelines for the use of military force.
In not challenging the roots and overall
policy of interventionism we will remain
on the defensive, fighting intervention
brush-fires throughout the world.
What can we do? We can hold sym-
posiums on military intervention, ar-
range exhibits on the culture of war and
create an alert system to monitor crisis
situations; in short, form what could be
called a Non-Intervention Network.
However, unless the Network can estab-
lish solid credibility with policymakers,
succeed in getting the media to discuss
not only specific interventions but also
interventionism, and most importantly,
somehow broaden public support for
nonintervention way beyond what exists
today, we will be ineffective and unable
to change our foreign policy. All of this
may sound unrealistic in the present
political atmosphere, but remember,
after Barry Goldwater was trounced by
the "peace candidate" Lyndon Johnson
in 1964, the extreme Right regrouped
and began a successful 15 year campaign
to the White House. We may also need
15 years, until 1999, but what a great
way to end the century.
"REHABILITATING"
VIETNAM
With the return of the American : hos-
tages from Iran, the construction of the
Vietnam veterans' monument, the burial
of that war's unknown soldier, and the
continuing revision of its history, the
image of those who fought in the Viet-
nam War is being transtormed. It was
only a few years ago that Vietnam
veterans were considered baby-killers,
drug addicts and psychopaths. The vet
we used to see so often depicted on TV
and in the movies dressed in ragged
fatigues, anti-social, psychologically
crippled, and of course, violent, is now
an historical artifact. Today the Vietnam
veteran is portrayed in the media like
any other flag-waving veteran, indis-
tinguishable, except in the most super-
ficial ways, from all other veterans from
all other wars. At last America can feel
comfortable with its veterans of the
Vietnam War.
But war veterans, despite being bound
by the common experience of combat,
are not a single, uniform group. They are
differentiated by the uniqueness of their
wars. The poetic antiwar vets of World
War I, the gung-ho patriots of World
War II, the anonymous veterans of
Korea, the deranged boys of Vietnam;
each of these images is derived from the
different combat experiences and social
interpretation of each particular war. In
turn, veterans become symbols for
"their" war, and ultimately, I believe,
inseparable from the meaning of that
particular war.
At the height of passion, the anti-
Vietnam War movement did not separate
the warrior from the war, and supporters
of that war, past and present, do not
separate the veteran from the war. In the
1970's, the general consensus of the
American public was that Vietnam vet-
erans were victims, objects of pity. The
country was remorseful over the war.
However, with the country's shift toward
conservatism and the election of Ronald
Reagan and his effort to re-cast the
Vietnam War into a "noble cause," the
popular image of the veteran changed to
an object of pride.
During this 20 year evolution when the
Vietnam veteran was transformed from
prince to toad and back to prince again,
and the war itself from moral to immoral
to noble, the right-wing criticism of the
anti-Vietnam War activist has remained
constant. There has been no restoration
of the activists' image, and with good
reason. In rehabilitating the image of the
Vietnam veteran, the Right is seeking to
rehabilitate the image of the Vietnarr
War. A noble veteran helps to make a
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noble cause. Conversely, the Right deni-
grates those who were against the war
and would have us believe that the
Americans who marched in the streets
instead of the ri"e paddies were oppor-
tunists and cowards, and that the anti-
Vietnam War movement is and always
has been anti-American.
For two decades the extreme Right
has pushed the notion that the antiwar
movement undermined the effort of our
soldiers in Vietnam. Those who refused
the call and resisted the Vietnam War
may soon be groomed for the principal
role in a "stabbed in the back" theory of
that war's outcome. With the passage of
time and the distortion of memory it may
be possible for this lie to gain broad
public support, and even enter into
official U.S. history.
If this oc uia, tnen the cause for our
defeat in Vietnam will be shifted entirely
to the "liberal antiwar movement" and
their conspirators in the media, and
farther away from those who are really
responsible. A new generation of poten-
tial antiwar activists could be intimidated
into silence and unable to successfully
resist new wars with the same kind of
people dying for the same old lies. Then
the worshippers of military force will
have at last won the Vietnam War.
NON-ALIGNED
EUROPE?
When the Soviet Union invaded Af-
ghanistan in 1980, 114 nations in the
United Nations General Assembly voted
"for the immediate withdrawal of the
foreign troops from Afghanistan"; only
21 countries did not support this resolu-
tion, among them the countries of
Eastern Europe, the Soviets' closest
allies. Four years later when the United
States invaded Grenada and the U.N.
vote was 108 to 9 against that invasion,
Western Europe voted for the noninter-
vention resolution and condemnation of
the U.S. action.
Similarly, when the Soviet Union boy-
cotted the summer Olympics in Los
?
Angeles, every Eastern European coun-
try except Rumania supported the boy-
cott. When the United States boycotted
the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, Western
European nations, with the exception of
West Germany, refused to support the
boycott.
Today, Western European govern-
ments, encouraged by their citizens, no
longer unequivocally support U.S. for-
eign policy. In fact, in nearly all quarters
of Western European society both super-
powers are being severely challenged.
At a major disarmament conference this
summer in Perugia, Italy, which included
representatives of virtually every major
disarmament group in Western Europe,
the Soviet Union was the target of harsh
criticism, and was even jeered when its
delegation attempted to defend itself.
An observer to the conference stated
that "the time is past when much of the
European Left harbored more tender
feelings for the Soviet Union than for the
United States."
In the tense Cold War atmosphere of
the 1950's and 1960's, when "our super-
power right or wrong" could have been
the guiding principle of most countries'
foreign affairs, it was impossible for
Europeans to even contemplate non-
alignment as a policy. But in Western
Europe today, the successor genera-
tion's leaders have no qualms about
portraying the "balance of power" as
the balance of terror, and divided Europe
as the pawns of the superpowers, fore-
telling a possible future of non-align-
ment.
The division of Europe was created out
of the fear of military invasion from the
opposite ideological camp. For four
decades, however, since the separation
of Europe, the only invader has been the
?
Soviet Union and the only countries
invaded have been members of its own
bloc: East Berlin in 1953, Hungary in
1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968, with
the almost annual threat of other military
interventions, e.g., Poland. In Europe it
is clearly the Soviet Union which has
shown a willingness and ability to resort
to military force to control its allies.
Soviet military intervention has cer-
tainly made it more difficult for Eastern
European nations to resist the pressures
of the Soviet Union. Most Eastern Euro-
pean governments, however, continue to
press for more independence, and there
have been some real successes: Rumania
in foreign policy and Hungary with its
economy. But the 1984 Olympic boycott
and the Soviet's recent success in halting
Erich Honecker's trip to West Germany
(which would have been the first for an
East German leader), exemplifies the
Soviet Union's continuing control over
its allies in Eastern Europe, while the
example of Afghanistan shows the Sovi-
ets are still willing and able to invade a
neighboring country.
With the increased economic inter-
dependence of all of Europe, the rede-
velopment of a European self-identity,
and the continuing example of Western
Europe's independence from the United
States, the alliance's "glue of fear" will
continue to dissipate. The Soviet Union
will be confronted with a major decision:
the continuation of military invasions or
the acceptance of a redefined relation-
ship with Eastern Europe. Neither choice
leads to a non-aligned Europe, which is
way off, but a Soviet pledge not to
militarily intervene would be an impor-
tant historical step encouraging the
trend of a Europe free from both super-
powers. ^
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THE
WE CAN
1CX
1. A Blow to the Heart
Wars are cruelest to children. Vietnam was no excep-
tion. What memory of the war is complete without the
images of a napalmed girl screaming on Highway 1, the
homeless shoeshine boys scrambling for food in the
garbage cans of Saigon, and the nearly one million
orphans. No one who was there will ever forget the
children. In the closing hours of the war, during the month
that the war ended, an effort was made to bring Viet-
namese orphans-or those thought to be orphans-to the
United States. The Air Force sent its largest plane to
launch "Operation Babylift." That first plane crashed.
Ninety-eight of the nearly two hundred-fifty children
perished in a tragedy that devastated the beginnings of
the evacuation effort.
That horror was instantly relayed to a stunned world.
"A blow to the heart," was what ex-CIA agent Frank
Snepp called it in his Vietnam memoir. "Too unbearable
to believe," wrote Arnold Isaacs of the Baltimore Sun. The
survivors were quickly airlifted to waiting families in the
United States and overseas, but they did not escape
Danny Schechter is a television producer and radio
broadcaster.
offy"aaffarmrm
awmgm
unscathed. Doctors say that most or all of these children
are now suffering from chronic brain damage caused in all
likelihood nine years previously by the air disaster in
Saigon.
11. Saigon, April 1975
The "decent interval" was over. South Vietnam had a
month to live as a separate entity. In Washington, the
Ford Administration scrambled feverishly to head off the
inevitable. The President and his advisors argued that an
infusion of arms could stabilize the situation. A war-weary
Congress was not being receptive.
In Saigon a number of childcare agencies were scram-
bling to find places to fly the orphans in their care out of
the country. Friends For All Children, a Denver-based
group, ran four Saigon nurseries filled with children they
wanted to evacuate to the U.S. and Europe. Their
supporters in Connecticut were trying to raise money for a
plane. They wanted a 747 but the commercial airlines were
not being responsive. Pan Am and Air France would give
nothing but vague replies to requests for charter aircraft.
The U.S. Embassy was of no help initially because
Ambassador Graham Martin reportedly feared that any
official evacuation would stir panic.
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?
Enter Ed Daley, the pistol-packing President of World
Airways who offered free tickets out on one of his planes.
The Embassy declared Daley's plans unsafe, perhaps
because they were alarmed by his flamboyant publicity-
seeking antics like his "last flight to Danang" where
refugees literally hung off of his plane while it took off,
Daley beating their hands off the open hatchway as the
plane lifted. According to the childcare workers, Daley
insisted that the evacuation be "performed in an action-
packed" manner for effective television coverage. An
airlift under his sponsorship might make World Airways
look good but could embarrass the government.
Then someone got a bright idea. A highly publicized,
officially backed airlift might stimulate a wave of renewed
sympathy for the plight of South Vietnam. If Daley had his
uses for the flight, so might the U.S. government. The
Ford Administration seized on the idea, proclaiming
"Operation Babylift," a program to bring Vietnamese
orphans to America and in the process dramatize and
humanize the attempt to save Saigon. "It's the least we
can do. We will do much, much more," declared President
Gerald R. Ford on April 2, 1975 in a nationally televised
press conference. "Marvelous propaganda" is how Am-
bassador Martin reportedly described it to an aide.
Publicly the Embassy explained that the Ambassador's
concern "was simply the welfare of the children."
At Martin's urging the South Vietnamese government
agreed to cut through the red tape governing foreign
adoptions. Dr. Phan Quang Dan, the Deputy Prime
Minister for Social Welfare, sent a letter to his colleagues
predicting that "when these children land in the United
States, they will be tremendous." In North Vietnam,
Prime Minister Phan Van Dong denounced the babylift as
"criminal," likening it to a mass kidnapping.
President Ford was upbeat about the announcement. He
explained we would be airlifting two thousand orphans
"all in the process of being adopted by American
families." This statement was inaccurate. Many of the
children were bound for families in Europe and Canada as
well as in the U.S. More importantly, there was no way of
being absolutely certain that all of the babylift children
were even orphans. In fact, more than 100 babylift
"orphans" would ultimately be returned to their natural
parents after ugly legal battles. Oddly, at the press
conference, Ford specified the precise type of aircraft to be
sent: "I have directed that C5A aircraft and other aircraft
especially equipped to care for these orphans during the
flight be sent to Saigon." At the time this contradiction
went unnoticed. The C5A is a cargo plane, not at all
"especially equipped" to care for people, much less tiny
babies. The C5A was a plane which for years had been
caught up in controversy over massive cost overruns,
design and safety problems.
Furthermore, the C5A was not the only plane that might
have been used. Commercial planes were later chartered
for the babylift. The Air Force also had more appropriate
planes nearby. Four fully-equipped medical planes were
based in the Philippines. There was even a C141, a smaller
version of the C5A, in Saigon which took off empty while
the passengers crowded on board flight 80-218, the
inaugural plane sent to pick up the children. Why this
plane? Those who say the choice was not unusual cite the
plane's size and flying range, the fact that it was built for
airlifts and flown by the Military Airlift Command which
was assigned to organize the babylift. But lawyers
representing the surviving children put forth another
hypothesis: that the C5A was sent to rehabilitate the
aircraft's image at a time when Lockheed was on the ropes
financially and politically, a time when the Congress was
being asked to spend millions more on repairing the plane.
M. The Military-Lockheed Complex
April, 1975 was not a good time for the Lockheed
Corporation. The company, which faced bankruptcy in the
late sixties only to be bailed out with government help,
was surviving on 90-day notes its bankers were rolling
over. Senator Frank Church was about to launch his probe
into an overseas corporate bribery scandal that would
implicate Lockheed, topple the corporation's top manage-
ment and send shock waves through several governments.
The C5A itself was embroiled in a heated controversy.
Cracks had surfaced on the airplane's wings indicating
that they were too light for the plane's load. They had to
be replaced at an enormous cost. It is this context that
leads the children's lawyers to argue that the C5A was not
dispatched to Saigon for humanitarian reasons. A success-
ful mission of mercy, they argue, would show the world
how vital the Lockheed jet could be. They believe there
was collusion between Lockheed and its Air Force friends
to use the babylift to give the C5A a chance to share in the
good publicity that would flow from the operation and its
media campaign, well orchestrated by the Ford Admin-
istration.
The plane arrived at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airport
during the lunch hour. The C5A is a huge plane: six stories
high from wheel to tail, with a 223-foot wingspan. "I never
saw such a big plane," one of the children, Ly Vo, would
say later. "We didn't think it would get off the ground."
