The Lesson I Learned in War

Jennifer Pacanowski

By Jennifer Pacanowski

Speech to the Conference on the Veterans Peace Movement, Rutgers Presbyterian Church, New York City, May 18, 2013. 



The lessons of war I believe are different for everyone.

I have heard more than once from other veterans of all eras that war/conflict stays with you, seeps into your soul, creates moral injury—a restlessness that is unresolvable even with time.

PTSD is not curable.

All week long I have been struggling and battling with the ideas, What did I witness? What do I continue to witness as a veteran?  Creating a war again, a war with myself.

We bring the war home with us but my lesson to you today is that it does not have to define who we are as veterans, as people, as beings in this universe.

Every since my return from Iraq I have felt that my experiences in war have controlled and conquered who I was, how I react to other people, how I view myself and what my future would be.

From 2005 to 2011, I was a victim and prisoner to my emotions, my PTSD, my co-dependent relationships and my addictions.

I can not say it was a single moment I woke up one day and said, "no more" but I definitely started developing my own toolbox of coping.

At first, I dealt with my reactions of anger, of not applying the sledgehammer of rage to ALL situations but maybe starting smaller with a mallet of discussing what I was angry about and not just destroying everything in my path. I started fostering and training bullmastiffs, taking care of them gave me a reason to wake up.

My mother drove me to the veterans' retreat in Martha's Vineyard that slowly started the change of course in my life. THIS is where I first experienced a community of veterans talking, understanding each other, writing and creating combat paper.

As the years passed I allowed myself to grieve the loss of my idealism, MY YOUTH had been replaced with a hatred and resentment for everything I thought this country once stood for, honor, integrity, leadership, selfless service, loyalty, a fearless solidarity and defense for what is right.

Soberly, I cried and released the pain without feeling weak but empowered by my ability to break away from the conformity my mind had been trapped in.

During these last two years I have discovered a map to guide me. My map started with the process of putting the needle down and stop using my extensive medical knowledge to get high, escape and be numb…

Throwing away the VA meds, the bottles of whiskey and vodka and walk away from my hope of death.

To trailblaze a new path, to learn how to transition from war and from the military culture and not only do it for myself but also as I discovered to be able to help others too, as I have always wanted to do.

I moved to Ithaca to expand my comfort zone and embrace the future I never thought I would live long enough to see.

Working with the Veterans' Sanctuary, I found a healing approach that I disregarded because it was for hippies and tree huggers and well anyone else but me—this was of course the holistic approach.

I went to a "wellness chiropractor," acupuncture, I ran, I walked with my dogs in the sunshine, rain and snow, I went to the park and festivals, I farmed and celebrated pot luck dinners, I spoke to college students, we wrote and created art and combat paper but above all, I had a community, we created community.

Lately I have felt immersed in war and this idea of community has diminished into a job, facilitating workshops, speaking events, outreach, even my own writing a chore, a reminder of failure, feeling that no matter how much I do there is still more to be done, the wars go on and the veterans continue to be misunderstood, lost, addicted, homeless, suicidal, homicidal and traumatized by their communities and the system set up to help them, the VA.

And events like the Boston bombings validated my greatest fears of bombs blowing up on the streets in the USA.

For awhile it was like, FINALLY, after searching all these years for bombs in the road, scanning and scanning, reliving convoy after convoy, ALL THESE YEARS, it happened....... just like it use to every day in Iraq. Now my war truly came home and my angry, frustration and despair broke my core.

Today, however, in my moment of despair, a light shined on my map, the war IS with me, a part of me but it is does not have to consume me, it does not have to be a burden or a huge weight to be carried.

 It can be a thought that drives me or the war can disappear completely in those moments at the playground or the dog park.

My lesson about war, OUR LESSON IS CHANGE.

Challenge my mind to think differently about war, to change the way we feel about war.

Change it to something that works that helps me feel great, empowered, experienced… Knowledgable, so not all others will follow that path.

For my PTSD to kick ass and not let it kick my ass!!!!!!

In that way, I facilitate workshops so others can learn to express themselves in positive ways to create community.

The lesson I learned in war is that
Healing is not a job,
Speaking the truth is an honor, especially if I can speak for those who can
   not, and
Writing is my gift.

Most of all, for me, I had to change my perspective on my purpose....
I had to forgive myself for sacrificing my humanity in war,
To live and come home.


