Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson
Copyright 4 July 2001
During the eight years of the Clinton administration of the 1990s, as the counter-culture revolutionaries of the Boomer generation came to power in America, the idea of 'multiculturalism' has been pushed as a concept for universal acceptance. In spite of the fact that this concept is completely alien and diametrically opposed to the concept of government set up by our Founding Fathers (a common American identity), it is this creed by which our 'heroes' are now chosen and venerated.
Individuals are now selected for heroism, not so much for the merit of their deed (although this is often a mask that hides the truth of the matter) but by the 'victim' status of the person so selected. The New Age 'hero' is now a person chosen from a politically selected 'victim' group and placed in a position of honor [1],[2]. It is by this means that the agents of this promotion are able to divide us into 'victim' and 'non-victim' groups based on race, ethnicity, sex, or sexual behavior. Only in cases of overwhelming evidence of an individual's heroism are the 'traditional' heroes recognized by this New Age generation of revolutionaries. A case in point is our returned Vietnam War prisoners of war.
It is said that history is written by the victors. Although we won the Cold War, the 'battles' that were fought (Korea and Vietnam) have been disputed in American political and cultural history. The popular histories of these wars, particularly the Vietnam War, have been written by those who opposed America's fighting it.
Take for example, the question of the choice of 'heroes' who fought in America's wars? It was, of course, natural to honor Sergeant York [3] for his heroic exploits in the trenches during World War I. It was equally natural to honor Audie Murphy [4] for his heroism in battle during World War II. A proud, young, vital and growing America anointed these heroes in public and in print. They were heroes truly chosen by the American people for honor, bravery, and courage under fire. They fought and they fought valiantly. And America won both wars.
But who are the heroes whom we now honor from the Korean War, the Vietnam War era? Who chose them? By 'chose,' I mean who venerates the deeds of those who were awarded medals for military heroism by their military peers, those in authority to recognize that heroism at the time of the event for which it was awarded. The actual award of the medal by military authorities close to the action are not in dispute. This act is considered sacrosanct. It bubbles up the chain of command from eyewitnesses to the act of heroism all the way up through the military hierarchy of decision-makers who approve the award for the event described.
I am really talking about who 'chooses' to venerate, repeat the story of a particular heroic act, keep the hero before the nation's eyes as an inspiration for the nation and its citizens - both the living and those young who are expected to become tomorrow's patriots. In this sense, the 'choosers' are generally politicians (giving speeches on holidays memorializing our nation's heroes) and the mass media (in choosing scripts for movies and television shows, and in editing (deciding) what 'story' to emphasize).
If one watched the presidential primary races during the Spring of 2000, one was barraged with the an emphatic move to honor our Vietnam War prisoners of war (NAM-POWs). All other candidates, democratic or republican, are 'measured' in terms of their military 'service' during that period against those who were imprisoned. One candidate, Senator John McCain, was held by the mass media, and thereby, the American public in the highest esteem as a true 'hero' of the Vietnam War. Along with ADM James Stockdale, he and other leaders are given credit for bringing our NAM-POWs home with their honor preserved -- for their RESISTANCE to their captors' will in spite of inhumane, brutal treatment by the North Vietnamese during their captivity.
All of this is justly so. These loyal Americans did their duty, and faced unbelievable torture and hardship. They behaved heroically during their captivity. They deserve every honor bestowed upon them. They deserve our unswerving gratitude for their service.
But just what is so different about these heroes and those which America chose to venerate as a result of heroic acts in World Wars I and II, the Civil War, and our Revolutionary War? That difference tells us much more about ourselves, the American public, than it does about the heroes themselves.
Charles Krauthammer, the conservative Boomer syndicated columnist, who also appears regularly on national television, captures the essence of the reason. He describes[5] John McCain's heroism as "a peculiar kind of courage, a kind that fits perfectly with America's still conflicted feeling [and presumably Krauthammer's personal feeling] about Vietnam. McCain's military heroism is not the heroism of a warrior. He is no Eisenhower liberating Europe. He routed no enemy. He conquered no territory. Nor did he commit the momentary act of insane self-sacrifice in the chaos and terror of battle, as did ... [here, Krauthammer might have mentioned 1st Lt. John Bobo, of whom you will read more of later - but Krauthammer probably never even heard of Bobo] ... McCain's is not the heroism of conquest or even rescue, but of endurance, and, even more important, principle. It is not just that he suffered for five and a half years in Hanoi. It is that he chose to suffer by refusing the early release the North Vietnamese offered him and insisted - with torture - he accept. He refused because that would have violated the military code of conduct under which one does not accept early release until those who have been captured earlier have been released."
Krauthammer gives away his elite Boomer anti-Vietnam War sentiments as he continues. "Twenty-five years ago, it was impossible to imagine what a Vietnam War hero would look like...How to be a hero in a war that so many [including Krauthammer?] believed was immoral and wrong? McCain has given us the answer. Even those [including Krauthammer?] who deeply opposed the war and who still remain ambivalent about it can only be moved and feel ennobled by war service that consists of suffering and denial. It explains why even people so ideologically distant from him find his experience so moving and his appeal so powerful."
Of course, Krauthammer was trained as a psychiatrist in his young adulthood and became a columnist only in his mature years. Hence, it would be expected that his view would be a 'therapeutic' one. Heroism defined as 'suffering' and 'denial.' But his description of 'hero-hood' is that of the psychiatric profession. And the fact that a huge portion of American sentiments accord with his tells us a great deal about ourselves - what we have become as a nation.