The plane was the 21st of the 84 Galaxies that Lockheed
built for the Air Force on its vast production lines in
Marietta, Georgia. The C5A is almost as long as a football
field and is capable of carrying 250,000 pounds. Orville
and Wilbur Wright's first flight could have taken place
entirely within the bowels of this giant transport.
C5 number 80-218 had been flown in from Clark Air
Base in the Philippines, its last stop on a flight that
originated in California, hopped east to Georgia to pick up
a load of howitzers and then flew west to Saigon to drop
them off. The plane had flown halfway around the world to
pick up its new cargo: babies. Newsmen at the airport
filmed the unloading, watched as the vast rear doors
swung open with a giant ramp clanking down into place.
Trucks drove right into the plane's belly to drag artillery
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pieces onto the runway. To open the doors, a loadmaster
had to unlock a complex system of 14 interconnecting
latches which had a tendency to slip out of rig.
After the accident, the lawyers for the survivors would
discover just how dangerous the system was. It was so
complex that many mechanics couldn't understand it or fix
it. In 1971, an Air Force study called the doors a "monster
system" which, if unrepaired, could lead to a "catas-
trophe." These are strong words for a military study. But
not much was done. There were many incidents officially
acknowledged involving locking system malfunctions,
including one when a door fell off in flight less than two
months before the C5A was sent to Saigon. Court
documents reveal that both Lockheed and the Air Force
knew about the problems, but there was no "fix" prior to
the accident because of a quarrel about who would pay for
it. According to trial depositions, even Lockheed's own
engineers had recommended improvements, but the
company's management vetoed the work until the Air
Force agreed to pay for it. The Air Force rejected one
Lockheed proposal for a cost-plus contract for just such a
fix because the military procurement officials felt Lock-
heed had a responsibility to build a safe plane. Neither
Lockheed nor the Air Force made the issue a priority or a
matter of safety.
IV. Flight 80-218
Captain Dennis Traynor was plane 80-218's veteran
commander. He had received the order to pick up the
orphans only a day earlier during a stopover at the Clark
Air Base in the Philippines. When asked, he told his
superiors that he could "combat load" as many as 1,000
children. He asked them if he could offload his military
cargo first to another C5A also on the ground at Clark but
was summarily denied. He did his best to ready the plane
for its new mission: he had containers of milk, box
lunches, and baby bottles loaded aboard. Flight nurses
and medical corpsmen were assigned to the flight which
had been designated a top priority mission. In fact, the
plane was dubbed "The President's Plane" in honor of
who would be meeting it when it landed in California.
The boarding was a noisy affair. The C5A has two decks.
The troop compartment upstairs with 75 seats was filled
first. The infants were strapped in, two to a seat. Nurse
Christy Lieverman and the others tending the children had
to stand. Downstairs, in the giant doubledecker, the scene
was even more chaotic. Over one hundred older children,
several medical corpsmen, and Embassy personnel being
evacuated under babylift cover were stretched out on the
steel floor. Cargo straps substituted for seat belts. There
were no toilets, not even enough air sickness bags. Most
importantly, there was not enough oxygen on board for
emergencies.
"Try and picture a hundred children, screaming,
hollering, carrying on. Lots of confusion," Lieverman
recalls bitterly. "Children aren't cargo. Children are
people. They belong in seats. They don't belong on the
floor of an airplane, particularly with luggage strapped
into one side of them." Remember, this was to be a
twenty-hour flight.
With the passengers on board, the crew prepared for
takeoff. In the cockpit they discussed a high altitude flight
plan, climbing up to 37,000 feet to get over some turbulent
weather. Incredibly, as the children were loaded aboard,
crew members had second thoughts about the safety of the
mission. A cockpit recorder taped a prophetic discussion
about exactly what would soon happen. "If we are up at 37
[i. e.. 37, 000 feet] and we have rapid decompression, we're
gonna lose someone." And again, they noted the lack of
oxygen, both upstairs and below. "Those babies, they
ain't gonna get 'em all out in time." But the airport
loadmaster ordered them to proceed and they taxied for
takeoff. At 4:03, the 75-ton machine lumbered down the
runway and rose toward the clouds. In 12 minutes, 80-218
would reach an altitude of 23,752 feet, four miles high.
Christy Lieverman was in the rear galley upstairs filling
baby bottles when she heard the explosion. Susan Derge,
then twenty, who had volunteered to help out on the flight,
was standing towards the front of the troop compartment
and heard a more muffled sound. Medical technician Phil
Wise was downstairs in the cargo area. He just happened
to be looking towards the back of the plane.
"We had no warning," he recalls. "It was just a loud
explosion all at once, and I looked back and saw the doors
falling off like they never were attached. And blankets and
debris flying throughout the aircraft, bodies flying, and a
lot of screaming."
In 3/10ths of a second all the oxygen left the pressurized
aircraft. And not just air. Wise saw crew members sucked
out of the plane. "Our crew members that were back there
at the time-they all went out the aircraft.... It was
horrifying... it was a powerful suction. . .just took every-
body off their feet .... I felt like I was gasping for air, and
you could not get air. And I didn't have time to get scared.
My reaction was, `This shouldn't be happening "' Wise
estimated that he passed out within 20 seconds. Ly Vo, one
of the children on the floor of the cargo compartment,
reported the same sensation: "It hurt really a lot...I
couldn't stand the pain any more. Both ears!"
Upstairs, a floor above the exploding clamshell-like
doors, Christy Lieverman remembers the plane getting
cold, the children first becoming quiet, and then passing
out. "I just assumed we were all going to die." She looked
down and could see the South China Sea through a gaping
hole. That frightened her even more because she couldn't
swim.
The oxygen masks upstairs popped free of their com-
partments but many didn't work. They were designed for
adults and were too big for the infants' tiny faces. Most
couldn't reach them anyway, so the children had to be
picked up and held close to the masks. Some were turning
blue. Air Force personnel worked with the other attend-
ants sharing whiffs of oxygen with some of the babies.
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t . .
"Most of the children were unconscious at the time of
descent," Susan Derge remembers.
Their oxygen masks on, the Captain and his crew were
facing a formidable task. Not only were the doors gone,
but a flying piece of metal had severed the control cables.
They had little navigational capability. With only the
power of his engines, Traynor turned the C5A around,
heading back towards Saigon. By banking and rolling,
increasing and decreasing power, he managed to get on an
approach to the runway. But the 300,000 pound plane was
losing altitude fast. Traynor had to keep the nose up as it
fell towards the ground. He applied power as it was going
down, a risky but only half-successful maneuver.
"I had to add max power in the dive," he reported
afterwards. "The nose pitched down rapidly and the
addition of maximum throttle would not bring the nose
back up." The vertical velocity was 500-600 feet per
minute when they touched down in an open rice paddy just
two miles short of the runway. The plane was going too
fast and couldn't stop. It bounced back into the air and
crossed the Saigon river, hitting an irrigation dike. The
wings kept flying, the cockpit went one way, the troop
compartment another.
"The lights went out," Traynor noted in an Air Force
report. "I felt the nose seem to furrow down and soon it
was dark. We slowly rolled, inverted, and suddenly it was
stone quiet. I was alive."
The plane had literally come apart into four sections.
Most of the crew walked away from the cockpit. The tail
was torn off and the wings flew on by themselves until
they burst into flame. The troop compartment with its
babies two to a seat slid at least one thousand feet, many
of its occupants shaken but alive. The downstairs-the
huge cavernous cargo hold-was pulverized. Only six
children and a few adults miraculously survived. "They
found me hanging upside down with my leg twisted
around a wire," says Phil Wise. "My eyeball hanging out
and my head laid open." Wise says he was saved only
because rescue workers recognized his uniform and didn't
want his body to burn up.
Ly Vo was also downstairs, one of the few older children
who lived. She was thrown out of the plane, into the rice
paddy. "My body was in pain. I gave a scream and an
American guy in a helicopter saw me move and came to
get me." She would live in a full body cast for years. Most
of the other human cargo-153 people-perished.
Anh Traer, born Bui Thi Kim Hoa, is eleven years old
now. She was babylifted to America on that first flight.
She's a pretty girl who wears large glasses. Only when she
takes them off is it clear that she's Asian as well as Black.
"My brain cells were crushed, that's all," is how Anh
understands her problem. Anh and most of the babylift
survivors suffer from Minimal Brain Dysfunction or MBD,
an often incapacitating illness characterized by hyperac-
tivity, learning disabilities and frequent emotional out-
bursts.
Doctors retained as part of the children's lawsuits link
these MBD problems to the air crash. Dr. Steven
Feldman, a Rhode Island pediatrician and psychiatrist,
examined some of the survivng children and studied all of
their records. He believes: "The plane crash caused the
Minimal Brain Dysfunction by exposing these infants to a
variety of conditions: a degree of lack of oxygen; a degree
of what's called deceleration or slowing down; a degree of
explosive decompression; an impact, fumes, a number of
factors which we'll probably never fully understand in the
crash caused damage and insult to their brains."
Through a process of intense neurological and psycho-
logical exams, doctors retained in the lawsuit found that
virtually all of the C5A crash survivors showed some MBD
symptoms. One is now institutionalized; at least two are
suicidal.
VI. All My Trials
It's been nine years since lawyers, acting on behalf of
the 150 survivors, filed suit in federal court against
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Lockheed, the company that made the CSA that crashed.
Lockheed in turn brought the Air Force into the case as a
third party. Together they spent an estimated ten million
dollars mounting an aggressive defense that turned the
case, in the words of Trial Judge Lewis Obdorfer, into
"one of the most protracted, costly, and bitterest liti-
gations in the history" of his federal district court. Like the
war it grew oLt of, the case has become a political and
ethical quagmire-in the words of The Washington Post, a
"judicial horror story."
By 1984, more than half of these "babylift children," 92
out of 150, are still waiting resolution of their lawsuits. All
92 now live with adoptive families outside the United
States. They were left out of a settlement reached in 1982
in which Lockheed and the government agreed to pay
$300,000 per child who lived with U.S. families. The
children's lawyers contend that the exclusion was part of a
deliberate campaign to prolong the litigation. In March of
1984 a jury awarded $660,653 to a Vietnamese child, now
living in France, who survived the crash. However,
despite the settlements and that latest jury verdict, the
remaining cases could drag on for another decade, lawyers
say. Lockheed's lawyers-who are paid by the insurance
company-no longer contest the role of C5A defects in the
accident. Instead, these trials are fought over two ques-
tions: were the surviving children really hurt in the crash,
and if so, what are their injuries worth? As one Lockheed
lawyer puts it, "How much should you pay for a damaged
brain?"
Lockheed's doctors scoff at the plaintiffs' claims,
suggesting non-crash related causes to explain away
whatever problems exist. They deny that the children are
brain damaged. Lawyers for the children honestly believe
that there has been a virtual conspiracy between Lockheed
and the government to suppress evidence, conceal the
cause of the crash, and cover up the illegalities. They
have, they say, evidence which they believe could cost
their opponents millions in punitive damages.
It emerged later that the Air Force had destroyed
"hundreds, perhaps thousands of photographs, negatives,
and slides of the crash scene and wreckage." One Air
Force official who admitted burning the documents said he
didn't know why they should have been saved as evidence.
He said the destruction was "routine." The Trial Judge
would later call this destruction "intentional" and "ques-
tionable." This act would trigger charges of cover-up that
would still be unresolved and the subject of continuing
litigation nearly a decade later. Judge Oboderfer, citing
Court of Appeals delays, said, "Once in a great while, a
case comes before this court which makes one wonder
whether the judicial system is still equipped to deal with a
litigant determined to frustrate the workings of justice.
Unfortunately, this is such a case."
In addition to subverting the judicial system, the delays
have had even more devastating effects upon the children.
Charles Work, the court-appointed legal guardian for the
children, has said that "these children, because of the
delay, have deteriorated. These people have in effect
perpetuated a terrible outrage on these children because
these children could be better off for the rest of their lives
if they had gotten treatment 'earlier." Work believes that
Lockheed has pursued a "scorched earth defense,"
dragging out the procedures every way that they could in
hopes of wearing down the plaintiffs.
The thrust of the defendants' legal case has been to
show that the accident was not all that severe, that the
oxygen loss was not serious, the descent no worse than an
"amusement park ride," and the crash landing "gentle"
for the children in the top of the plane. The defendants'
legal briefs take all of the horror out of the crash, referring
antiseptically to the plane's destruction as "the erosion of
its structural integrity." Lockheed's ability to win new
contracts from Congress was not impeded. As David
Keating of the Conservative National Taxpayers Union
puts it: "Not only has Lockheed not suffered from this
crash, but from what I can tell, Lockheed has done very
well with future contracts from the Air Force not only to fix
problems with the plane, but in fact, to get a new order
from a whole set of new planes."
In fact, after the crash, Lockheed stuck with its position
that the CS's locking system was adequate. The Air Force
demanded modifications-which the company ultimately
made on the usual cost-plus basis.
At this point, on the eve of a new trial, faced with
information that vital evidence had been suppressed or
withheld, Lockheed and the government decided to settle
the cases of the American families for a little more than
$300,000 per child. They would not concede on the liability
question directly but in an acceptable legal flim-flam
agreed not to contest causation if the plaintiffs promised
not to press for sanctions for misconduct and punitive
damages. Significantly, they also agreed to compensate
each child irrespective of the "individual differences"
they had been stressing for years. In some cases, children
who were never examined received cash awards.
In 1982 the attorneys who had been working without
fees on a contingency basis accepted the out-of-court
settlement with the parents' approval. With the govern-
ment picking up a good part of the tab, it was a $13.5
million deal. Guardian Work insisted on using a chunk of
the money for a special trust to set aside funds for any
children who were eventually hospitalized or severely
troubled. The children's lawyers split a $3.3 million fee for
their three years of work. Each family was left with little
more than $125,000 for a lifetime of costly care for medical
and educational problems. Many comparable accident
claims involving brain damage often produce multi-million
dollar individual settlements in other courts. "We did not
believe the $300,000 per child was enough, far from it,"
explains Work, "but we had little money left to keep
fighting the lawsuit. Their strategy of delay wore us
down."
continued on page 23
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DEFENDING
PERSIAN
GULF
BY
EARL 0.
