My friend the veteran artist John Paul Hornbeck made this flag -- I just love it. It carries forward the whole issue of POW/MIA into the present day, by asking in effect why the veteran is "still" Missing in America (that's the "MIA" part these days.) He mocked up this flag, using the old and familiar symbol, to highlight the cause of homeless veterans in America -- a cause worth addressing.
I'm broadening the point, though, to something else:
Why ARE Vietnam veterans, in particular, still exiles in their own land?
And what should we, as a country, be doing about that?
Because failing to address that, failing to welcome back these warriors into their own land, perpetuating their exile both from what they've seen/done/experienced and how they were received when they returned -- has left a gigantic, gaping gash in the "fabric" of the American psyche; and decades worth of not addressing it has not resulted in any pain being healed. Sure there are sporadic attempts made here and there, but they're relatively weak, lackluster, or involve too few people to really make a difference.
If you read Pat's "Welcome Home" story, or Claude Anshin Thomas', just to use the names of two representative Vietnam vets among thousands -- you find out that they are STRIKINGLY similar, almost verbatim copies of each other (and the rest who haven't written them, I suppose). The hopes, the dreams, the flat-out fantasies (under the circumstances) of how they were to be received -- combined with the completely dashed, rejected and really shattered realities of how they were -- aie, the mind boggles. It's surprising the whole generation of warriors didn't go postal, not just a few. It also explains why so many of them are still living in pain to this day. Turned into exiles by what they lived, that they had no possible means of integrating -- and shunned by the country they fought for. If that woudn't give you issues, I'm not sure what would.
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So let's think outside the box on this, FAR outside the box. (If the box is the status quo, that is, because that's not particularly impressive.) What prevents us from giving veterans, in every city across America, down EVERY Main Street -- a true, genuine, and long-overdue "WELCOME HOME"?!
Couldn't we use that psychic energy we'd gain back as a nation -- from repairing the rent in our actual psyche -- to surge forward, and embrace our combat veterans from here on out, with all the services and the help they so desperately need? We've seen the problem: it's been well-documented. But even to go forward successfully, in this case, I think we also need to go backwards -- make use of the "invisible bridge" -- and welcome the group of veterans who are STILL waiting, 40 years out, for America to acknowledge their return.
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I learned a long time ago, that even in personal relationships, there's a big difference between the crappy/weak/self-serving apology -- "sorry IF I hurt your feelings" -- and an actual, gut-level, authentic and genuine apology, that takes responsibility, asks for forgiveness from the injured party, waits for the answer, or renegotiates the situation -- and then moves on, healed. In the Bible, that's even called the difference between "worldly sorrow" (sorry I got caught) and "godly sorrow" (sorry that I did it, because I know it was wrong). Without making a point about religion here, I'm merely trying to show that many traditions understand there's a difference between a heartfelt apology, a lame one, and none at all. It's like the Oliver Wendell Holmes line from a few blog posts back, that "even a dog knows the difference between being kicked, and being tripped over."
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Let's harness or leverage the momentum from the current groundswell of public "enthusiasm" for veterans' rights, exemplified by support for passage of the new GI bill, and the continuing emphasis on not settling for less in healthcare, particularly PTSD and TBI. Let's expand that, though, to other issues of concern to veterans, before the "mood" passes -- as it surely will -- to be eclipsed by other different, pressing concerns. Let's settle our largely unspoken national shame with how we treated Vietnam veterans, while a few of them are still alive to appreciate that our apology is genuine, and acceptance would heal us all to be able to move forward. What we don't want to do is to create two different classes of veterans: the ones we care about, who get the right treatments for the right reasons; and the ones we don't, because we frankly made such a mess of it it's just easier to overlook it than apologize and move on. It's time to make things right for ALL veterans. Let's have those Welcome Home parades NOW...
Editor's note: John Paul Hornbeck is the artist (and veteran) who made "Shattered Soldier," the lifesize scultpture of a veteran with PTSD, that we blogged about earlier, here. He is the child of an American Vietnam war veteran Army father, and a Vietnamese mother.