Philip Gold, a brilliant commentator on American culture, reviewed a book [6], 'A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century,' by Ben Shephard, in the Washington Times. His review give great insight regarding who 'chooses' our heroes in the therapeutic age. "In the United States, there's a saga, well embedded in popular consciousness, of the nexus between soldiers, psychiatrists and war-induced mental conditions. Part Gen. George Patton slapping a combat-fatigued soldier...and part quasi-official psychiatric 'court history.' By this telling, psychiatry advanced America from vicious disregard to stern but benign treatment, then in the 1970s and 1980s, to an enlightened understanding of the prevalence, nay, near universality of 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and that concept's wider applicability."
Today, it seems, no terrorist attack, school shooting, or natural disaster is complete without the shrinks and 'grief counselors' - often 'hurrying to the scene,' as the media dutifully inform us. By some interpretations, trauma has become so prevalent that to exist is, by definition, to be traumatized." Without psychiatry's 20th century experience with -- and exploitation of - the military, it never would have happened."
"In the early 20th century,...folks on both sides of the Atlantic were fretting that men were no longer men, that 'nerves' were getting the better of everybody, and that Victorian repression maybe wasn't healthy. A lesser concern, indeed no great pre-1914 concern at all, was that gunpowder and explosives had altered the military definition of courage. Traditionally, courage meant the untrammeled unleashing of aggression. By the 18th century, courage seemed more the ability to 'take it' - to stand in line in neat rows, methodically enacting parade-ground rituals, while the enemy took aim."
"In World War I, courage came to mean the ability to endure all the horrors of prolonged trench warfare - the interminable shellings, the gas, the machine guns. Aggression may or may not be quintessentially human. Lying passive while the world explodes all around you is not. Early in the war, it became clear that psychiatric breakdown, known back then as 'shell shock,' was epidemic. Several fundamental disputes arose. One was whether to treat it as a disciplinary or a medical problem, to punish or to treat. Everything was tried; neither worked well enough to invalidate the other."
"In World War II, as 'shell shock' segued into 'battle fatigue,' the American approach became more or less the standard. First, admit and train to think of fear as natural, and only wrong when it led to cowardly acts. Second, there was the realization, formalized in procedures such as limiting aircrew missions, that no one could carry on forever. Third was the PIE. Proximity. Immediacy. Expectation. Treat as close to the front lines as possible. Treat as soon as possible. And make the soldier expect to return. Better for everyone, including the soldier ... at least, the soldier who survived."
"The World Wars established psychiatry's (and psychology's) legitimacy. Intelligence and classification tests, motivational techniques, even legal categories developed for the military now suffused civilian society, especially the school system and the large corporations. The notion that everyone was either sick or potentially sick gained currency. Increasingly, shrinks set the vocabularies and the tenor of debate for any number of issues."
And the Vietnam War climaxed this process. Krauthammer's sense of heroism tied to suffering and self-denial is an example of this process. A war hero in the traditional sense, James Webb, who served as a Marine officer on the ground in Vietnam, gives his account of John McCain's heroism [7]. "...any discussion about Mr. McCain begins with his ordeal as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Even though Vietnam was a divisive war that is not yet resolved in the national consciousness, Mr. McCain can appeal to all sides. He is an inspiration to many veterans and conservatives, who see some validation of their service and also of the war they believe was justly begun, well fought on the battlefield and mindlessly boggled by the political process at home."
"At the same time, many who opposed the war can nonetheless support the man because of his personal ordeal, without facing the intellectual complications of directly facing the issues of the war itself. This broad appeal is unique, especially because it is based on suffering rather than concrete battlefield accomplishments.
"Eisenhower, after all, gained fame for directing the allied victory in the European theater. Teddy Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill. Rutherford B. Hayes and Ulysses S. Grant were battlefield heroes in the Civil War. Andrew Jackson won renown for his victory over the British in the Battle of New Orleans. George Washington led the Continental Army during the war for independence."
"John McCain's historic contribution, it would seem, was to rot in a Hanoi hellhole for more than five years as the nation ripped itself apart in venomous political debate. But a closer look brings deeper insight into why most Americans have come to hold this defining experience in such great esteem."
"The Vietnam prisoner of war experience was itself unique in our history. American POWs have frequently endured brutality, particularly in Asia, where the death rates of POWs in or last three major wars was above 40 percent. The Korean War saw the first major attempts at what became known as brainwashing, where interrogators and political commissars sought to 'turn' Americans against their own government."
"But in Vietnam, the manipulation of the prisoners became a dominant part of Hanoi's overall strategy to turn the American people at home against the war. Thus, American POWs were at center stage for years during the political debates here at home, even as they suffered in relative anonymity in Hanoi. The North Vietnamese, who referred to their prisoners as their negotiating 'pearls,' refused throughout the war to provide a complete listing of those who were in captivity."
"That the majority of these prisoners returned from such a nightmare in early 1973 with their patriotism intact was an ennobling experience for all Americans, who by that time had grown confused, war-weary, and decidedly less than noble in their dealings with each other over the war. Throughout his political career, McCain has benefited from the halo effect of that emotional homecoming. And critics today have accused him of harping on his experience as a prisoner of war to burnish his image as a presidential candidate, using it to evade questions about his policies and leadership."
"Having been in prison during the most hostile period of antiwar protests, [McCain] has displayed little understanding of how deeply many combat veterans were scarred by the reception they received upon coming home. Never having served on the ground in South Vietnam, he seldom articulated a concern for those South Vietnamese who had suffered immensely in the war and its aftermath. And he created a perception in some circles that he would reach over allies to work with enemies by allying himself to Senator John Kerry, who once headed Vietnam Veterans Against the War, as well as providing political cover for President Clinton when normalization [of diplomatic and economic relations with North Vietnam] was announced."