RAVENAL
igh on the list of objects of American
foreign policy that are often declared
essential is the Persian Gulf. This region
stands as a surrogate for the whole ques-
tion of our assured access to resources-
in this case, oil-that are held to be
111virtually irreplaceable in acceptable
terms and are subject to interdictions by powers and
interests inimical to the United States and its allies.
No doubt this is a serious matter. But expressions of the
importance of an interest do not entail our extending
military protection to it. This is not to deny the interest
Earl C. Ravenal, a former official in the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, is a professor of international
relations at Georgetown University. His latest book is
Never Again: Learning From America's Foreign Policy
Failures.
involved; and it is not to deny the potential challenges to
this interest. Neither the interests nor the threats are
fictitious. But they are not absolute or infinite, either.
Interests must be weighed; responses must be compared.
Proposed actions must be arrayed against each other, and
against inaction.
Even advocates of curtailing our containment of the
Soviet Union to a "selective" effort would continue our
defense of the Persian Gulf against indigenous or external
threats-a spectrum that ranges from resource blackmail
to actual invasion. A weighty case is made to the effect
that this region is the linchpin of the Western alliance. Our
allies' dependence on oil from this region is, indeed, much
more abject than ours. It follows that, if the Soviets were to
control this region, they could subordinate Europe. If local
countries, dominated by either Marxist or Islamic revo-
lutionaries, could threaten to deprive the West, they could
exact all sorts of concessions or bring about financial and
industrial collapse.
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But, ironically, the unintended effect of such apocalyptic
scenarios is to provoke us to reevaluate our alliances.
Under the circumstances evoked by the proponents of
enhanced defense of the Gulf, Western Europe and Japan
would become liabilities to the United States, rather than
assets. And, the more urgent and exacting the measures
necessary to defend the Gulf, the more the argument from
necessity raises the ulterior question of whether the
United States could "do without" Western Europe and
Japan, in the sense of relinquishing our protection and
letting them make their own accommodations.
Whatever its propriety, undertaking the defense of a
"new" area is not cost-free. The Carter Doctrine of
January 1980, for example, specified and militarized a
commitment which, to the extent that it had existed
before, was only implied and mostly political. For some
time after the enunciation of the Carter Doctrine, which
promised an American military response to aggression in
the Gulf, its consequences in terms of force allocations and
defense budgets were masked-to the point where critics
assailed the Doctrine precisely for being an empty
declaration, unsupported by bases, deployments, and lift.
In response, the Carter administration moved to create
the Rapid Deployment Force-initially a 100,000 plus
group of Marine, Army, Air Force, and Navy units, only
contingently available from other commands. Then it
acquired or refurbished a series of stepping-stone bases in
the western Indian Ocean and the Red Sea areas: Berbera
in Somalia; Mobasa in Kenya; Masirah, off Oman;
Bahrain, near the head of the Gulf; Ras Banas, along
Egypt's Red Sea coast; in addition to Diego Garcia, in the
mid-Indian Ocean, which has been held since 1966 jointly
with the British, with facilities begun in the early 1970s
and greatly expanded since then. It also put as many as
sixty U.S. ships into the Indian Ocean at a given time,
including two carrier task forces. The Reagan administra-
tion inherited these programs, and enhanced them,
creating a new "Central Command," and increasingly
orienting major forces-Army and Marine divisions, Navy
carrier battle groups, and Air Force tactical air wings-to
the missions of this command.
The point is that to take on the defense of additional
regions eventually required tangible dedicated units, with
airlift, sealift, and logistical sustenance. And a string of
bases requires not just complaisant clients, but outlays,
disguised as they might be, for military assistance,
construction, economic aid, and other functions, some-
times even the internal rescue of friendly governments. So
the cost of a doctrine that commits the United States to
defend a "new" region is inevitably incremental. Commit-
ments may be articulated in fine phrases, but they must be
implemented by forces. In the case of the Gulf, since the
overall U.S. force structure since 1976 has been increased
only by one aircraft carrier and by the one "light" Army
division to be created in fiscal year (FY) 1985, the
"additional" forces for the Gulf must, in some way, come
14/Intervention
from forces previously allocated to Europe and, to a lesser
extent, to Asia.
So the issue of costs cannot be escaped. The question is
not whether it would be nice to have continued access to
Persian Gulf oil on tolerable terms. It is, rather, whether it
is feasible to fight for it, if access to it for ourselves or for
our Western European and Japanese allies is threatened
by the Soviet Union, a local proxy, or a revolutionary
government, and therefore, derivatively, whether it makes
sense to prepare, perpetually and at great expense, to do
this.
How do we decide this question? The feasibility of this
proposition can be assessed only by presenting a calculus,
in terms of "expected losses," of contrasting courses of
action, or inaction: to protect access to oil by American
armed intervention, or to "let" the region slip into the
hands of the Soviets, their proxies, or independent local
revolutionaries.
It is not easy to calculate with exactitude the peacetime
and wartime costs of defending-let alone not defending-
an area such as the Persian Gulf. But that does not matter,
since some of the terms we are discussing-the possible
loss of economic strength and the possible devastation of
war-are of gross magnitude, in trillions of dollars over
the time the effects would be felt.
On one hand, peacetime military preparations, taken as
the present portion of the defense budget attributable to
the defense of this region for, say, ten years, compounded
each year by a percentage comprising the projected real
increases in defense spending and the expected rate of
inflation; plus the expected loss in a regional conventional
war; plus the expected loss in a nuclear war. On the other
hand is the expected loss to our economy caused by the
deprivation of oil for, say, ten years.
Before we assign values to the first element in this
equation (or inequality), the cost of preparing for war, we
must determine the present portion of the defense budget
attributable to the defense of the Persian Gulf. To do that,
we must analyze and allocate the entire defense budget,
by types of forces and by geographical region. Conse-
quently, I offer an anatomy and a methodology that
enables a fairly confident and revealing attribution of
defense expenditures to the regions we are committed to
defend. The following figures are slices of the Reagan
administration's originally requested 1985 defense budget
authorization for $305 billion. This request includes
strategic nuclear forces which come to about $70 billion, or
23 percent of the 1985 requested authorization. All the
rest, $235 billion or 77 percent, is dedicated to general
purpose forces-land divisions, tactical air wings, and
surface naval units.
By my own estimates (derived from an analysis of
Secretary Weinberger's 1985 "Posture Statement,"
presented to Congress on February 1, 1984), Europe will
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continue to be the main beneficiary of American defense
resources in 1985, accounting for $129 billion. Asia will
absorb $47 billion. And an expanding requirement for
Rapid Deployment Forces will take $59 billion, of which
about $47 billion (or 75 percent-a rough and plausible
apportionment) is for the Persian Gulf. In 1985, the
Pentagon will continue to increase its primary allocation of
forces to the Persian Gulf. It will begin to implement a
plan to create as many as five additional "light" Army
divisions, justified mostly by the Persian Gulf or South-
west Asia requirement, but without adding any significant
manpower to the Army.
In these calculations, we attribute all forces either to the
"strategic" or to the "general purpose" side of the
ledger, and, in turn, attribute general purpose forces to
some region of the world. Combat forces are costed on a
full-slice basis. For failing to state the full costs of forces
prevents us from linking defense dollars and manpower
with the defense of regions of the world. It makes the
linkage unintelligible. Both full-slice costing and the
allocation of forces to regions of the world are necessary to
making defense costs intelligible-that is, relating the
primary inputs to the ultimate outputs. Perhaps that is
why defense officials are so apparently intent on diffusing
or obscuring these connections.
I judge that, for FY 1985, the Reagan administration
intends the following regional attribution of a total of 20
active ground divisions: NATO/Europe, 11 divisions; East
Asia, 4 divisions; Other Regions and the Strategic Re-
serve, 5 divisions (4 1/3 Army and 1/3 Marine, with its
double-strength air wing), 7 Air Force tactical air wings,
and 2 Navy carrier battle groups, each with a tactical air
wing-about 75 percent of which could be attributed to the
defense of Southwest Asia and the Persian Gulf. These
allocations are likely to continue to change as propor-
tionately more forces are "pointed" primarily at South-
west Asia and the Gulf, at the expense of Europe and East
Asia. Applying these fractions to the total cost of our
general purpose forces, $235 billion, we calculate the
rough cost of our three regional commitments: NATO/
Europe, $129 billion; East Asia, $47 billion; Other Regions
and the Strategic Reserve, $59 billion. Multiplying the
"Other Regions and the Strategic Reserve" requirement
by 75 percent yields the present cost of defending the
Persian Gulf region: $47 billion.
The Payoffs
Thus, to prepare, over ten years, to fight a war to defend
Persian Gulf oil would cost, cumulatively, $727 billion.
This figure also includes the projected real increases in
defense spending and the expected rate of inflation. In
addition, we might increase the chance of a regional war-
say, a Vietnam-size war-by 5 percent (and the 1985 cost
of such a war would be some 31/4 times more expensive
than the $350 billion it had come to by 1975); and that
yields an expected loss of some $57 billion. Further, we
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would court the risk, say even one percent, of a general
nuclear war, in which the United States might lose
one-third of its annual gross national product (at its
current value of $3,692 billion), or $1,231 billion, for ten
years-an expected loss of $123 billion (not to speak of the
casualties and the loss of other precious values, both in
war and in an extended period of increased governmental
regimentation). The total of these three cost factors is $907
billion.
All this must be thrown into the balance against the
consequences if the United States failed to defend and if
some sequence of events resulted in the deprivation of oil.
(In this calculation, I give every benefit of the doubt to the
militant hawks.) America might lose 10 percent of its gross
national product (even though Persian Gulf oil comprises
less than 3 percent of our energy requirement), for as
much as ten years, or a total of $3,690 billion, and this
eventuality might become as much as 20 percent more
probable-yielding an expected loss of some $738 billion.
So the total expected losses of war are greater than
those of peace; the costs of defense exceed the conse-
quences of disengagement. Very simply, the net value to
us of protecting the Persian Gulf is less than zero and
should cause us to take more seriously non-belligerent
options for otherwise providing the energy that is at risk in
this region.
Faced with the large ongoing and contingent costs of
defense or occupation of the oilfields, we should, as an
alternative, hedge against resource deprivation, creating
alternative sources of supply through exploration, more
intensive recovery, and research into substitute materials
and processes. The costs of these moves should be born by
private organizations and passed along to consumers in
the form of prices that recover and reflect the true
long-term costs of providing the commodities and serv-
ices. It should be intuitively obvious that even expensive
hedging moves are cheaper than the costs of a war to
maintain access to these strategic commodities. Somet
national interests cost more to defend than they are worth.
David Suter is a frequent contributor to Intervention. His
illustrations also appear in Time Magazine, The New York
Times and Harper's Magazine.
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THE FOURTH
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rot
n Army recruiting ad appeared recently
in On Your Own, "The magazine for high
school seniors." Emblazoned across the
glossy ad were the words "Father, Coach,
Teacher, Leader, Friend .... Sergeant."
The ad depicts an Army Sergeant whose
strong, confident face signals approval as he stands
between the new recruits and us. The Sergeant-clean
cut, in his late twenties, white-directs his gaze at the
hidden face of a black recruit wearing identical and very
clean camouflage fatigues. The scene radiates cama-
raderie, cohesion, and most crucially, acceptance. The
magazine in which this ad appeared asserts on its
masthead page that it is published "by the 13-30
corporation of Knoxville, Tennessee, a private firm in no
way connected with the Department of Army," a strange
disclaimer for a magazine containing the usual collection
of articles geared to American high school seniors-
Ernest Drucker is an Associate Editor of Intervention.
articles titled "Changing Relationships," "What If I Hate
College?" and "Summit to Sea," the tale of a heroic
young woman adventurer. But as you leaf through On
Your Own, you realize that this Army ad and the several
others in the same issue are the only ads in the entire
magazine. Ads which occupy exactly 25% of the maga-
zine's 48 pages, and back cover! Suddenly the absence of a
sale price on this glossy high school give-away and the
publisher's disclaimer about its relation to the Army
makes sense. On Your Own is recommended reading for
the latest addition to the American high school curricu-
lum-the fourth "R"-Recruiting.
"Be all you can be
Growing strong now, strong together
Be all you can be
You can do it in the Army. "
(Army Recruiting Song)
It's 1984 and a couple of million kids are graduating
from America's high schools. Now "on their own" indeed.
But who cares? American business wants solid skills and
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good work habits-things not easily acquired in many of
today's high schools. And once again, neatness counts-
corporate America doesn't just want good behavior, it
wants good attitudes and, if at all possible, good looks. A
tough bill to fill for many 18-year-olds-especially for
those who have attended grossly inadequate schools in
communities which offer little support.
There's always Burger King! Minimum wage (less if
Reagan has his way) and nowhere to go but the same job at
McDonald's or Pizza Hut. Not very inspiring. College?
College now costs $40,000-$50,000--counting tuition, liv-
ing expenses and lost earning capacity. "So here's the
plan .... I'll go to college later. "
Enter the U.S. Army, the Marines, Air Force, and Navy.
"We're looking for a few good men," and women, too. In
1983 alone, 91% of the 150,000 Army enlistees held high
school diplomas.