Jennifer Pacanowski, a former US Army combat medic who served in Iraq, is a poet and Warrior Writers facilitator for the Veterans Sanctuary in Ithaca, NY

Iraq and Vietnam

Nearly 6 years ago, I shared these thoughts as part of a panel discussion at The New School university in New York City, on May 10, 2007... Much of it still applies as Americans mark the 10th anniversary of invading Iraq.


They are two different countries in different parts of the world. What unites Iraq and Vietnam are American attitudes and actions. After supporting the disastrous military campaign in Vietnam, a majority of Americans did the same thing all over again and supported invading Iraq. Indeed, the war in Iraq was a continuation of the bitter battles here at home over Vietnam.

As my friend, and fellow Vietnam vet, Ken Campbell, wryly notes in his new book—A Tale of Two Quagmires: Iraq, Vietnam, and the Hard Lessons of War—“Some have said we failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam. This is not quite true. The United States did, in fact, learn lessons from Vietnam. The problem is we learned too many lessons, and they frequently contradict each other.”

Perhaps the most disturbing lesson of all is that Americans are addicted to war. Even in the current climate of public dismay over what’s happening in Iraq, there is no civic groundswell to wage a diplomatic campaign to resolve issues that inflame the Middle East. Despite the horrendous carnage in Vietnam and its bloody sequel in Iraq, Americans are still primed to wage war against somebody. So much so, that an unusual coalition of retired generals, admirals and ambassadors has felt compelled to issue public warnings about the consequences of military action against Iran.

Is anybody listening to these voices of experience? Previously, a number of high ranking retired military leaders, vowing to never repeat their experience in Vietnam, publicly warned against invading Iraq—and were ignored by Congress, the Bush administration, the news media and the American people.       

And now some of the fiercest critics of the war in Iraq are soldiers who fought there.

“Americans generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq,” a two-tour veteran of Iraq, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, recently wrote in the Armed Forces Journal. “No one leader, civilian or military, caused failure in Vietnam or Iraq. Different military and civilian leaders in the two conflicts produced similar results,” he concluded in a devastating critique of the war he fought in. His proposed solution: choose better trained military leaders. Other veterans are calling for a reexamination of America’s fixation with finding military solutions to international disputes and ideological differences.

The Vietnam war, as the late great New York Times reporter David Halberstam insightfully noted, was a product of America’s “best and brightest” military and strategic shakers and doers. After Vietnam, the US military reorganized, retrained and redeployed its best units and commanders—and came up with the war in Iraq. Consequently, many veterans of Vietnam and Iraq are seeking a different strategy. 

A grassroots perspective that challenged the war policy was drafted by a group of Vietnam veterans who opposed the invasion of Iraq and issued a statement in spring 2003 signed by thousands of veterans, from World War II to the first Gulf War. Based on experience, these veterans said “we do not believe that the American military can or should be used as the police force of the world by any administration, Republican or Democrat. Consequently, we believe that the lives and well being of our nation's soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines should not be squandered or sacrificed for causes other than in the direct defense of our people and nation.”

A year later, as the first wave of invasion troops came home, a new organization was formed—Iraq Veterans Against the War. The group modeled itself on Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The sobering legacy of Vietnam and Iraq, these veterans hope, will be a transformation in America’s involvement in the world, from sending military expeditionary forces blundering blindly into other people’s homelands to true international cooperation and security.

Retired general William Odom, a Vietnam veteran and former head of the National Security Agency, tried to explain this call by veterans and others for a different course of action in a recent radio address:

"The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place,” Odom said. “The war could never have served American interests. But it has served Iran's interest by revenging Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran in the 1980s and enhancing Iran's influence within Iraq. It has also served al Qaeda's interests, providing a much better training ground than did Afghanistan…. We cannot 'win' a war that serves our enemies interests and not our own. Thus continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in Iraq makes no sense.…

“No effective new strategy can be devised for the United States until it begins withdrawing its forces from Iraq.... Withdrawal is the pre-condition for winning support from countries in Europe that have stood aside and other major powers including India, China, Japan, Russia. It will also shock and change attitudes in Iran, Syria, and other countries on Iraq's borders, making them far more likely to take seriously new U.S. approaches, not just to Iraq, but to restoring regional stability and heading off the spreading chaos that our war has caused.”

Teaching (and Learning) in Vietnam

Three decades after the end of the Vietnam War, Americans are welcome visitors and even classroom teachers in Vietnam.