So, who 'chose' our Vietnam War heroes? Given this history of the therapeutic movement in America and its tie to America's wars, I submit that the 'enemy' chose our heroes from the Vietnam War period. No. Not the North Vietnamese. Not the American people who became 'confused,' 'dispirited,' and finally 'lost the will to support the war - as a result, as James Webb points out, of Hanoi's overall strategy to turn the American people at home against the war. The 'enemies within' 'choose' our Vietnam War heroes. The radical-left, turned modern liberal Boomer generation draft dodgers, anti-war demonstrators, and counter-culture revolutionaries who betrayed America and helped Ho Chi Minh's strategy succeed. These elites of the Boomer generation migrated to positions of power in the 1990s, including the media, politics, education -- in every institution in the land - and they choose whom to venerate as America's heroes.
But wait, you say. Did not President Nixon honor these heroes upon their return by a hearty, patriotic national display of thanks and veneration. He invited them to the White House and bestowed honor on them. Yes, he did.
Well, then, didn't President Reagan similarly honor these heroes at the White House on many occasions during his presidency? The answer, again, is yes.
These two presidents led the American people in public demonstrations of pride in our Vietnam War heroes. They and the American people 'chose' those deserving Americans for their heroism while under captivity. A grateful nation expressed its gratitude for their bravery, courage, and strength under great torture and suffering. But, unless this becomes an issue in a political season, that heroism is largely forgotten. Why is this so?
This is so because the power elites of the Boomer generation, the counter-culture revolutionaries and their enablers in other generations, are the ones who have written the popular history of the Vietnam war. They are the ones who have defined, in the light of their own biases, their own prejudices, the motivations for, the conduct of, and the outcome of that war.
Indeed, it is they who celebrated a young woman, a Vietnamese 'victim' of the war, by inviting her to give the major address at the Vietnam War Memorial on Memorial Day, 1999. This young woman, communist schooled in Cuba and now living in Canada was the young South Vietnamese girl seen in a Pulitzer Prize winning photo, running naked down a dirt road, screaming in panic as she fled a fire fight between Viet Cong guerrillas and American troops. These power elites of the Boomer generation are the ones who mocked the Vietnam War memorial that day by celebrating her prominent place in the ceremony.
And they are the ones who have 'allowed us' our Vietnam War heroes. They are the ones who, today, choose whom we venerate among those traditional -- 'non-victim' heroes of our past wars. And make no mistake about it; they are our culture war 'enemies.' Their literary 'heroes' are the likes of Tim O'Brien, the anti-Vietnam War novelist whose works are required reading at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Look at whom they continue to overlook in choosing their 'victims' for veneration and celebration as our nation's heroes. Take the case of Second Lieutenant John Bobo [8]. Commissioned in the Marine Corps, he volunteered to serve in Vietnam. On March 30, 1967, his company was establishing night ambush sites. Suddenly, his command group came under attack by a reinforced North Vietnamese company. Bobo immediately organized a hasty defense.
"Ignoring intense enemy fire, Bobo moved from position to position to encourage his outnumbered Marines. When members of his rocket launcher team were hit, he recovered their weapon and organized a new team, directing its fire into enemy machine-gun positions. An enemy mortar round exploded nearby, severing Bobo's right leg below the knee. But Bobo refused to be evacuated. Instead, he placed a web belt on the bleeding stump and ordered his men to place him in a firing position from where he could cover their withdrawal to a more defensible position."
"With his leg jammed into the dirt to curtail the bleeding, Bobo began delivering devastating fire into the ranks of the enemy force that repeatedly attempted to overrun the Marine position. As his command group finally reached a protected position from where it was able to repulse later assaults by the enemy, Bobo fell mortally wounded."
"Faced with having to choose between his survival or that of his men, Bobo did not hesitate to do the honorable thing. Overcoming one's natural predilection toward self-preservation, he acted so as not to fail those who looked to him for leadership. Knowing death was inevitable, he did what was necessary to ensure their survival. As guns fell silent on the battlefield, a leader lay dead, having sacrificed his life so those he was responsible for leading could survive."
Now, that is heroism! That is the stuff of Sergeant York and Audey Murphy. This is the type of combat heroism, which a young, vibrant, proud, and self-confident nation promotes to mythology by way of military decoration. This is the stuff of stories that motivate young men to serve a cause and a purpose 'higher than themselves.' This is what heroes are made of. A proud military recognized John Bobo's heroism. It recommended him for the nation's highest military decoration.
"As the enemy closed in and John Bobo drew his last breath that fateful day, it is only hoped he knew his selfless act of valor had saved the lives of many others. For his conspicuous gallantry, he posthumously received a grateful nation's highest combat decoration -- the Medal of Honor."
Yes, the military and a grateful Congress recognized John Bobo's heroism -- a traditional heroism. But a silent press, a distracted populace, a divided nation does not. No one heard of LT Bobo during the year-2000 election cycle. We heard, instead, as the result of the media's infotainment coverage of an election year 'horse race,' of those who were captured by the enemy, and, by displaying great courage, survived to return home with their honor intact.
Another Vietnam War POW, who suffered more than those who returned was Captain Humbert Roque 'Rocky' Versace. CAPT Versace was one of more than 200 prisoners, mostly infantry soldiers, held in horrendous jungle camps in South Vietnam. He was executed by his Viet Cong captors as a result of his open defiance of their attempts to 'turn' him. A fellow Army officer, on patrol late in 1963 in the Mekong Delta, gives this account, from villagers who described the scene they had witnessed [9]. "His head was swollen, his hair completely white and his skin turned yellow from jaundice. He was rail thin, and he had no shoes, and his Viet Cong captors were yanking him around from village to village by the rope tied around his neck."