The recruiters, often local types from the same ethnic
background as the students they're addressing, come to
the school auditorium and classrooms looking like a
million bucks. Spit and polish. Serious members of the
adult world who tell their personal stories, frequently of
how military service saved them from the ghetto streets or
an otherwise wasted youth. Simultaneously, color posters
appear in the school entrance lobby or corridors, library,
cafeteria, gym lockers or counseling area. The images of
these posters which trade on the Madison Avenue, slick,
TV sensibility, hold out the promise of excitement,
education, competence, dignity, belonging, and self-
respect. And, most importantly of all, images and words
which communicate concern and optimism about the
future. Who else in America is even coming close to such
genuine interest in these kids?
Driven by an underperforming economy which always
hits youth especially hard, today's high school graduates
are the target of a thoughtfully engineered, well financed
and professionally managed recruitment campaign with-
out parallel in peacetime America. While debate continues
about the political and social significance of our current
all-volunteer armed services (now in its tenth year), each
of its four branches have met their recruiting goals for the
last three years. "We see no need to worry for at least the
rest of the decade," says Dr. Lawrence Korb, Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Manpower, quoted in a recent
CCCO Newsletter. Dr. Korb's confidence must stem in part
from the goldmine that military recruiters have struck in
America's otherwise neglected high schools.
As far back as 1916, the U.S. Senate was presented with
an "outline for military training in public schools," first
applied in Wyoming and thereafter referred to as the
"Wyoming Plan." Although principally designed to facili-
tate the establishment and maintenance of our armed
forces, its proponents argued that this program would do
more. It would also "inculcate high ideals and correct
views on the duties of the citizen ...by showing the value
of obedience to superior authority .... " Congress ap-
proved the Wyoming Plan and, by 1920, 45,000 students
were enrolled in JROTC. Today over 1300 high schools
have Junior ROTC programs which directly train students
in military history, skills, tactics, organization and com-
portment. Nationwide enrollment now tops 100,000 and
29% of all high schools host such programs. But direct
military training is only the tip of the iceberg. In fact,
these JROTC programs enroll fewer than 10% of the
student body in each school and are not the major source
of new graduate enlistees. The really big numbers come
through the far more extensive, aggressive and effective
general recruiting activities now taking place in most high
schools. These activities may include on-site administra-
tion of the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude
Battery)--an extensive screening test of skills and know-
ledge geared to the military's needs and interests, and
on-site interviewing and counseling about opportunities in
the armed services. The occurrence of these activities
within the school setting lends legitimacy and enhances
trust. There is also direct mail solicitation of students by
the Army utilizing the schools' rosters of graduating
seniors, an incredibly valuable asset for "marketing"
military service. In some cases, the schools actually do the
mailing for the military so that via his or her school, each
graduating senior gets a personalized letter from an
Assistant Secretary of Defense in Washington, D.C. "At
last, somebody cares." And recently, some high schools
have become partners in draft registration drives with,
once again, clever posters and often one-sided counselling
on students' responsibilities under current registration
requirements.
In addition to direct military training and widespread
recruiting activities in our high schools, the armed
services provide a presence in other ways-exhibits of
military history, technology and hardware or performances
by military bands. These serve to orient and shape the
perceptions of the entire student body. School staff may
even be brought along on all-expense-paid junkets to visit
distant, and for that reason if no other, interesting military
facilities such as SAC bases or the NORAD command
center on Cheyenne Mountain.
While each high school has the authority to restrict
these activities, only a few choose to do so. There may be
strong pressure from top school administration to "co-
operate with the Armed Services," as one big-city Board
of Education official put it in his directive to all high school
principals and administrators, "in publicizing military
service opportunities." But more likely, the military will
be welcomed by school systems truly concerned about
their graduates' future prospects-especially in areas of
high unemployment. Indeed, military service is, with
some justification, seen as a positive option by many high
school administrators and counselors-an "Armed Job
Corps" which can help students break out of the cycle of
poverty and unemployment.
The students themselves do not miss the point. A 1983
study commissioned by the Army Recruiting Command
found that economics was a powerful factor for students
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opting for the military. The study, entitled "Measurement
of High School Students' Attitudes Toward Recruiting
Incentives," surveyed 5600 high school students and
found that the three most important enlistment incentives
were a guaranteed monthly salary, work experience in a
skill that would lead to a civilian job, and retirement
benefits. Black students gave even higher scores to a
monthly pay check and added health and dental benefits
as powerful incentives for enlistment. This pattern led
John Kester, once an Army manpower specialist, to tell
the Christian Science Monitor in 1983 that we have
developed "an Army of the poor [who endure the] danger
and inconvenience of military service ...to protect society
for the comfortable."
The 5th "R"-Resistance
Congressman Charles H. Randell, addressing the U.S.
House of Representatives on a proposal to establish
military training in high schools in 1916, said, "The
training of children in military ideals, however well
intended, is a retrograding step. It tends to lure them from
gainful pursuits toward illusive militarism. And militarism
strikes at civil freedom and in practice leads to tyranny. "
As the presence of the military in schools has grown, so
has organized resistance to it. Individual faculties, parent
and student groups and some school boards have rejected
ROTC programs, or attempted to curtail recruiter access
and school collaboration. This resistance can run into
problems, often related to the issues which loom largest
for high school students and their advocates: jobs and
future educational prospects. Thus anti-military groups
(often white and middle class) can find themselves pitted
against the perceived interests and values of local Black
and Hispanic communities. A no-win situation for both
sides.
But now another, more far-reaching strategy of opposi-
tion to untrammeled military presence in schools has
arisen. This is a legal approach based on a powerful
argument already well-rooted in American public educa-
tional ideology-the doctrine of balance.
In January of 1984 a Chicago Federal District Court
judge ruled that anti-military groups must be given equal
access to students in those schools which admit recruiters
or offer JROTC. Operating under this doctrine, Federal
District Judge George N. Leighton ruled that "once a
school opens its doors to outside groups," it may not "pick
and choose" between them. A similar ruling was made in
Florida in 1982 and related cases are now pending in
Atlanta, Baltimore, San Diego, and Louisville. Plaintiffs in
these cases include local chapters of Clergy and Laity
Concerned, Quakers, anti-war groups, and local parents
and community coalitions. They maintain (successfully
now in two federal rulings) that if the military is
presenting its point of view in public schools, then others
should also be admitted in order to assure that students
receive a "complete and balanced presentation of infor-
mation pertinent to military service," and by implication,
to the nature, role, and accountability of the military itself.
Local school board politics are already among the most
emotional in the electoral arena, and are often bitterly
fought. Recent school textbook controversies, and before
that, bussing, gave a glimpse of the powerful feelings
involved and of the far-reaching potential of Federal Court
decisions. The relatively uncontested "occupation" of the
high schools by the military may now precipitate a legal
confrontation of great importance.
Schools are still one of the few areas of public life where
local communities can and do make important decisions.
Broad, well-informed citizen participation is possible and
citizen empowerment, the essential ingredient for any
democratic process, is assured. In this instance, local
school boards and the constituencies they represent really
do have the legal authority to make deliberate choices.
Through these choices they can express their viewpoint on
the military's role in our society and its presentation to
successive generations of children. Here is a place where
local citizens groups concerned with war and peace can at
last negotiate from a position of some strength. We may
even discover that this struggle contains within it the seed
for a serious effort to present not only alternative
viewpoints about the military, but to actually begin to
establish the grounds for forms of alternative service, not
restricted to the armed forces. Indeed, the presence of the
military in our schools and the court battles already
under way may open the school house door to many new
possibilities for open dialogue at the local level with regard
to military conduct and philosophy. If that door opens wide
enough, the grass roots American peace movement can
and should walk in and take a seat at the head of the class.
Steven Guarnaccia is working on a children's book to be
published by Harper & Row. He teaches a seminar on
satiric illustration at Pearsons School of Art.
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DISPATCH FROM.
AFGHANISTAN
A British Physician Reports from a
Medical Tour in the Mountains of
Afghanistan
One of the few things on which the U. S.
and U. S. S. R. are in agreement is the use of
military intervention to get their way. While
the United States mines Nicaraguan har-
bors, equips and helps train the Contra
army and sends "advisors " and extensive
military aid to El Salvador, the Soviet Union is conducting
Chris Blatchley is the director of Health Unlimited, 20
Linden Gardens, London W2 4ES, England. After his
return from Afghanistan, Dr. Blatchley formed Health
Unlimited to give "primary health care to countries in
conflict which receive very little in the way of aid. "
full-scale war in Afghanistan. The Soviets' tactics are
reminiscent of American military conduct in Vietnam,
where ground operations were combined with heavy
bombing of villages and civilian population. During the
summer the Soviets mounted a new major offensive
against Afghanistan's rural population. The Russians are
attempting to clear rebels from those areas which could be
used as bases for attack against the Soviets. It is estimated
that one-third of Afghanistan's pre-war population of 15
million has been displaced.
Yet, in over four years of military action and occupation,
the Soviet Union has not succeeded in stopping armed
resistance or in gaining popular support for its regime.
The following article provides some insight into why
~Y DR. CHRIS BLATCHLEY ~
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Afghanistan refuses to be pacified, and should be re-
garded as background briefing on the culture and politics
of Afghanistan.
Chris Blatchley, a British physician, travelled in Af-
ghanistan before the Soviet invasion and returned again
last year to offer medical services in rural areas. His work
was sponsored by Medecins sans Frontieres, a French
medical aid group which provides care to "victims of
natural catastrophes and war, without discrimination,
operating with the strictest neutrality and complete
independence ......
The group specializes in rapidly sending trained medical
staff to parts of the developing world where conventional
relief organizations will not go. These are often war zones
where doctors work alongside rebel or guerilla forces.
Medecins san Frontieres has placed doctors in Beirut,
Honduras, Ghana, Kurdistan, Eritrea, and most recently,
El Salvador. The Editors
In Pakistan it was 1982; in Afghanistan 1361 according
to the Islamic calendar. Every kilometer I travelled I felt
the sensation of going backwards in time, into a fiercely
proud, feudal world where the "Wali," or local leader,
controls his area-often with a hand of steel.
We crossed into Afghanistan without permission or
visas, travelling over 500 kilometers of rugged, mountain-
ous terrain to get to the Hazarat, a region with a racially
distinct minority, about 100 kilometers or so from Kabul.
Our route, through nomad territory, has become a main
supply line for goods and staple foods from Pakistan.
Thirty or 40 vehicles use it at any one time. There is a
frequent, albeit primitive, "bus" service.
Sangi Mosha, the main bazaar in Hazarat, has benefited
from the Soviet presence. Kabul had been the major
bazaar but those under 40--conscription age-can no
longer travel there, so Sangri Mosha has expanded to
become an important trading center for the whole of the
Hazarat.
Local dignitaries are chauffeured at high speed in partly
dismembered jeeps. Each has an entourage of heavily
armed mujahadeen. The whole scene has an air of the
Wild West. Many trucks came and went each day,
including a couple of very modern Mercedes 20-tonners-
but for most, life is frugal. There are no roads, electricity,
or running water.
The Wali, like a feudal lord, demands at least 50 percent
of his tenant farmers' crops as rent. In return he offers
protection. Land is never bought or sold and remains
entirely the property of male descendants.
The economy is almost entirely agricultural with cottage
industries providing additional income-usually less than
$5 a month-to buy extra food and clothes for poorer
families. By this standard, basic commodities are expen-
sive. Wheat has doubled in price in the last year and costs
10 cents a pound. Meat is 50 cents a pound, and eggs 50
cents a dozen, while chickens cost more than they do in
Britain.
For most it is a subsistence existence. Wealth is
measured very much by the number of animals owned.
Those who have no animals do not eat meat or drink milk.
Far too many who came to us for treatment existed on a
diet of bread and black tea with occasional vegetables.
They had milk rarely and never ate eggs or meat. Many
suffered from diseases of malnutrition. With low resist-
ance to infection, TB was rife and the infant mortality rate
horrendous.
Rising costs have not been matched by a rise in rural
incomes and many families who previously relied on their
sons working abroad are much worse off. For many it has
been "flee or starve."
Over the last 20 years the rudiments of secular
education and health care have come to the mountains.
Before 1979, influential locals went to Kabul to be
educated, and the better leaders exude a depth of
perception instilled into them since birth. They may accept
feudal rule but their views of the country's future are not
static. They see the need for education and health care.
Central government control was always uncertain.
Taxes were collected with difficulty and civil order was
maintained more by feudal structure than the army. Thus,
since the Russians came, life for many has continued along
much the same lines, and far from being anarchic, there
is, in some spheres, more control. For instance, emigra-
tion from the Hazarat is not allowed and anyone travelling
towards Pakistan without the necessary passes is turned
back.
There is apparently no central government funding for
the hospitals and schools. They have closed, and often the
buildings have been stripped of useful items. Medical care
is non-existent for most, for even if the consultation fee of
about 40 cents could be paid, many could not afford the
medicines for treatment of the most simple illnesses. Only
the richest can afford a course of TB treatment costing $20
to $30.
We set up a clinic in the hills at 10,000 feet and saw up
to 150 people a day. Since everything was free, news of our
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existence travelled fast. People were walking eight or nine
days to see us; some with trivial illnesses; others in such a
serious condition that they died.
Afghanis have no concept of the seriousness of symp-
toms for they have never been educated in this. Backache,
caused by the hard way of life, and TB are considered with
equal gravity, for both stop them working.
Difficulties of communication and lack of education
make many Afghanis myopic about the problems of their
country as a whole. There is little transference of
manpower or resources from area to area and no one
expects it.
It is because of this lack of cohesion that Kabul will
never govern the mountains without consent; so, for the
time being, it leaves the mountain people alone to argue
among themselves.
The educated Afghanis I spoke to saw the Russians as
.imperialists and the Karmal Government as their puppets.
However, there are signs of new politics in the mountains
which the Russians may find more difficult to combat.
