04/17/09 05:49 pm ET
In July 1975, I wrote an article for TV Guide that started:
I am a Vietnam veteran, and if I acted according to what I have seen on television in the last six months or so, I should probably be harboring extreme psychopathic tendencies that prompt me to shoot up heroin with one hand while fashioning plastique with the other as my war-and-drug-crazed mind flashes back to the rice paddy where I fragged my lieutenant.
It's 2009, and we now have a bunch of new veterans demonized once again, not in television programs (though I'm sure more than one script writer has already started to develop the crazed Iraq veteran plot line), but by my own Homeland Security Department.
According to a "For Official Use Only" DHS report, which surfaced this week, "right wing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to recruit and exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat."
That report also said a "prominent [and prominently unidentified] civil rights organization reported in 2006 that large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the [U.S.] armed forces,'" invoking an image of all the above running amok as updated Rambos in the Homeland, whatever that means.
The entire DHS "Right Wing Extremism" report has the malodorous tang of Washington-ese, which means it has little connection with the reality of those of us who live in the Homeland. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledged this in her rather half-hearted apology when she said, "If there's one part of that report I would rewrite, in the word-smithing, Washington-ese that goes on after the fact, it would be that footnote."
Napolitano's use of the word "footnote" in her apology to veterans stands out as a bit of Washington-ese because the sections on veterans in the eight page "Right Wing Extremism" report take up about a page and a half - which, out here in the Las Vegas, N.M., section of the Homeland where I live and work, amounts to far more than a footnote.
I think that Napolitano, and whoever wrote the report (probably a team of $150K a year contractors), need to spend some time getting to know some veterans, such as the hearty and happy crew of four guys from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center I met last month competing in the annual Bataan Memorial Death March at the White Sands Missile Range -- on their artificial legs.
She might learn a bit about the post-war reality that all veterans face, which, as I well know, amounts to a daily struggle to live in a society that has little grasp of the horrors of combat.
The online collection that has my TV Guide piece, also has a reference to an August 1976 Washington Post article by (now) Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., which sums up well the real plight of any veteran:
I don't need to elaborate . . . how incredibly difficult it has been for the Vietnam veteran. His anonymity and lack of positive feedback about himself and his fellow veterans have intensified all the other difficulties he has faced, including those shared by nonveterans. With the exception of a few well-publicized disaster stories, he is invisible.
Quantum res abeo quantum subsisto idem eadem idem. (The more things change, the more they stay the same.)
I served with the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam from 1965 to 1966.
COMMENTS
All veterans and members of the military need an apology NOW - on ethe fornt pages of every US paper.
Suzanne 04/29/09 08:03 am ET
re: Bob Ramos:"It does say that veterans will be targeted by right wing extremists to join their cartel."
You're being disingenuous. Obviously, the vets wouldn't be considered threats by the DHS if they didn't think there was a great likelihood that they could be successfully recruited. They don't describe people of color as likely targets for KKK recruiting, because they assume that they won't join the KKK. Obviously, the implication is that not only will the KKK attempt to recruit vets, but that the vets will join the KKK.
adagioforstrings 04/28/09 09:10 pm ET
Secretary Napolitano's Department oversees the US Coast Guard (which makes her commander of a military service). I can't help but wonder if Admiral Thad Allen, the Commandant of the Coast Guard, might not have had a "Come to Jesus!" conversation with his boss about this issue. I can only hope so.
Michael O'Donnell 04/27/09 01:26 pm ET
I f RJ Anderson really believed what he wrote he should have been writting to say that Palatano should be chatised for apologizing about the report. Me thinks RJ maybe a left wing radical. Of course they were not mentioned. For some stramge reason people like Janet P. and RJ never seem to talk about their service.