"When [the villagers] said the American prisoner had continually argued with his captors - using Vietnamese and French to rebut their propaganda - [the Army officer] knew they were talking about Rocky Versace. He had a funny expression about him, a smile, a flashing of teeth, that got their attention. And they listened when they heard him speak, they listened, because they couldn't help it."
"'He told them to go to hell in Vietnamese, French, and English,' one of Versace's fellow captives, Dan Pitzer, who died in 1997, told a historian. 'He got a lot of pressure and torture, but he held his path. As a West Point grad, it was duty, honor, country. There was no other way. He was brutally murdered because of it."
"Another prisoner held with Versace, James Rowe, escaped in 1968 after five years of captivity. Rowe made an impassioned pleas to President Richard M. Nixon that Versace receive the Medal of Honor, describing how his resistance deflected punishment from other captives and stiffened their will to resist...The Army downgraded the award to a Silver Star."
We have heard of the heroism of ADM James Stockdale. We heard endlessly of the heroism of Senator John McCain during the year-2000 presidential election cycle. Why have we not heard of the heroism of CAPT John Versace[10]? His heroism is in the mold of America's traditional, pre-therapeutic age heroes. And he gave his life for his country. Just who was Rocky Versace? "Versace followed his father to West Point, graduating in 1959. Assigned to the 'Old Guard' at Fort Myer, he chafed at the ceremonial duties and volunteered for a tour in Vietnam. [After a one-year tour in 1962 in Vietnam] he volunteered for a second tour and had then planned to leave the Army. He had been accepted into the Maryknoll Order and wanted to work with children in Vietnam."
"In October 1963, two weeks before his second tour was to end, Versace accompanied an operation near U Minh forest, a Viet Cong stronghold. The South Vietnamese company was overrun by a large enemy force, and Versace went down with three rounds in the leg. He, Rowe, and Pitzer were taken prisoner, stripped of their boots and led into the forest. It was a dark maze of mangrove, canals and swamps. The prisoners were kept in bamboo cages, deprived of food and exposed to insects, heat and disease."
"Versace's untreated leg became badly infected, but within three weeks he tried to escape, dragging himself on his hands and knees. Guards soon discovered him crawling in the swamp. Back in camp, they twisted his injured leg. Versace was kept in irons, flat on his back and frequently gagged in a dark and hot bamboo isolation cage that was 6 feet long, 2 feet wide and 3 feet high."
"The VC cadre set up indoctrination classes, but Versace attended only at the tip of a bayonet. Rowe and Pitzer 'adopted a sit-and-listen attitude between bouts of body-wrenching dysentery, feeling the more we said, the worse off we'd be,' Rowe later wrote. 'Rocky, on the other hand, was engaging all comers.' Increasingly, Versace was separated from the other prisoners."
"Versace tried three more times to escape, and his treatment worsened. The last the other prisoners heard from him, he was singing 'God Bless America' at the top of his lungs from his isolation box."
"On Sept. 29, 1965, Hanoi Radio announced that Versace had been executed in retaliation for the killing of suspected communist sympathizers by South Vietnam."
"Versace's case [for the Medal of Honor] has been pushed in recent years by a hodgepodge group of soldiers and civilians who have heard his story: officers in the Army Special Forces command, West Point classmates and friends from Alexandria, Virginia. What they have in common is the haunting image of a man who, as Rowe wrote, did not break, or even bend. Said Nicholson [the fellow Army officer', 'It makes you think, Good Lord, could I be that strong?'"
Lance Sijan is another 'traditional' American war hero who died in captivity in the Vietnam War. He was a 'backseater' in an F-4 engaged in a night attack on a target on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos on the night of Nov. 9, 1967. During a bombing run, Sijan's aircraft was hit by enemy fire and the crew ejected [11]. "...there was one chute. Sijan ejected and was drifting toward a flat-topped, heavily forested karst formation. For Sijan, recollection stopped as the 195-pound captain crashed into the towering trees."
"Sometime the next day, Sijan regained consciousness in a haze of pain. He had suffered a compound fracture of the left leg, a crushed right hand, head injuries, and deep lacerations. Most of his survival gear was gone. He tended the broken leg as best he could, then lapsed again into unconsciousness."
"The following morning, a flight of F-4s picked up the sound of Sijan's beeper, and a search-and-rescue operation got under way. Throughout the day, Sijan maintained contact with the rescue force, but several attempted pickups were thwarted by NVA gunners. At 5 p.m., a Jolly Green chopper made it in directly over Sijan. In a desperate attempt to crawl through tangled vines to the chopper's penetrator, Sijan lost contact with the rescue force. As darkness fell, the SAR operation was called off."
"Early the next morning, the search resumed, but Sijan's radio batteries were depleted. Failing to make contact, the SAR team was recalled. Sijan was on his own. If he were to survive, he must make his way down the steep karst to water and an open area where he could warm the radio batteries and call in a chopper. With a crude splint on his shattered leg and only the thumb and forefinger of his right hand functioning, Sijan began the most incredible journey in the history of Air Force survival efforts."
"For several days, Sijan, lying on his back, pushed himself over the sharp rocks with his good right leg, a few painful inches at a time. His only source of moisture was dew licked from foliage. There were many falls down the steep slope and periods of unconsciousness and delirium. First his clothing became shredded, then the skin on the back of his body, until he was inching along on raw flesh. At last he found water and pressed on, inch by agonizing inch."
"Forty-five days after he parachuted into the forest, Sijan saw ahead the open area he had been looking for. He dragged himself over a bank and fell unconscious in the middle of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, three miles from his starting point."