There are now supplies of money and arms coming from
Iran to support Islamic fundamentalists. Nehzat is perhaps
the most influential group. Its roots appear to go back
many years when, though its numbers were small, it had
sympathizers in many government offices.
Nehzat is composed of young intellectuals, now driven
to the mountains to avoid conscription. They are highly
literate and articulate, frustrated by unemployment and
hereditary and feudal leadership.
Politically, they are neither left nor right. They are
aware of the importance of schooling and health care and,
to a certain extent, the redistribution of wealth. But their
overriding motive is their belief in the importance of
Islam. Such strong fundamentalist views place them
squarely behind Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. Like him they
distrust the West and dislike Westerners in their midst.
They use the Holy War as a political and military rallying
call and are quickly gaining power in several parts of the
mountains.
The traditional leaders see them as a threat, feared
sometimes more than the Russians. Their rise has
produced much tension in the mountains, which, in at
least two areas, has erupted into bitter fighting between
rebel factions.
For many in the mountains, the future looks bleak.
Insufficient food, falling incomes and no education or
health care make it difficult to survive, and the uprooting
is taking its toll on this traditional society. ^
Note: Future issues of Intervention will publish reports by
Soviet soldiers who have fought in Afghanistan.
Andrzej Dudzinski came to New York from Poland. His
work appears regularly in The New York Times, The
Boston Globe and numerous other publications.
continued from page 11
The babylift tragedy is now only a footnote to the
'Vietnam War-one of those events that was bathed in
publicity when it happened and then promptly forgotten.
Yet one can easily become obsessed with this "footnote"
because it raises so many questions about humanitarian-
ism in the service of our foreign policy, the interworkings
of our military-industrial complex, and the ways our courts
system can frustrate justice as often as serve it. Would
these children and their claims be treated the same if they
had been American and not Vietnamese?
But this is not a story that is widely known and therefore
it is not yet in the curriculum of Vietnam War courses that
The New York Times reports a new generation of students
have demanded. In part that's true because the most
widely received media, like The New York Times, have
barely covered the story. When I produced a television
account of this event for the ABC news magazine 20/20, I
tried to interest other news media in investigating and
reporting the story further. I felt the case would become a
public issue only when more than one news outlet covered
it. First I thought some talk shows might want to explore
the issue through interviews with the lawyers and parents,
but Donahue, Good Morning America, Nightline, Free-
man Reports (CNN) and others passed. They felt that
because the Vietnamese children who were still embroiled
in litigation live overseas, Americans wouldn't be inter-
ested.
I wrote a long article about the tragedy to expand many
of the issues which couldn't be compressed into the
television report. Perhaps the article was too long, or too
detailed, or not well-written enough. In any event, it was
offered to and rejected by The New York Times Magazine,
The Washington Post, People, Harpers, New York, The
Village Voice, Rolling Stone, The Washington Monthly,
Mother Jones and The Progressive. None of these publi-
cations chose to do their own reporting on the issue even
though I suggested it to some. No national columnists
picked up the story either, even though many were told
about it in detail. I am pleased that The Los Angeles
Weekly and now Intervention have published part of it.
These children, victimized once by the war, again by the
crash, and a third time by the courts, deserve better at the
hands of the media and all who questioned the war and
express concern about its aftermath.
One promising development: members of Congress and
the Senate are writing to President Reagan asking him to
intervene. Reagan has so far declined-but at least the
issue is no longer buried in the courts. Perhaps, if
pressure builds, he will follow the advice of the Chicago
Tribune: "Forget the legalities and do what is right." ^
Matt Mahurin's work has appeared in Time Magazine,
Rolling Stone, Mother Jones and The New York Times.
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DEATH IN
VIETNAM
ANGUISH AND
SURVIVAL IN
AMERICA
BY HEATHER BRANDON
Between 1961 and 1975 nearly 57, 000 Americans died in
Vietnam and are survived by hundreds of thousands of
widows, orphans and parents. In the tradition of the best
oral history, Heather Brandon's book Casualties (St.
Martins Press, November, 1984) evokes the feelings of
these survivors. Their stories are unpretentious, painfully
honest, and are distinguished by a rare emotional power.
In terms of our understanding of what Vietnam and its
terrible aftermath means to our country, Brandon's book
adds a new and valuable dimension.
The people who speak in the excerpt presented here are
not literary characters; they are real people who carry
inside them real pain and unequivocal loss. Salvator (Sam)
Cammarata was killed in DaNang, Republic of South
Vietnam on February 4th, 1967. We hear from his wife,
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Katherine Cammarata DeTample, who gave birth to
Salvator's baby only days after she learned of her
husband's death; from Gary DeTample, a medic in
Vietnam who was at Sam's side when he died and who
came home to marry Sam's widow and become the father
of his child; and from Carmen Cammarata Sr., Sam's
father, who tells his story with such grace and courage that
no matter how painful the legacy of his son's death is, we
cannot turn away.
The Editors
Katherine Cammarata DeTample
Born: September 4, 1946
Lackawanna, New York
Wife of Salvatore Cammarata and of Gary DeTample
Gary DeTample
Born: February 24, 1941
Lackawanna, New York
Friend of Salvatore Cammarata and Husband of Katherine
Cammarata DeTample
Carmen Cammarata, Sr.
Born: March 7, 1922
Serrodefaleo, Italy
Province, Sicily
Father of Salvatore Cammarata
KATHY: I was carrying Sam's daughter at the time, and
I had dreamt that he was killed. When I woke up and told
my mother, she said, "Oh, it's your imagination. It's
because you're pregnant. You're going to have a baby,
and you're dreaming all sorts of things." I said, "Nine
o'clock, Mom. The doorbell's going to ring, and it's going
to be two officers." Well, at nine o'clock, the doorbell
rang, and it was two officers. Three days later I had his
daughter. She was late. She was supposed to be born on
his birthday, but she was late.
They sent his body home, and they wanted to take him
and bury him before I got out of the hospital. I said, "No,
there's no way. I better attend; otherwise, I will never
believe it." I was fortunate in that I did have an open
coffin, and that I did something I shouldn't have done. I
broke the glass and put him in another coffin. Maybe I
shouldn't have done it, but I did it. I just made up my
mind: "I'm going to verify that it's him." We broke it
open, and we had him placed in another coffin. What could
they do? After we did it, it was done.
I proceeded to find out where he was shot, because his
face was completely untouched. It looked like he was
perfect, and I said, "How could this have happened?"
Then I saw his whole stomach was blown right out, and his
legs were off, and there was all paper inside. I saw him,
and I was able to touch him, to know that it was him, and
to verify that it was him. Otherwise, I probably to this day
Heather Brandon has been the northeast regional coordi-
nator for the Veterans Administration's Vets Center
program. Casualties is her first book.
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would never have believed it. That was awful hard for
someone who had never seen the contents of a casket.
According to stories told to me by an Army buddy,
Phillip, you would not know if it was your family's remains
or not, because they had to go through the field and pick
up arms and legs and put them into bags not knowing.
There was no way to identify them sometimes, so maybe
you had half of someone else's. This was the only way they
could do it in the field, so I was really one of the fortunate
ones. I have to honestly say I was fortunate. I can be at
peace, knowing it was him.
GARY: I went over with him. A bunch of us from this area
were drafted, and we all went together. That's pretty
unusual for Vietnam, but we were all drafted together. We
went to Fort Dix and Fort Devens, and we trained as the
196th Light Infantry Brigade. It was the first time they had
formed it since World War II. We trained together, we
shipped together, and a lot of us didn't come home
together. It was a little harder when someone got killed,
because you knew him. It was a lot harder.
He wasn't at base camp when he got killed. He was
supposed to be at base camp. He wanted to go out and see
what it was like, because everybody else was going out,
but he wasn't ordered to go, not as far as I know, That's
what happened. Mortars. I was there. I was a medic.
KATHY: When I was in the hospital, Gary tried to get a
ship-to-shore phone call through to me to notify me of
Sam's death before the army did, but Gary never told me
that. Phillip told me the entire story while Gary was at
work one day, about three years after Gary and I were
married. I thought, "Well, if I fill Phillip up with a little
booze, I can get anything I want out of him," so I did. We
sat up all night, and he told me the entire story.
When Sam was dying, Gary was at his side, and Sam
asked Gary to come and take care of me and the baby.
Gary came home at the end of July. The first thing he did,
the first day he was home, was to come over to my
mother's house. We had corresponded back and forth
after Sam was killed, but I'd never met him. I couldn't
have asked for a better person. He has become a saint in
his own way. Sam didn't send some run-of-the-mill
person, but somebody he knew would take care of me and
his child, and Gary has. I've talked to my daughter Sally
about it, but I've never talked to Gary about it before this.
GARY: When I see Phillip, I'm going to smack him.
Fortunately, he's stopped drinking. He won't tell any
more stories.
Sam's dad just started talking the last couple of years.
His mother took it pretty hard. He did, too, to the point of
going over to the cemetery and trying to dig up the grave.
KATHY: Sam was gone for about four or five years then.
His other son started growing up, and that son got mixed
up with the wrong kind of people, and Dad felt, "I've lost
one, now I'm losing another." Sam was his sidekick. Dad
went hunting; Sam went hunting. Dad went fishing; Sam
went fishing. He'll say, "Sam should not have gone to
war. Sam wasn't old enough to go to war. Why did they
take my Sammy?" He just doesn't understand why his son
got drafted. "He wasn't born in this country, why did they
take him?" He'd just turned eighteen when he was
drafted. He quit high school and started working at the
plant. He got his draft notice that fall and reported in
October.
GARY: Most of our brigade was made up of people who
were drafted. I was drafted two or three times. I was
underweight all the time. It finally got to the point where if
a guy could bend over, he went. I could bend over, so I
went. It was not our decision to go. Three of us were
known as the "pops" of the brigade, because we were old.
We were twenty-three, twenty-four. The average age in
Vietnam was something like eighteen, so we were old for
Vietnam. One of the three of us died, another killed
himself. He killed himself in this country, after he got
back.
KATHY: When Sam died, his dad just wanted to go and
bring his son back. When he was at the cemetery a few
years later, he just started digging. His hands were all
raw, sore, and he said he would rather be there than his
son. He said, "I'm going to take him out of here." Now
that family has a beautiful memorial. It's in Italy, in
Montedoro, where Sammy was born. It's in the center of
town. It's all brick and marble. It is the memorial that was
built before anything was built for a Vietnam veteran in
this country, and Sam's parents did it. It's the most
gorgeous thing, and they built it.
Sam's mother wears black to this day. She's constantly
lighting candles, constantly sending masses to anything
and everything. I don't think she will ever be able to come
out of black, but she's learned to accept the fact that he's
gone, and he's not going to come back.
For years they thought I killed him. For years we did not
talk, because they thought I killed him. I don't know how,
how I would have gone to Vietnam and killed him, but to
them, I killed him. I didn't understand Italian then, but
during the entire wake, his mother told his father, "She
killed my son. She killed my son." I kept saying to myself,
"Don't cry, Kathy, don't cry. You've got to be strong for
these people. You cannot cry."
From February until July, when Gary came home, it was
three days here, three days there, three days at their
place, four days at my mother's. I was back and forth,
living with them both. Finally I was going to take an
apartment on my own. I was going to live downstairs from
Sam's parents. When Gary came home, he said, "You're
not living in this neighborhood with this baby. No way."
They live on the west side. It's the lower section of
Buffalo. It was rough then, but it's even rougher now. It,
.was a downstairs apartment, and Gary was afraid for the
baby and me, so I told them, "No. I'm not going to live
there." In August, Gary and I got engaged. They said,
"Oh, my God. Our son isn't even in his grave a year yet.
You must have had this planned. We know you killed our
son."
After Sam was killed I used to get calls from his mother.
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She would tell me I was going to be thrown into the
Niagara River. I laughed. She would come to the place
where I worked and stand in front of the doorway and call
me a "black whore" in Italian. My boss would say,
"Who's that?" I'd say, "I don't know. I've never seen the
lady in my life." I would talk to them some during that
time, but, at the same time, I figured, "Hey, this is your
hardship, your problem." The final blow was when Sally
made her communion. They said, "Our son isn't here to
see this thing."
This went on until about two years ago. That's when I
saw Dad at a funeral. I don't hold grudges, so I went up to
him and said, "Hello, how are you? This is your grand-
daughter." He said, "My granddaughter?" and the tears
started coming down. I asked him if he needed a ride to
the cemetery. He said no, but he made me promise to
come over to the house and see him sometime. He and I
were still arguing back and forth until about a month ago. I
guess Sally got fed up with it. He'd had a little bit too
much of his wine, and he started on me again. He said,
"Well, if it wasn't for you, Sammy wouldn't be dead."
Sally said, "Now wait a minute, Pop. How do you figure
my mother killed your son? My mother didn't kill my
father. In the first place, she couldn't get over there, but
how do you figure this? You're wrong." He thought about
it for a minute, then he said, "You know, I think you're
right." It's been within the last month that it's been totally
different. You can see that it doesn't come to his mind any
more that I killed his son. It's totally different. Now he
introduces me as his daughter. Before that day with Sally,
I was nothing. I was the whore who killed his son.
GARY: I know when it started changing. It was at the St.
Anthony Festival. He called me up and said, "Do you want
to go to the Italian festival?" I said, "Sure." He was
laughing and joking, buying this and that for the kids,
saying, "Anything you want, you can have," then he got
to the statue of St. Anthony, and I saw him turn away from
me. Tears were rolling down his face. He didn't want
anyone to see him crying. I didn't know it was his son's
saint.
KATHY: St. Anthony's is near here. Sammy was an altar
boy. He followed through until he was seventeen years old
at St. Anthony's, and St. Anthony was Sammy's patron
saint. When Dad saw St. Anthony, he saw his son, but
he's been better the past two years, and in the last month
he's been totally different. He just couldn't face the fact
that his son was gone. Even now, when I go someplace
with him and I happen to have to sign my name, he'll say,
"You know your name is Katherine Cammarata De-
Temple." I say, "Okay, Dad." I'll sign it like that to make
him happy. I'll do anything to please him. To keep peace
among the family, I'll do anything.