Dave 04/20/09 11:56 am ET
Yes, things are much changed in terms of the public image and perception of veterans. Having returned from Vietnam service with an Army infantry division in 1970 I observed what you did, and like most, got beyond that, regardless of the pitiful stereotype and what a minority of people thought about veterans. A great many of the vast majority of Americans who came to oppose the war projected no animus towards veterans; they knew we were, in a way, pawns. The hateful minority of antiwar people were fairly easy to avoid. You seem uncomfortable with a rare, high-level, publicly expressed government concern with right-wing extremists, some of whom might be veterans. Some might--who knows? But the deserved thanks and positive image of returning vets today will possibly keep the number of vet recruits to such fringe groups very small. We can credit the prior administration with creating the conditions that swelled the number of combat vets after putting them in harms way for less than compelling reasons. We can look forward to the present administration to extract our brave service members from Iraq in an appropriate manner.
Michael Lent 04/20/09 10:05 am ET
Once again the anti-war crowd has decided to blame the troops. They can not tell the difference between the soldier and the country's leaders. Blame Bush if you must but back off the troops.
I am a Vietnam veteran and I still have nightmares of the war and of the anti-war types that took out their anger on the returning vets.
Lawrence Hall 04/20/09 09:59 am ET
Really - demonized? Or just truth. Since when does it become OK to disregard trends and potential threats just because someone has worn a uniform or are of a certain ideology.... If the facts line up to that conclusion then maybe you should try and figure out why certain ideologies tend to be so volatile and violent
It is a fact that that a certain sector of individuals who have served in the armed forces do align themselves with militia and other such groups. Are we suppose to be quiet when the facts may line up that way just because some individuals in that group may also have served in the military?
It does no one any good to ignore facts and it really does no one any good for you to continue to promote that we should not speak of situations that may rise to the concern of the security of our citizens just because that or those individuals at one time were in the armed forces.
Oh and - your story obviously was written to true and paint the Obama Administration with the old worn out Right Wing Talking point - "they don't support the troops" crap.
And how about you learning a little bit about where the research and the report came from... LIke it came from the Right Wing Bush Administration DHS department.
We will not as citizens be bullied into not discussing legitimate truths - just because they reflect poorly on the Republican donor base.
RJ Anderson 04/20/09 09:51 am ET
I am a SDV; two deceased brothers were vets; my sons are vets.
I did what a lot of folks have not done - I actually read the report. Nowhere in the report does it say that veterans will become right wing extremists. It does say that veterans will be targeted by right wing extremists to join their cartel.
Bob Ramos 04/20/09 08:58 am ET
My wife served 30 years in the Air Force and I served 37 years. I too served in Vietnam from 68-69. Now to my surprise we might be classified as potential terrorist. The memo written by Homeland Security (I'm beginning to question this term now) also classified other areas that touch on areas that my wife and I believe in such as anti-abortion (except rape or incest) and anti-illegal immigration (what part of illegal don't people get??).
So because of these beliefs, we both might be terrorist?
What is our country coming too? What's next? Brown Shirt militia to make sure folks don't have free speech or freedom of religion, and so on? It's time for this Secretary of Homeland Security to step down. She is bad for this country!
Bob a veteran 04/20/09 07:46 am ET
Bob,nice update, so to speak. We also have the "debate" over PTSD/TBI where everyone except the Vet has been commenting on the distribution and Impact. (RVN USMC corpsman 67-68.
Jack Taylor 04/20/09 07:07 am ET
Indeed, coming from a military family myself, I was utterly appalled by the nonsense in that report, obviously it's authors have a political axe to grind and it is amazing the lengths they will go to, to see their agenda to fruition.
There were so many errors in that report, especially the part about exporting oil nations in 2009 gaining economic strength, I had to laugh. This demonizing of some of the greatest most patriotic Americans in our nation is absolutely wrong. I'd like to debate the makers of this report on live TV, and I'd like to ask them, if they have ever risked thier life for this great nation. Who wrote that report and who allowed it to circulate without the fact check. Scary stuff indeed.
Lance Winslow 04/20/09 05:49 am ET