"The young captain regained consciousness in an NVA road camp, his formerly athletic body little more than a skeleton partially covered by transparent skin. He was given some food and water but no medical attention. In spite of his pitiful condition, his mind focused constantly on escape. When some strength returned, Lance Sijan overpowered a guard and dragged himself up a trail, only to be recaptured and punished."
"Sijan was moved to a temporary prison near Vinh, where he was beaten severely but refused to give any military information. The guards, who had never seen a human in such ghastly condition, refused to touch him. Sijan was put in the care of Maj. Bob Craner and Capt. Guy Gruters, an F-100 Forward Air Control crew that had been shot down near Vinh. The latter had been in Sijan's squadron at the Air Force Academy. In his lucid moments, Sijan gave them the details of his long, painful journey."
"Several days later, the three were loaded on an open truck for a three-night trip to Hanoi in the chill monsoon rains. At Hoa Lo Prison, they were put in a damp cell. Sijan, who had contracted pneumonia and was near death, asked his cellmates to prop him up on his pallet so that he could exercise his arms in preparation for escape from that grim, impregnable bastion."
"On Jan. 22, 1968, Capt. Lance Sijan died. When the POWs were freed in early 1973, Craner and Gruters recorded the details of his long fight for freedom and his resistance to torture."
That's right. Rocky Versace and Lance Sijan. A good old-fashioned 'traditional' American heroes! And we never hear of them in the nation's mass media. We never hear their names in Memorial Day speeches. Not one damn politician even knows their names. But they are right up there with Patrick Henry and his famous quotation, 'Give me liberty, or give me death.'
Yes, indeed, it is the 'multiculturalists,' the Mary McCrory's of the nation, who now choose whom we venerate as our heroes. It is the Boomer elites and their enablers of other generations who are choosing our heroes. It is they who even filter our past for the current veneration of heroes past whom the nation has, in previous ages, mythologized into our history. It is the draft dodgers, the anti-war demonstrators, the counter-culture revolutionaries of the mid-1960s and their sympathizers who 'chose' our heroes. Indeed, the 'enemy,' the 'cultural Marxists' in the media, in politics, in positions of power in our culture are the ones who 'allow' us our heroes -- 'victims,' survivors of captivity, all.
A civilian, Michael Benge, who was taken prisoner in South Vietnam tells the story (Internet Newsletter, Voice of the Grunt, 10/5/99) from his point of view.
"I was a civilian POW in Vietnam from 1968-73, and held in South Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos and North Viet Nam. I spent 27 months in solitary confinement, of which most of a year was in a black box (a brick SH with the inside walls painted black), and one year in a cage. After release in Operation Homecoming in 1973, I was often asked about the conduct of other POWs."
"My response then, as it is today, is that each man has his own breaking point. As the old saying goes, "Don't judge another 'til you've walked a mile in their moccasins. After our return, at times I was called a hero. My answer then, as it is today, is that we, the returned POWs, are not heroes; we are just survivors."
"The heroes are the ones who gave their all, and their names are etched on that somber black granite wall called the Vietnam Memorial. The heroes are those who never came home and are still POWs in some God forsaken hole. The heroes are the ones who lost part of their bodies from the ravages of war. The heroes are those that still suffer from the horrors of war...No, we are not the heroes, we are just survivors."
"...I salute and have a special reverence in my heart for those POWs who were Medal of Honor recipients, as I do for my former SRO ... who resisted to the last..."
"There are 46,417 former captives of foreign wars living in this country [12] ... The feeling of helplessness is the most dreadful part of their ordeal, say the ones I have spoken with. The emotional texture of prisoner-hood is vastly different from that of combat, and the experience takes a peculiar - and permanent bite out of a person's psyche."
"Fairly or not, the former POW is also silenced by the residual stigma that is attached to the notion of surrender. We Americans prefer to think of ourselves as invincible. God is on our side. We don't quit. We don't lose wars, we don't even lose battles. (And when we do lose battles, we go down fighting like Bowie and Crockett at the Alamo - to the last man.) Fortunately, we do not look upon our POWs with contempt, as some cultures do (and as the Japanese Imperial Army of World War II did). But the mythologies of invincibility exacerbate the poor self-image that the prisoner feels." And the author might have added that the distinction made here is one, which has been made traditionally regarding America's heroes. A 'warrior ethos' is built on this image. And America needs this ethos to assure that our future wars will be WON, not LOST. Especially in our core combat leadership - for which we depend on the nation's premiere military academies, such as the U.S. Naval Academy.
An author describes the aftermath of the massive surrender of American troops on the Bataan peninsula in the Philippines during World War II [13]. "For nearly four months, American and Filipino soldiers had fought a relentless siege in the malarial jungles. Starving in their foxholes, lacking vital medicines and ammunition, they took to chanting, 'We're the battling bastards of Bataan, no mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam.' Finally, they were forced to capitulate. It was the largest surrender in our history (after Appomattox) and the beginning of one of the darker chapters of modern warfare."
"The Japanese moved the captives 75 miles north in a plodding atrocity that came to be known as the Bataan Death March. And that was only the beginning. In the prison camps, these men suffered gratuitous and surreal mistreatment that those alive today still don't fully understand."
"And, as with so many ex-POWs from other conflicts in our history, many of the Bataan veterans felt branded by a certain shame when they returned to American shores - shame for having surrendered, shame for having survived when so many of their friends didn't, shame for becoming walking exhibits of American defeat - so many wraiths crashing the national party. So they resumed their lives, blurring the past to the extent possible, suffering quietly."