GARY: I've made up my mind as to that. I want peace and
quiet in my life. No aggravation. No fights. I've seen
enough. What I've got left of my life, I'm going to live in
peace and quiet. It's as simple as that.
KATHY: He wants peace and quiet to the point that he
The body count is not the
only measure of what we
lost in Vietnam
Death in Vietnam, Anguish
and Survival in America
By Heather Brandon
With an introduction by
Senator Alan Cranston
The soldiers who died in Vietnam left
behind wives, children, lovers and par-
ents. In CASUALTIES the voices of 37
of these survivors tell of their own pri-
vate and public sorrow.
"A moving testament both to those we
left in Indochina and to a country still
struggling to come to terms with its
memories of war. "
-Senator Gary Hart
"The total effect of CASUALTIES is
tremendous. Its real documentation of
on-going grief makes it clear that the
Vietnam War is not only about South-
east Asia. It's about all of us, our own
nation. It is our own unresolved Amer-
ican story. This book is long overdue."
-David E. Bonior,
U.S. Representative
Available at bookstores or direct from:
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
(Mail orders please enclose $15.95, plus
$1.50 postage and handling, Attn: PY)
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won't fight with me. He won't argue. He's beyond
arguing.
GARY: A lot of things might be important to someone
else, but they're not important to me.
KATHY: There were many times when I got punched in
the mouth. Not intentionally. He would be dreaming, and I
got punched, and I would wake up and say, "Who the hell
are you to hit me? Don't hit me, or I'll hit you back." He
would be asleep, tossing and turning. I don't how many
clock radios he's put his fist through. I no longer put clock
radios in our bedroom. He still dreams at night.
GARY: They're not as bad as they were.
KATHY: They're bad. You just don't realize it. Many
nights I get up, and I'll sit an hour. I'll crochet, or I'll do
some kind of needlepoint. If he hasn't settled down in an
hour, I'll sleep on the couch.
GARY: The next morning, I'll just be tired. I won't
remember it. She took me out to the fair one time...
KATHY: Oh Lord. He came home in July, and the fair
was in August. This was the first August after he came
back, in 1967. At the end of the Hamburg Fair, at eleven
o'clock at night, they light up the fireworks. Well, it was
all unknown to me at that time. I didn't realize what they
had gone through in Vietnam. I was knocked down in the
parking lot, thrown between two cars, and another woman
got totally knocked to the ground. Gary tried to barricade
her. I thought, "Oh, my God, I'm going out with a crazy
man," not realizing at the time that Vietnam was flashing
back at him. He thought we were getting hit with mortars,
and he was trying to protect us.
GARY: It's an automatic reaction. I stay away from
fireworks now. If I'm prepared for it, I can handle it, but I
can't if I don't know they're going to go off.
KATHY: A complete stranger was walking by, and he was
trying to protect her. This woman got up off the ground,
and she said, "Oh, my God, this guy is going nuts." In my
own mind, I was thinking, "I agree with you." It was
about five minutes later that he realized where he was,
then he said, "I've got to get out of here. I've got to get
out of here."
What was the name of that movie? The one with Henry
Winkler and Sally Field? Well, anyway, we went to the
drive-in to see that. The whole family went, all of us. We
were hoping to learn more about Vietnam. About twenty
minutes into the show, the car all of a sudden took off, and
the speaker went with it. I thought, "Oh, my God, we're
going to get killed." He just took off. He couldn't take it.
Right now, Gary will go downstairs and sit at the type-
writer. He'll take out his frustration by writing letters to
President Reagan, to Moynihan, to anybody under the
sun. If he's down in the cellar, and he's down there for
more than an hour, we know it's one of those days, and we
don't bother him. Call him for dinner, but don't bother
him.
GARY: I just put myself in the cellar, and I stay away from
everybody. Well, I survived Vietnam. I'm all in one piece.
My head's on, and I consider I'm pretty normal. I might
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have bad days once in a while, but I'm not carrying an
M-16, trying to wipe out the world or anything like that.
It's hard, but I don't think this country should forget
Vietnam. If it was a mistake, learn from it, so we don't do
the same thing over again. Let's not let any American go
through it again unless it is an absolute and correct
necessity, based on a true threat to our own freedoms. I
don't think we should forget it. I don't think we should
bury it. The school books aren't even telling the kids the
true facts. If someone wants Vietnam vets to come into a
school and talk about Vietnam, we should be willing to go.
Let them know what it's about.
I can tell about people I remember, lying there, knowing
they were going to die. They would say, "I don't want
anybody to know I died this way. Don't let anybody know
this is the way I died." Three minutes later, or in less
time, they'd be gone. The last statement they would make
would be something like that. It would be somebody who'd
lost both his legs and both his arms, and there was just
nothing left of him. You didn't know how they could talk
any more. They didn't want anybody to know they died
that way. The medics couldn't walk away from it.
Somebody else, they could call a medic. They could get
away. A medic couldn't get away from that. You had to
deal with it. There was just no way you could get away
from that.
You were hoping nobody would die, but they did. They
died on you. The first one I saw, a mortar went right
through him. There was nothing left of him, just the
pieces. I can still see him. Those are the nights when I
have a tough time. I'll be sleeping, and I'll wake up
because it's night, and I can see it.
CARMEN CAMMARATA, SR.
Father of Salvatore Cammarata
What did I get from the war? A gold medal, right on the
nose. That's what I got. They took the diamond out of my
house, the racketeers in Washington. They packed their
own pockets off the war. When they get elected, that's
when they grab the money. They talk about organized
crime. What do they mean, "organized crime?" What do
they think they are, legitimate? They put all these kids up
at the slaughter house. That is what it is, a slaughter
0
house. "Go. Go and get killed." What did I get? After he
got killed, I never even got a letter from the army, from
nobody. No. Nothing.
I didn't know he was going to Vietnam before he went. If
I would have known, I would have stopped him. I would
have held hire back. "Hold it, baby. I take you, baby. I
take you away." I know where to take him. To the
mountains. Dig a tunnel in the mountains somewhere. He
would have survived. Sure. On wild game, fish. He would
have been in Canada, in Allegheny County, in Pennsyl-
vania, anyplace. There are a lot of mountains in Penn-
sylvania. They would have never got him. No way.
I may be wrong, but I think this country is in a danger
situation. They keep on pushing so many countries.
They're shooting all over, and one of these days one of
these countries is going to be strong enough to turn it
around and dump it on this country. This country is going
to go down. BANG! This country is talking too much,
because they never saw a bomb. They never saw an atomic
bomb. They've never been attacked. That's why they talk
too much. We never had a war here, not in internal U.S.A.
I know, because I was there, in World War II, in Italy.
Some people want war. It helps them. That domino theory,
they're playing it out in Central America right now, like in
Vietnam. That's quite a bag. That Reagan, I tell you, he's
got funny ideas. Congress has got to dump him.
When we lost our boy, it was quite a bit. We lost our
minds. We lost all track of everything, went out of balance
and everything, out of control, physically and mentally, all
of it. His mother is still in it. This is a house that will never
see light again. Since he's been dead, there's no parties,
there's no weddings, there is no nothing. We are jailed in
this house, jailed in without doing anything. We can't go
out. Know what I see on TV? News. Western pictures,
something like that. If there's dancing or singing, I shut it
off. There is no music in this house. Everything is dead. I
feel rotten, pretty rotten inside. I don't know. I feel no
more pain. I don't know. I used to feel pain. No more.
It's not easy. It's a tough thing to go through all that. It
is a scar. How can you forget? Every time I turn around,
even if I go into another room, I see something. The
picture. The gun. We used to hunt together. Fishing, he
was with me like a little puppy, like a puppy dog. He
wouldn't get away from me at all. Anything I needed, I
had from him: "Hey, Sam." "Yes, Dad." Boom. It's
mine. I need that thing, and right away, it's mine. Now,
what happens? So many things I remember. If he would be
sick, that would be another story. Not this way. This was a
slaughter house way.
P.S. Recently, Carmen Cammarata returned to Monte-
doro, Italy to see his son's memorial, which he had never
visited. And his wife has stopped wearing black. D
Vivienne Flesher is a recipient of a gold medal from the
Society oflllustrators. Her work has appeared in New York
Magazine, Texas Monthly and Vogue.
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Poetry
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,T~ 10.117-
Like Ezekial,
Unless the ghost is inside me,
My tongue is tied
And my hands with which I otherwise gesture,
Twisting in the air before me to make a point
Will not move, nor my arms, nor my legs.
It has been so long now
The bodies have grown back into the earth,
Into the green places, the shadowy
Plantations abandoned by the snowy white
Egrets who will not return to the war-fouled
Groves of bamboo.
But the cocaine is even whiter,
Spread out on the mirror
Into which we stare our grotesque faces,
Even whiter than this sky full of holes
Opening like flowers into the humorless oblivion beyond.
Unless the ghost is upon me,
I can't say a word.
Tonight a razor of ice slides through my brain.
I lie back on the stoop and hear
The evening of birdsong rise and fall
And only a few black wings roll past,
The sleeplessness hunting me down
Until the ghost is inside me
And I sing.
Bruce Weigl
Drinking yourself to death in a bar somewhere in the world
Is Sepuku-
A word for Ritualistic Suicide
Excusing yourself from polite company to shoot up in the bathroom
Is Satori-
A word for sudden illumination
Either way it is Bushido-
The code of a warrior
O but murder is murder
And when you learn to kill people
They become just a bit like lovers-
Once you get good at it-you stop counting
My last unsolved koan from my Roshi
A word for master-who lived on West 81st Street
And where I went on Saturday afternoons to drink beer
And get beaten with sticks
Was that "if this is a religion for warriors-what are you doing here?"
I solved this puzzle by never going back there
I'm still in New York
He's in Japan
I drive by the neighborhood occasionally in cabs
And it's always the rainy season.
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What I saw before I slept,
your face.
Its lines grown deep into the skin.
I watched your hands move
toward the boy in the street.
He'd been there for days, unclaimed.
You feel the bones of your children,
watch as the jeeps go by. They trade
your country for someone else's fears.
You don't understand the romance
these people have with death. Why they count bodies
in the dark, drive to the capital to see fires.
You hold your children close,
feed them bread left
by the armies that patrol all day, all night.
Later, I see you carry
the boy to a field. In the night
that belongs to the armies
you quietly cover him
with grasses and twigs that lie nearby. You carve
a small cross with your penknife,
plant it in the dirt.
When I wake,
you're counting your children.
It's not that I think the people erected this statue
because I know better than you that I ordered it myself.
Nor do I pretend to pass into posterity with it
because I know the people will topple it over someday.
Not that I wanted to erect to myself in life
the monument you never would erect to me in death;
I erected this statue because I knew you would hate it.
Ernesto Cardinal
translated by Steven F. White
i
The perfume of coffee stands in the clearing
waiting for us to get up and drink.
Coffee is like good soil... so fertile
it can be brewed and drunk.
That's what land should be.
On the map, you lose the vague shape of
country. It breaks down into pieces. Green
and brown, rough and smooth. Pieces
small enough to fit in the pocket.
Far away I am watching fishermen on the river.
Occasionally there is a small silver flash as
the nets turn, and then nothing. Little explosions
of labor. And a boat filled, even as we are rising,
goes back to empty itself.
Today is almost like yesterday. We'll do
the same things. Our hearts adjust to thursday
or tuesday. On sunday, for instance, we are
unconsciously lazier.
If I don't get to drink my coffee tomorrow
it will be sad. I will have to return to the earth
and become the humus for the plants to grow in.
All that takes a long time, you know... and
it really is too abstract for me.
I will tell you this: I am afraid I will
never get to change something before
I am changed myself. I am always on the outskirts
of my most important cities.
Today is a good day. It must have been a day
like this that everything started up. It must
have been a monday. Today is monday, and I feel
like friday night.
Quinton Duval
Ernesto Cardinal is a poet, priest, and spokesman for
the Frente Sandinista. This poem initially appeared in
Poets of Nicaragua: A Bilingual Anthology, 1918-1979.
published by the Unicorn Press.
Bill Cooner is a free-lance film maker and writer residing
in New York.
Quinton Duval's book of poems. Dinner Music, is
forthcoming from Lost Roads Publishing.
Mari LoNano lives in Norfolk. VA where she works for the
Associated Writing Programs.
Bruce Weigl is an Associate Editor of Intervention. His
most recent book of poems, The Monkey Wars, is forth-
coming from the University of Georgia Press.
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"Would you say your husband was a violent man?"
Violence. That's the first thing men think of. She didn't
like this man standing in front of her with that bulge at his
waist. It was a gun, she wasn't stupid.
"No, I wouldn't say that. George was a calm person. A
little moody, maybe. Sombre, almost, in his later years.
Like a color. But not violent."
Interested in violence as all men are. But not himself
violent.
1 1 i
Aw, Georgie, she had begged. Put it down. Come back
to bed with your little Emma.
But he went on reading: General Francisco Franco
landed at Cadiz today...
Please, Georgie. Emma's cold. She remembered it as if
it were yesterday. Some honeymoon this is.
"Like a color?"
"Did I say that? What I meant, Sergeant, is I could see
him getting darker and darker."
"It's Lieutenant, M'am."
"Lieutenant, I see. Those are ranks out of the army,
aren't they?"
"Is there someone you'd like me to call? A daughter? A
friend? "
"I don't have a daughter."
That was true. She didn't. She would have liked to have
a daughter. But after the war George seemed to lose
interest. She was sure she hadn't told the lieutenant that.
"I'm not here to hurt you, M'am."
"Is that why you wear a gun? And those two in the
other room, those lieutenants. . . "Sergeants."
"Oh excuse me. Sergeants. I understand it's important
in the army to get the rank right."
"M'am, if you wouldn't mind. I find the situation here
a little mysterious."
"Mysterious?"
"Do you know anyone who might have had a reason
to...?"
"Reason? What has reason to do with it?"
l 10.1 M.04 1FA111090,11 11670 a Uy IN I N ILVA
oom=
It wasn't any different the next time around. All he did
was read the paper.
Can't you see what it means? We'll be in it next.
You always see the worst in things, George.
"What do you mean, mysterious?"
"Did you and your husband quarrel much?"
That was one of their trick questions. Answer yes and
they've got you. Answer no and they say, No? How much
would you say was much?
"It's true I have a son." She hadn't meant to say that.
It just slipped out.
Did you see him, George? His tiny fingernails. His cute
little nose. Isn't he a beauty?
He's a real fighter, that kid. Just from the way he was
sleeping I could tell our Danny's gonna make his old
man proud.
She knew it was only a matter of time before the lieu-
tenant found out about Danny. They kept records of births
and deaths. Anyone could look them up. Especially a
lieutenant.
He brought the newspapers right into the hospital.
Every day he brought them in.
Stop reading that, she shouted. I don't care about it, do
you hear?
How can you say a thing like that?
How? I just said it, that's how.
It's your freedom they're fighting for.
Join them then, if you're so concerned.
They can't force me now, Emma. I'm the sole support
of a family.
How convenient.
What're you getting at?
I'd say you were the one who was getting at something,
George. You're very perceptive about how wars go.
Reading all those papers over the years. And last April,
coming at me every night. No precautions. No ques-
tions about the time of the month. You think I didn't
suspect something? Now lo and behold we're in a war
and here you are, the sole support of a family. It
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must've given you quite a jolt to find you'd figured it
that close.
"I'd be glad to call your son for you, M'am."
"Would you, Lieutenant? Maybe that's what's needed.
A strong male voice. Danny doesn't seem to hear when I
call."
"When you call?"
That's another of their tricks. Saying back to you what
you just said to them. Only with a little question at the end
so you know they think it's off somewhere.
"I've told you everything I know, Lieutenant. I was out
all day. I came in and found him like that. The blood all
Seven thousand, six hundred and eighty-four men,
Emma. Don't you think I'd give my eyes?
Give them, why don't you? It won't bring Danny home.
"Would you mind telling me where you went?"
"It's a big city, Lieutenant. A woman could walk
around it all day and not be absolutely sure where she
went. "
"Is that what you did, walk?"
"I believe that is what I said."
"Would you mind telling me what you were wearing
when you took this walk?"
"This is what you call an interrogation, isn't it? That's
something else out of the army. The Viet Cong and those
awful quilted coats. The evil was stitched right in. I could
hardly look at the photographs. But not George. He
couldn't get enough."
"The evil was stitched in?"
"Day after day. Reading the articles. Poring over the
photographs. Talking to Danny about duty."
"Do you own a pale green button-down blouse..."
"Duty, duty, that's all I heard."
"Decorated with orange giraffes?"
"Giraffes?"
"Sergeant, you can bring that in now."
SIX MONTH U.S. 1 AT 9,557
COMBAT
MORI: AMERICANS WERE KILLFD IN IN SOUTH VIETNAM IN THE FIRST SIX MONTHS
OF THIS YFARTHAN IN ALI,THF PREVIOUS
Stop it! she shouted. But even then he went on. Can't
you ever stop? Not even now?
You don't have to worry about him, Emma. Our Danny
knows how to take care of himself.
Don't say his name. It makes me sick to hear his name
coming out of your mouth.
I only wanted him to do what was right. He understood
that. He told me he did.
"Is this your blouse, M'am?"
4 Inn a MINI / I
"M'am? Is this your blouse?"
"There's no mystery here, Lieutenant."
"We found it in the trash out back."
"No, M'am."
Pale green cotton. Spotted with blood. Spotted orange
giraffes blinded by blood.
"Let me speak to a woman, please. She would not find
this mysterious. Surely there are women in your army."
"Sorry, M'am. No lady officers assigned to our
precinct."
"Lady officers? Are you mocking me, Lieutenant? Do
you find me ridiculous?"
111111, 10411111111
1 1 ? 1
"All right, Sergeant. You can take it away."
"Yes, take the giraffes away. Let their blind eyes
close."
"You have the right to remain silent..."
"The last time I saw Danny he was silent. Innocent but
silent. All talked out. I couldn't help thinking he looked
sort of silly."
"If you give up this right..."
"Like he was still a little boy dressing up in his father's
suits. The uniform hung on him. Of course that was a suit
his father never wore. From deep inside it, he looked out
at me, smiling and innocent."
"Anything you say may be taken down and used
against you... "
"His father made him take it all down. Word for word.
He pounded it into his head. Duty to country, to family.
Duty to himself as a man."
"His father insisted it was his duty to go. But Danny
saw the despair in that argument. He went to war to make
peace with his father."
"Will you come with me now, M'am?"
"Of course, Lieutenant. There's no mystery here."
Enid Harlow is a fiction writer who lives in New York. Her
stories have appeared in Southwest Review, Bennington
Review, and Ontario Review. In 1980 St. Martin's Press
published her novel Crashing.
Gail Freund is an illustrator living in New York whose
work has appeared in The New York Times, New York
Magazine and Vogue. She also designs jewelry.
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You love America.
But not what is being done to others-in El Salvador and Nicaragua, in
the Middle East-in the name of our "national defense";
You remember Vietnam.
Not as a war cry, or a political slogan; not as a fight to "win hearts and
minds"; but as a tragic failure of American military intervention;
You vow never again.
And you're not alone.
There is a generation of Americans who carry the lessons of Vietnam in
their bones. Whether we are combat veterans or veterans of the peace
movement, the Marine Corps or the Peace Corps, we share a common
heritage and common concerns. We know the real costs of military
intervention at home and abroad, physically and psychically. We know
cluster bombs cannot solve complex human problems, nor can military
strategy free the world from hunger and oppression. We reject-reject-
any more bloody battle streamers on our flag.
iiirrniirairinii
11^ I LI1 VLI^ I IVIV
A JOURNAL ON WAR & PEACE AND THE VIETNAM EXPERIENCE
Yes. I want to subscribe. If I am not totally
satisfied me monev will be refunded.
$10 for I year (4 issues) [_1 $18 for 2 years (8 issues)
$20 per year for institutions [1 $100 for life-time subscription
Name
Address
Cite State Zip
INTERVENTION 545 West 111 Street, # 9M. New York. NY 10025
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is
Book Reviews
BEYOND
THE GREEN WAR
BY BRUCE WEIGL
MEDITATIONS IN GREEN
by Stephen Wright
Charles Scribner's Sons, 342 pp., $14.95
Publishers, editors, writers and film
makers have turned America's involve-
ment in the Vietnam war and the terrible
aftermath of that involvement into a
mega-corporate industry. Even before
the last body count was taken on the
battlefield, Americans could see John
Wayne, our cowboy of mythic propor-
tions, cavort on the big screen in an
obscene romanticization of the war
called The Green Berets, a movie aptly
described by Michael Hdrr as being
more about Santa Monica than about
Vietnam. In addition, as early as 1956
the American publishing industry began
to recognize the commercial potential of
Vietnam novels, especially given the
success of Graham Greene's important
and beautiful book The Quiet American.
Since that time over one hundred novels,
over fifty personal narratives, twenty-
five critical studies, thirty narrative
films, fifty documentary films, twenty
full-length collections of poetry, and
hundreds of other assorted literary
works either directly or indirectly con-
cerned with the Vietnam war have been
produced. Critical reception of this work,
especially the fiction, has been largely
favorable. So favorable in fact that it
?
tional Book Award-winning Going After
Cacciato, and Robert Stone's Dog Sol-
diers), Wright's novel, winner of Scrib-
ner's Maxwell Perkins Prize, does not
limit its focus to atrocity and does not
trade sensationally on a graphic retelling
of horror, artificially jarring the reader
out of complacency. Instead, Wright is
smart enough a writer to consider the
larger implications of the war and its
aftermath. He writes not only about the
obvious destruction of body and limb in
Vietnam, but also about the destruction
of the psyche and about his characters'
and his country's loss of American,
apple pie, idealistic innocence.
The novel begins after the fact. The
narrator, Spec. 4 James Griffin, who
comes to resemble Melville's Ishmael,
has just completed one of fifteen medi-
tation exercises in the book after which
he shares a heroin-laced Kool cigarette
with a friend and begins his tale, grace-
fully moving back to his year in Vietnam.
Structurally this is a risky move. Since
we know at the outset that our major
protagonist has made it home in more or
less one piece, the subsequent flashback
scenes in which he is placed in mortal
danger are somewhat tempered. But
finally the close reader will come to see
that that is exactly the point of this book:
although Griffin literally survives the
war, he has been figuratively destroyed
by it. This destruction takes place
gradually throughout Griffin's journey of
transformation from an innocent,
straight-arrow soldier to a cynical,
burned-out drug addict who has wit-
nessed too much and who, in moments of
pathological clarity and insight, tells a
story of our mutual descent into the
darkness of the human spirit equal in
intensity and insight to Mr. Kurtz's
brilliant, mad revelations in Conrad's
Heart of Darkness.
Structurally the novel functions on two
levels: vivid, carefully wrought war
scenes interrupted by the first person
narrative of Griffin as he tries to put his
mind and spirit back together in a
country he finds at times more foreign
than the Vietnam he left behind.
Through his eloquent narrative, Wright
shows us that the fall of Griffin is
actually a metaphor for the fall of Amer-
ica, and though the narrator/soldier
initially tries to bury his head and hide
from his country and its sins, he ul-
seems critics have been unusually soft
on the Vietnam novel, as if this particu-
lar category of prose fiction inherently
deserved more than the usual generous
consideration because of its painful sub-
ject matter, or because of the fact that
one group of the war's victims-the
Vietnam veterans-most often author
these works. Regardless of this over-
whelmingly favorable critical response to
Vietnam prose fiction and its relatively
high level of commercial success, there
have been very few good novels to come
out of the war. Most of the work simply
trades on the war, subverting and sen-
sationalizing the horror of the war in the
form of graphic descriptions of combat
and civilian casualties, and most do not
ultimately attempt to come to grips
morally with the consequences of the
war. At work under the surface of these
slickly written and produced books is a
motto which seems to say: I was there. I
saw the horror; therefore, my fiction is
valid. And the failures of many of these
books are not only moral failures; in
many instances they are failures of craft.
Many of these novels seem ill-conceived,
poorly written and obviously rushed
through the editorial process as if the
publishers were so anxious to take ad-
vantage of the readers' faddish interest
in war literature that they ignored larger
and more significant concerns of craft.
Stephen Wright's first novel, Medita-
tions in Green, is a notable exception.
Not simply a good war story, it is a good
novel which happens to be about the
war. But it doesn't stop there. Like some
of the more important and eloquent
novels about the Vietnam war (and I'd
include in that list Greene's The Quiet
American, James Crumbley's One To
Count Cadence, Winston Groom's Better
Times Than These, Tim O'Brien's Na-
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0
timately comes to realize that not only
can he not hide, he is compelled to speak
out. He is, like Coleridge's Ancient
Mariner, forced to tell his story to
whomever will listen, not so much to
exorcise his sins but to take full respon-
sibility for them.
This is finally a flawless book. Wright
should be praised not simply because he
has cast a new light on our experience in
Vietnam, but because he has written a
remarkable book in which he clearly
demonstrates that he understands the
intricacies of plot, the subtleties of char-
acter development and the complications
of human emotion. He is always in
complete control, never sacrificing the
craft of his book in order to indulge in
cheap, flashy, sensational battle stories.
He is after much bigger game than that.
He wants us to recognize that our in-
volvement in Vietnam changed us for-
ever. And although he finally comes to
see that there is no going back, no
possibility of forgiveness, there is at
least the possibility that we have learned
a hard lesson: the painful recognition of
our humanness and the moral limitations
present therein.
Bruce Weigl is an associate editor of
Intervention.
THE ANATOMY
OF
REVOLUTION
BY ERNEST DRUCKER
WITNESS TO WAR: AN AMERICAN
DOCTOR IN EL SALVADOR
by Charles Clements, M.D.
Bantam Books, 268 pp., 1984
This is really two books in one. The
first is the personal saga of Charlie
Clements-son and younger brother of
U.S. military officers, 1968 Air Force
Academy (second in his class), Vietnam
veteran pilot turned Conscientious Ob-
jector, and by 1983, Quaker physician in
El Salvador treating civilian casualties
in the rebel controlled Guazapa Front.
The second book is a detailed and very
human account of the daily experience of
guerilla life and of the revolution in El
Salvador, especially valuable for its
absence of cant and political rhetoric.
Clements' evolution from high tech
warrior to pacifist healer working under
the most primitive conditions offers a
rare combination of perspectives. And
his experiences are made more vivid by
the personal struggle to understand
revolutionary violence and his own rela-
tionship to it. The book focuses on the
life histories and observations of guerilla
fighters, their families, and their Chris-
tian base communities. It chronicles the
terrible ordeals of those who fight this
kind of war and the perhaps more
terrible ordeal of those who simply get in
its way. "Caught in the vortex of revo-
lutionary violence," Clements struggles
to maintain his own "letter-perfect
pacifism" even as he cowers with a
peasant family beneath the strafing at-
tacks of the same A-37 jets and Huey
helicopters he knew from such a differ-
ent vantage point in Vietnam. It is not
easy.