"And yet each survivor lives with his memories: the one-for-all spirit of the fighting unit giving way to a one-against-all existence; the small treacheries he committed to survive; the stealing and scheming; the things he never thought he could do and does not want to remember doing. In both his captors and his fellow captives, he recalls seeing the blackest aspects of human nature."
"'Prisoner of war, wrote Winston Churchill, who had been a POW himself during the Boer War, 'is ... a melancholy state. You are in the power of your enemy. You owe your life to his humanity, and your daily bread to his compassion. You must obey his orders, go where he tells you, stay where you are bid, await his pleasure, possess your soul in patience.'"
What is the difference in these accounts of a POWs existence and that of our Vietnam War POWs? Churchill's rendition fits both the Vietnam experience and that of our other wars. Except that our Vietnam POWs were mostly college graduates who had been trained to resist the coercion of a POWs existence, based on the experience of our POWs in the Korean War. They were trained in the art of RESISTANCE. And there is one huge difference, one that makes a world of difference in attitude. A good friend, who spent over 8 years in the 'Hanoi Hilton' told me that he and his fellows were buoyed in spirit because they were intelligent enough to understand that the North Vietnamese needed them ALIVE in order to squeeze every bit of propaganda out of the POWs in their fight for the hearts and minds of the American public. American public opinion was the battleground for their strategy for winning the war. That realization allowed our POWs hope, fundamental hope, based on reason, that they would eventually be returned home to their loved ones. This gave them the edge over their predecessor POWs in America's past foreign wars. Indeed, the Vietnam War was different from America's other wars.
A matter closely related to the issue of 'who chooses our heroes today' is that of the lowering of standards in this age of 'multiculturalism.' It has occurred in the military, as is evidenced by reduced qualification and training standards [14] [15], for preferred groups, including the first two women Navy fighter pilots and some in the Advanced Naval Aviation Training Command. Nowhere is this more apparent than the wholesale award of medals for 'service' rather than action and/or valor in combat. Bruce Junor, a contributor to the Internet newsletter, Voice of the Grunt/Soldiers for the Truth tells the story.
"Real warriors don't talk much about true accomplishments, nor do they have to sport many meaningless badges. They know what they have accomplished. A recent talk with my WWII veteran father reminded me of that.
"It was at the 101st Airborne Division reunion a year ago or so. These stud-type guys were all standing around with ribbons, shiny jump boots, etc, when these old, bent-over guys came by. The young guys were very courteous and acted like gentlemen...and they were all talking about how many jumps they had, and the old guys were asking about the equipment and how it worked, etc."
"Somebody asked one of the noisy studs how many jumps they had, and one guy responded 402, and another said 377. Somebody then asked one of the bent-over guys how many jumps he had. This old guy, he was about 75, said - only four -- "North Africa, Anzio, Normandy and Eindhoven." The noisy guys just quietly walked off."
"Those were the guys who paid some very serious dues... a long time before any of us."
One of the most striking events at the turn of the century is the way that Hollywood has portrayed World War II - a rewriting of history, if you will. Where in the past, America has celebrated the heroism of our 'Greatest Generation' in fighting and winning the Battle of the Pacific against the tyranny of Japan, Hollywood has made it into a cheap personal love story. On Memorial Day 2001, Disney opened the movie, 'Pearl Harbor,' which created quite an uproar. Several scenes, which would have traditionally appeared because of their rousing celebration of final American victory, were deleted - so as not to offend Japanese or German audiences.
According to one reviewer [16], "Star Ben Affleck informed reporters that the message of the film was about the terrible cost of having to go to war, and not 'about the United States or Japan or the Second World War, right or wrong'...the filmmakers took care to provide a scene in which the Japanese convey why it was necessary to launch the attack. Indeed, moviegoers venturing forth to this nearly three-hour epic will hear a Japanese commander declare, sorrowfully, that 'we have no choice but war.' And in addition tell his men - presumably also suffering pangs of conscience and concern - that Japan's oil supply was at stake. Moviegoers who know little or nothing of the history of the period - a sector of the population too huge to bear thinking about - may well conclude, from this Disney version of events, that a peace-loving Japan had been forced into an act of war by the American embargo of its oil supply...Nowhere in the film ... could anyone glean a hint about Imperial Japan's invasion of China, and its designs on the rest of Asia. What our former enemies could possibly find offensive in this blame-free, nobody's right-or-wrong portrayal of the Japanese sneak attack ... would be hard to imagine."
But that is not all. The producers "...serve up...a love triangle involving two ace fliers...who vie for the affections of a military nurse and, when the Japanese raid takes place, 40 minutes of ear-piercing special effects...The producers seem, for one thing, to have derived their view of what a bunch of 1940s army nurses might sound like from a study of 1990s television - in particular, HBO's 'Sex and the City.' See the wild-eyed nurslings chattering on about their lust and lives and which inductee has a cute butt, etc. Never mind. We are soon enough drenched in high romance, when [the nurse] meets up with that of Mr. Affleck, and, when the war carries him off temporarily, with Mr. Hartnett."
"Worse, the bombing and special effects end in time for the nurse to explain matters to flier love No. 1 - he comes back - with an emotional discourse on their relationship, her feelings, and the reasons for taking up with his friend. Outside, Pearl Harbor burns. The nurse's narrative explanations end with a final detail."
"'And then all this happened.' She means the Japanese attack - a line that produced gales of laughter from the crowd at the review. Otherwise, an ominous silence reigned in that huge audience - even toward the end, when Doolittle's avenging raiders dropped their bombs over Tokyo. It is a bad sign for a would-be blockbuster when even the moment of retribution can't stir the audience."