The campaneros do not readily trust
the gringo. Why should they and what
can they think of his individual struggle
to come to terms with his own govern-
ment's brand of violence now visited on
them? Once when he comments critically
on the dirge-like quality of the Salvador-
an national anthem sung by the intensely
patriotic rebels at the close of a war
council, Clements is told, "We do not
sing this song for you, gringo." So it is
all the more important for Charlie Clem-
ents to sing it for us. Like Che Guevara-
another doctor in a foreign revolution-
Clements must choose between the bag
of medicine and the bag of ammunition.
This physician chooses the medicine,
and, significantly, the role of witness.
His choice allows us all to be there and to
hear El Salvador's fierce song for our-
selves.
Ernest Drucker is an associate editor of
Intervention.
THE MYSTIC
VIETNAM
BY JOHN BALABAN
BLUE DRAGON, WHITE TIGER:
A TET STORY
by Tran Van Dinh
TriAm Press, 5015 McKean Ave., Phila.,
PA 19144. 334 pp., $14.95 hardcover,
1984
This book provides our first oppor-
tunity to look at the war from Vietnam-
ese eyes. The novel is set in Vietnam; the
characters are almost all Vietnamese;
the thinking is Vietnamese. We see our-
selves from their side as we follow the
hero, Tran Van Minh, back from the
United States where he has quit the
South Vietnamese diplomatic corps. We
share his confusion as he accepts the
protection of his half-brother in the
Saigon secret police and as he is scolded
by his aging mandarin father for not
struggling against the Americans.
Gradually, he is so revolted by the
corruption of the Saigon officials who
consider him one of their own that he
joins the communist side. Ironically, he
is driven to the communists out of
Buddhist compassion for the millions
who suffer from the war, and it is a
Confucian adage which propels him:
"Knowledge is the beginning of action.
Action is the completion of knowledge."
Some of the most interesting passages
of Blue Dragon, White Tiger are those
where we see a communist cell set up in
Hue under the noses of the police or,
later, after Minh has been found out,
when he is working in an underground
bunker headquarters in the jungle near
Hue. It is there that his fervor dims as he
begins to notice something scary in the
dedication of his communist colleagues.
In criticism sessions, he is told that he is
not "grasping the full revolutionary im-
portance" of his clerical duties. His
aristocratic background and his discrim-
inating mind make him suspect. With
the American defeat, he decides to leave
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as a boat person. Loc, his party superior
and friend, scornfully permits him to
flee. Now it would be "the spirit of the
historic Vietnam that he held in his
heart, not the political one-the mystic
Vietnam, not the vulgar and brutal one."
Tran Van Dinh writes with authority.
Like his character, Minh, he is an his-
torian from a literary family in the old
imperial city of Hue where his father was
a high-ranking mandarin. At eighteen,
Dinh was an officer with the Viet Minh;
years later, he served as charge des
affairs for the South Vietnamese em-
bassy in Washington. Blue Dragon,
White Tiger, a first venture for the
TriAm Press, is a valuable book for
America which cannot risk forgetting
Vietnam, which, if it should, will wander
into the twenty-first century with the
vulnerabilities of an amnesiac.
John Balaban, a contributing editor of
Intervention, is Associate Professor of
English at Pennsylvania State Univer-
sity.
VIETNAM RECONSIDERED
ed. by Harrison Salisbury
Harper & Row, 335 pp., $8.50
Based upon a series of papers pre-
sented at the Univ. of Southern Cali-
fornia, this collection discusses a wide
range of topics related to the war and its
aftermath including the traumas of Viet-
nam veterans and the Vietnamese, the
conduct of the American press corps,
and the policies of the military; in fact,
the book problematically tries to cover
too much ground in too little space so
that nothing is discussed in depth and
we're left with only snapshots of
thoughts and splinters of ideas.
ONE DAY OF LIFE
by Manlio Argueta
Vintage Books, 215 pp., $6.95
Written by a Salvadoran who was
exiled as a result of this book, One Day
of Life is told from the point of view of
the women of the fictive Guardado fam-
ily. This moving and lyrical novel tells
the story of the daily life of the peasant
in El Salvador after fifty years of military
rule. Never trading on geopolitical rant
38/Intervention
is
or rhetoric and written with remarkable
restraint, this book is especially impor-
tant for the way it presents the base facts
of corruption, social injustice and politi-
cal violence in a country whose future is
so intimately tied to our own.
TOUCHED WITH FIRE: THE FUTURE
OF THE VIETNAM GENERATION
by John Wheeler
Franklin Watts, Inc., 259 pp., $16.95
This book's title promises much and
although the reader will find throughout
rich and genuinely realized descriptions
of the author's experience at West Point
and in Vietnam, overall the book is
seriously flawed. Flawed structurally
because Wheeler has not yet found a
form for his story and flawed morally
because of his failure to identify the
colonialist roots of our illegal interven-
tion in the affairs of Vietnam. In addition
the book is weakened by the author's
generalizations about the generation of
Americans who came of age during the
Vietnam era.
THE `RULES OF THE GAME' OF
SUPERPOWER MILITARY INTER-
VENTION IN THE THIRD WORLD
1975-1980
by Neil Matheson
University Press of America, 159 pp.,
$10.25
An excellent examination of the ex-
plicit and tacit rules which the United
States and the Soviet Union follow in
Third World military interventions, this
book analyzes the guidelines which allow
the superpowers to deploy their military
forces throughout the world and at the
same time to avoid direct and dangerous
confrontations between themselves.
Four cases of military intervention are
considered: Angola (1975), Ethiopia
(1977), Zaire (1977-78), and Afghanistan
(1979). This is an extremely worthy
subject seldom acknowledged and prac-
tically never discussed.
AMERICAN PEACE DIRECTORY, 1984
ed. by Melinda Fine and Peter M. Steven
Ballinger/Harper & Row, 225 pp., $12.95
For anyone who wants to know what
they can do for peace and what groups
they can find for support and grassroots
organization, this book is indispensable.
Included is an alphabetical list of names,
?
addresses and brief descriptions of more
than 1300 peace-oriented groups in the
United States. Also included is a com-
prehensive index, facilitating use of this
important reference work.
SENSING THE ENEMY
by Lady Borton
Dial Press/Doubleday, 250 pp., $14.95
Flawed only slightly by its misleading
and ambiguous title, this is a moving and
beautifully written account of the
author's six month stint as health direc-
tor of a refugee camp on a small, previ-
ously uninhabited island in Malaysia
that had become the home for more than
12,000 Vietnamese boat people. Borton
is not only a woman of remarkable moral
responsibility; she is also a truly gifted
writer. This is a book we cannot turn
away from.
THE NEO-LIBERALS
by Randall Rothenberg
Simon & Schuster, 287 pp., $16.95
An incomplete and often ambiguous
analysis of neo-liberalism-a political
school which arose out of the collapse of
the Carter Administration-this book
reads more like an extended piece of
journalism than a well-developed study.
Interesting for its description of neo-
liberal strategies including more market
reliance, entrepreneurship and invest-
ment for economic growth, the book
finally does not provide enough back-
ground information, nor does it develop
its arguments as fully as one would
expect.
AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IN WORLD
AFFAIRS: VIETNAM AND THE
BREAKDOWN OF CONSENSUS
by Ole R. Holsit and James N. Rosenau
Allen & Unwin, 301 pp., $28.50/$9.95
Based on the polling of almost 5,000
American leaders, the authors conclude
that foreign policy elites hold two sepa-
rate, often conflictual sets of lessons on
the Vietnam War, and this division
undermines the development of a new
foreign policy consensus. Neither the
hostage crisis in Iran nor the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan eroded this
cleavage, indicating that the divisive-
ness from the Vietnam era will remain
with us.
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is
Commentary
BEYOND HEROICS
SOME THOUGHTS ON
"ROSY-GLOWISM"
BY ADAM HOCHSCHILD
Lately I've found that I've grown allergic to the word
"heroic." As in: "The heroic guerrilla fighters of El
Salvador." Or: "We must support the heroic people of
Nicaragua in their struggle against U.S. imperialism."
Don't get me wrong. I think the rebels in El Salvador are
heroic. And I think the covert U.S. war against Nicaragua
is criminal. But the rhetoric bothers me, ' because it
indicates that portions of the Left in this country are
currently making the same mistake many people did
during the war in Vietnam. If what we're doing is 100%
evil, the unspoken logic runs, then the other side must be
100% good.
Yes, the U.S. interventions in Central America are
100% wrong; there is not justification whatever for our
attempts to crush the Sandinistas on the one hand and to
prop up a corrupt and brutal government in El Salvador on
the other. Every North American of conscience ought to be
working to stop that intervention. But the corollary of that
statement is not that the Sandinistas or the Salvadoran
rebels are without problems. Few regimes or movements
anywhere are. And there is no useful purpose served-
particularly the urgent one of stopping U.S. intervention-
by pretending that they are.
I hope the rebels in El Salvador win. They potentially
offer more hope to a long-suffering people than the death
squad thugs running the country now. But the rebels are
in an unsteady coalition of five heavily-armed groups
ranging across the political spectrum. Some of these
revolutionaries have on occasion used arms against each
other as well as against government troops. There's no
certain guarantee of sweetness and light after they take
power.
In the countries in this hemisphere where revolutions
have triumphed-Nicaragua and Cuba-most people are
vastly better off now than before. Despite vicious U.S.
harassment, these nations have made huge advances in
attacking malnutrition, unemployment, disease, illiteracy
and the official corruption endemic to most of Latin
America. Nicaragua's is probably the first revolutionary
government in history to abolish capital punishment. Both
regimes clearly have deep popular support. But at the
same time, they're both countries, Cuba particularly,
where authority flows from the top down, not from the
bottom up. The Sandinistas have treated Nicaragua's
Indian population badly. Cuba has few civil liberties in our
sense of the term, has political prisoners in jail, and won't
even let Amnesty International send in a survey team.
Both governments have serious flaws. Why pretend that
they don't?
I don't mean to sound sanctimonious. There's no
country anywhere that fully combines great social justice
and maximum civil liberties. And you can't expect that
combination to arise quickly in nations whose history is
centuries of Spanish colonialism, U.S. economic imperial-
ism, slavery, and the Catholic Church. Given that heri-
tage, Cuba and Nicaragua have done extraordinarily well.
If Ronald Reagan were to stay off their backs, they might
do still better.
Why, though, do some North Americans talk about
Nicaragua as if it were a political paradise, and ignore a
degree of authoritarianism in Cuba that would appall them
if they found it in this country? This tendency is a familiar
one, I'm afraid; there is something seductive and guilt-
relieving about having some distant country to romanti-
cize, particularly if it has a history of being oppressed by
the West. There is always part of the American Left which
wants to see some Third World country bathed in this rosy
glow. For a time it was China. During the Vietnam war it
was North Vietnam. At other times it has been Tanzania or
Mozambique. Somewhere, somewhere, there must be a
perfect socialist society where justice reigns, everybody is
happy, and everything works. Alas, seldom is it so. In all
these countries there is much to admire, but in the end
China and Vietnam went to war against each other;
Mozambique is seeking Western investment, and Tan-
zania is sunk in economic doldrums which cannot be
entirely blamed on the rest of the world. Happily, none of
these places have ended up as badly as the Soviet Union,
which was the target of so much of that rosy glow vision in
the 1930s.
The problem with rosy-glowism is threefold. First: no
country anywhere, ever, for any reason, should be exempt
from being judged according to the basic international
standards of human rights. Second: North American
leftists who appear to have blind spots in this regard
weaken their own credibility. And right now the anti-
intervention movement in the United States needs all the
strength and credibility it can muster. And third: any time
people project their own vision of Utopia onto a particular
country, in the long run it usually ends up not being true,
and this leads to mass disillusionment. In this way,
illusions about Stalinism led to a great weakening of the
American and European Left as the truth about the gulags
unmistakably emerged. The best way not to have disil-
lusioned leftists is not to have illusioned ones to begin
with. Any progressive politics worth its salt must rest on
an absolute passion for justice, and not on the fantasy that
there is anywhere on earth where this has already been
achieved. ^
Adam Hochschild is a contributing editor of Mother Jones
magazine. This commentary first appeared in Peace &
Democracy News.
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BOARD OF ADVISORS
Peter Arnett,
Cable News Network
Richard Barnet,
Institute for Policy Studies
Walter Capps,
University of California
Peter Davis,
film-maker and author
Thomas Downey,
U.S. House of
Representatives
Daniel Ellsberg,
Political activist
Gloria Emerson,
author
Randall Forsberg,
Institute for Defense and
Disarmament Studies
Dr. H. Jack Geiger,
Physicians for
Social Responsiblity
Victor Navasky,
The Nation
Studs Terkel,
author
Tran Van Dinh,
Temple University
affiliations for
identification only.
Dear Friend,
U.S. military intervention, discredited a decade ago by the
wrenching experience of Vietnam, has returned. El Salvador, Leba-
non, Nicaragua, Grenada... where will it end? In another Vietnam?
With the ultimate disaster, nuclear holocaust?
There's a generation of Americans who carry the lessons of Viet-
nam in their bones. Whether we're combat veterans or veterans of
the peace movement, the Marine Corps or the Peace Corps, we share
a common heritage and common concerns. We know the real costs of
military intervention at home and abroad, physically and psychically.
We know cluster bombs can't solve complex human problems, nor
can military strategy free the world from hunger and domination. We
reject more bloody battle streamers on our country's flag.
A decade ago, we opposed America being the world's policeman
and we helped contain and- ultimately end the Vietnam War. Today
there is again the call for arms instead of reason, hate instead of
compassion, war instead of peace. Once more we must be willing
to resist.
INTERVENTION will play a central role in that resistance. It will
offer an informed and instant critique of the culture of war, a strong
voice against the institutions of war, and a living memorial to the
Vietnam War.
Please join us.
Sincerely,
iiJl4atxI1/
Tom Nusbaumer
Editor
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