And it is a bad sign for America when its movie industry attempts to rewrite history - a cheapened version at that - in accordance with the New Age multicultural virus. Is it not patently obvious that the anti-war crowd, after having dominated the popular culture version of the Vietnam War, would now attack America's past - World War II - in their revolution aimed at destroying our faith in America's exceptionalism?
Is this not a sign of the politically correct ('cultural Marxist') influence on America today -- even in our combat arms? Is this not at least a small creeping blemish on events, which have traditionally emblazoned their imprint on our consciousness? Is this not an alien influence to that which our Founding Fathers left us?
This nation was not founded to be a Paradise. It was [17] [18], "...brought into existence by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, George Mason, and those working with them...And above all, 'American' became synonymous with the word 'better.' And therein lies the answer to dreamers of Utopia [a 'multicultural' paradise, in our current example]. The perfection they seek exists only in books. Attempts to create it on Earth cause untold suffering and death...And once we understand that the key word is 'better,' [our Founding Fathers'] legacy will be seen as having benefited every man, woman and child, regardless of race, religion or ethnic origin."
"The principles...[that guide us] correspond naturally to four core points of America's compass: the rule of law, individual rights, security of property, and a common American identity."
Conclusion
Indeed, there is a flaming 'culture war' going on over the land. It is being fought in our politics, our news media, our entertainment media, our schools, our universities, our courts, our places of business, even in our churches. But the most important battles are taking place in our minds -- for those who are puzzled at what they see and hear. This puzzlement produces a 'passivity' that restrains decision and stymies action.
This 'war' pits the New Age elite Boomers and their enablers who espouse a 'multiculturalism,' 'affirmative action' or its new name 'diversity,' 'special rights,' 'preferential treatment of selected groups,' and 'radical egalitarianism' against those who hold a more 'traditional' view of the nature of our Constitutional Republic.
Nowhere is this condition more apparent than in the extension of the 'culture war' to our nation's military. It has come to the point where some of our active-duty military officers, usually 'traditional' by nature, are apparently taking the side of the 'multiculturalists' in this war. They are becoming active participants on behalf of the 'cultural Marxist' revolutionaries who would 'social engineer' our military establishment in directions that are inimical to military readiness, unit cohesion, and the 'warrior' ethos so essential to a fighting force. Who would have expected such a rapid disintegration of our military culture -- one that has won every war in our nation's history, including the Cold War?
Or maybe this state of affairs should not surprise us. After all, our military has a long history of accepting civilian control. This concept is ingrained deeply into the psyche of our military. And rightly so. History is fraught with disastrous results of civilizations which experienced military coups and take-over of power.
But, this concept has a dark side as well. A military with this mindset is a pushover for a civilian political agenda that can be imposed from the top -- with ease. Give the order -- the politicians will find someone to carry it out. If the political agenda is to finish a counter-culture revolution, began during the politicians' coming-of-age years, then the military is a pushover for sweeping the military establishment up into the storm of this revolution. Some would, politely, call this process the 'social engineering' of our military.
It is actually the last step in the long march through our democratic institutions by the 1960s revolutionaries as they have taken their place of leadership in every institution in the land. Our military is the last American institution to resist this headlong rush to 'change' since the early 1990s. All others have already succumbed over the past 30 years.
This 'social engineering' is actually a continuation of these revolutionaries' counter-culture movement, started in their young adulthood -- the mid-1960s. This 'revolution' is now being extended to our military today -- with potentially disastrous results.
As political pressure is applied daily on our senior military leaders to force on them an agenda alien to the military culture, these senior officers allow 'sensitivity training' techniques to be used on junior officers, enlisted personnel, and cadets/midshipmen officer candidates in our premiere military academies. These senior flag-rank naval officers, either by 'just following orders' or, as is more likely, 'tending to their careers,' impose these techniques on their charges through those mid-level officers who can be persuaded to implement them. They will find some such officers compliant -- for the same reasons as are the senior officers. Or, unknowing, these officers simply do not see the danger of the enterprise they have been charged to undertake.
Of course, throughout all of this, at every level, an officer who does not 'go along to get along' will be purged from the service. We have seen such a purge in the aftermath of the Tailhook '91 'scandal.' We are seeing it on a daily basis as young officers in all the services voluntarily 'vote with their feet' on the corrupted civilian and military leadership they see above them, and leave.
This situation results in a larger cadre of mid-level officers and young officers in the pool who will 'just do their duty,' and 'follow orders' from above.
Nevertheless, for whatever reasons, some of these mid-level officers have in this way been coerced into carrying out the culture war on behalf of the political leadership -- within the military establishment.
So, in light of the U.S. Naval Academy's public written defense of their new 'ethics' program, each one of us; the mid-level officers who administer the program at the Academy all the way up to the Chief of Naval Operations, as well as each and every USNA alumnus, and those of us who, as American citizens, have a vested interest in maintaining the integrity of the education of our core combat naval leadership have a simple question to answer.
Are we RESISTERS, COLLABORATORS, or just plain PASSIVE? Let me explain.
The techniques used to corrupt and passify our active-duty officer corps are quite similar to the indoctrination techniques used by the Chinese on captured American GIs during the Korean War.
Allegedly, the mostly young, poorly trained and uneducated GIs performed questionably during their imprisonment by the Chinese. The alleged misconduct by captured GIs is recorded in the extensive debriefings of the soldiers upon their return. These reports describe the "indoctrination" or "re-education" methods used by the Chinese.
Today, our senior military leadership doesn't recognize that this approach is being used to gain acceptance of the "feminization" of our nation's combat arms.
Regardless, these high-ranking military leaders are morally responsible for their failure to resist. In the face of our knowledge of the Korean War POW experience, they have no excuse for their lack of resistance.
These "behavior modification" techniques used on our military have been perfected over the years and used in our teacher training programs and in our universities during the past 30 years, and so they offer no surprises. These techniques are being used every day, in nearly every walk of our lives. These attempts to change the worldview of the populace have become mainstream in America.
Most Americans have not yet recognized that these methods are morally corrupt.
These techniques, applied by the Chinese, worked on our Korean War POWs. According to the best data available: Only 5 percent RESISTED the enemy indoctrination; 15 percent were consistent, dedicated, hard-core COLLABORATORS with the enemy; The other 80 percent were rendered "PASSIVE" by their captors' "sensitivity training" methods and stood for nothing but their own survival.
The Chinese indoctrination methods are strikingly similar to the methods now incorporated in the sensitivity training that is given to our military personnel by professional "facilitators." These methods were developed in the United States by Kurt Lewin during and immediately after World War II. His disciples, utilizing his T-group, small-group encounter techniques, are legion in this country today. They are called "facilitators" or "change agents." This process seems to be as effective in feminizing our military as it was in breaking down the resistance of our GIs while in Chinese captivity.
What do we learn from the Korean War POW experience?
(1) We learn that small, peer pressure encounter groups -- using "sensitivity training" techniques -- are very effective in breaking resistance to conform to another's will.
(2) We learn that those 80 percent of individuals who were rendered passive under the enemy's indoctrination program, had little knowledge of our country's history, heritage and unique place in the panorama of nations in history.
(3) We learn that many of these young men (18 to 24 years old) were simply not hardened to the real world. That is, according to one of the ex-POWs [19], "...some American mothers had given their sons everything in the world, except a belief in themselves, their culture, and their manhood. They had, some of them, sent their sons out into a world with tigers without telling them that there were tigers, and with no moral armament.''
And when they were placed in the hands of a brutal, ruthless, barbaric enemy, they had nothing to sustain them -- nothing to prepare them for survival in a land of "tigers."
(4) We learn that many of those in the passive 80 percent were not their brother's keeper. That is, they did not have a strong Christian morality.
Anyone alive in America today will recognize these same failures rampant across our culture. We are being manipulated by our power elites toward the same end.
The purpose of their social engineering? To slowly but surely replace our constitutional republic, handed down to us by our Founding Fathers, with a socialist utopia of their own "enlightened imagination."
We reject recognition of these parallels at our peril.
Dr. Nancy Sherman is a 'change agent' who has implemented the New Age 'ethics' program at the U.S. Naval Academy. The Academy, through CAPT Clemente's article in the February 2000 'Proceedings' lauds her contribution to that program. The Academy shamelessly wraps its defense of this program in the cloak of ADM James Stockdale's heroism. And the Academy does this in spite of the fact that the Stoicism that enabled Stockdale to heroically face the tribulations of his captivity by the North Vietnamese, is absolutely the wrong philosophy to undergird America and its core naval combat leadership. And few recognize the deep and fundamental contradiction between the Academy's twin line of defense -- praise for Dr. Sherman and reverence for ADM Stockdale, a contemporary American hero. This is approach is unethical, internally inconsistent, clearly transparent, and just plain wrong. There can be no valid defense of this New Age 'ethics' program at the Academy.
So, dear reader, what are you? A RESISTER, a COLLABORATOR, or are you just plain PASSIVE? America's future may rest on your answer.
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Footnotes:
1) Defense Link, U.S. Department of Defense, "Information About the Medal of Honor," 22 May 2000. President Clinton
is quoted, "No African American who deserved the Medal of Honor for his service in World War II received it."
2) CNN.com, "Clinton awards Medal of Honor to 22 Asian-American World War II veterans," 21 June 2000.
3) Williams, Gladys, "Alvin C. York," an unpublished biography on the Internet at http://volweb.utk.edu/Schools/York/
biography.html, date retrieved 3 August 2001.
4) Murphy, Audie, "To Hell and Back: The Epic Combat Journal of World War II's Most Decorated G.I.," MJF Books,
1949.
5) Krauthammer, Charles, "Profile in Courage," The Washington Post, 25 February 2000.
6) Gold, Philip, "War and Stress: Psychiatry's changing ways of helping out," The Washington Times, 29 April 2001.
7) Webb, James, "No Ordinary War, No Ordinary Hero," The Washington Times, 25 February 2000.
8) Zumwalt, James, "Honor as practiced in duty's trenches," The Washington Times, 23 February 1999.
9) Vogel, Steve, "POW's Tale May End With Medal of Honor," The Washington Post, 27 May 2001.
10) Ibid.
11) Frisbee, John L., "Lance Sijan's Incredible Journey," Air Force Magazine, Vol. 81, No. 12, December 1998.
12) Sides, Hampton, "Now Their Stories Can Be Told," The Washington Post, 27 May 2001.
13) Ibid.
14) Atkinson, Gerald L., "From Trust to Terror: Radical Feminism is Destroying the U.S. Military," Atkinson Associates
Press, August 1997.
15) Atkinson, Gerald L., "The New Totalitarians: Bosnia as a Mirror of America's Future," Atkinson Associates Press,
June 1996.
16) Rabinowitz, Dorothy, "Disney Does Pearl Harbor," The Wall Street Journal, 25 May 2001.
17) Vazsonyi, Balint, "Paradise gained," The Washington Times, 15 February 2000.
18) Vazsonyi, Balint, "America's 30 Years War: Who is Winning?," Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1998.
19) Fehrenbach, T.R., "This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History," pp.318-320, Brassey's, 1963.
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End of footnotes.
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