Before launching a career as a teacher in Texas, John Davin, a native of Rockland County, NY, decided to broaden his experience by teaching in Vietnam for a year. Armed with a degree in English from Hunter College and a master’s in education from Long Island University, he ventured into the Southeast Asian nation that repelled a US military invasion—and then embraced Americans on peaceful pursuits. 
 
Amid his teaching stint at Da Lat University in the Central Highlands, Davin had these thoughts on his experience: 

“I imagine that we are building bridges here. I occasionally feel that, because of the lack of Americans here, we are small ambassadors for our nation. I imagine that we are dispelling some negative stereotypes about Americans, and also reinforcing some positive ones,” he wrote in a blog post.

“Vietnam is rapidly changing and growing in its infrastructure,” he added in another blog post. “They are steadily modernizing and becoming an economic power in Southeast Asia, all the while reestablishing its cultural identity beyond the Vietnam War. It puts your work in a different perspective when you realize you are contributing to the economic and cultural revival of a nation.”

Returning to Her Native Land to Teach

Iris Nguyen decided to return to the nation that her family fled from due to the bitter upheavals of what for many Vietnamese was a civil war. With a B.A. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, she is teaching courses in conversational English at An Giang University in the Mekong Delta. 

“Before I left to teach here, my family and friends had concerns about what kinds of food I would eat, and how I would deal with mosquitoes, the currency, and the language barrier,” she wrote to her sponsoring organization, Teachers for Vietnam. “What concerned me was whether or not my students would understand me, would I get the time to get to know my students and vice versa, whether or not I would be a good teacher, and most importantly, would I connect with my heritage and culture on another level than what I had experienced before. So far, I can safely say that I have managed to accomplish most of those things on my invisible checklist.”

Teachers for Vietnam, a small nonprofit organization based in Piermont, NY, sponsors newly minted college grads as well as experienced, older adults as teachers of English at universities in Vietnam. The program provides travel stipends and health insurance, which supplement salaries that cover living costs and housing provided by the host institutions.

The program was founded in 2006 by John Dippel, an historian and author who served in the US Army during the Vietnam War, with a focus on providing Americans to assist Vietnamese college students in honing language skills important to expanding their country’s tourism and international trade relations.

Memorable Encounters in Former War Zones

As a member of the board of directors of Teachers for Vietnam, I’ve heard and read about many memorable interactions of people from both sides of our previously warring nations. Davin, a US Navy vet, felt adopted by Vietnamese in Da Lat. Many others felt adopted by their students, families and communities.

“Part of the mission of Teachers for Vietnam (www.teachersforvietnam.org) is to bring native, American speakers, usually recent college graduates like myself, to the English department of Can Tho University,” Kelly Fitzgerald, a graduate of the University at Albany, State University of New York, wrote in a blog post. “We are supposed to share our culture, customs and linguistic knowledge with our students. They love English class – are surprisingly but refreshingly enthusiastic about it here, even though they are reluctant to actually speak it! I even have students who aren’t enrolled in the course who come sit down just to watch me teach.”

Fitzgerald wrote that she wasn’t enthralled with the heat, humidity and hordes of mosquitoes in the Mekong Delta city, nor with the university’s communist-legacy bureaucracy. But she loved the people she met in Can Tho.  

 “… it’s impossible to get frustrated with my students for long, as the ear-to-ear grin I get from every single one of them upon entering class every day is so humbling that I almost feel I’m not worth it. They invite me to dinner with their families, they offer me rides home on their motorbikes when it’s raining and they always tell me that I’m pretty, no matter how awful I might be looking that day. They are undoubtedly the best pupils that a first-year teacher could ever ask for,” she added.

Thinking about doing such an adventuresome experience? Teachers for Vietnam is currently accepting applications for the 2013-2014 academic year.

Apply (by April 1) to:
P.O. Box 384 Piermont NY 10968 info@teachersforvietnam.org
860-480-5041

For application form and further information:  teachersforvietnam.org/

Moral Injury: Another Hidden Wound of War

Vietnam vet Randy Sachs throwing medal during
1971 war protest  (photo/Sheldon Ramsdell)

Often lost in the translation of war, for soldiers as well as folks back home, is that much of what goes on in a war is a moral outrage.

After a decade and more of warfare by American military forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere in hot pursuit of elusive bands of armed insurgents hiding amid sprawling cities, remote villages and other gatherings of civilians, The Associated Press has unveiled another hidden wound of war—one not listed in the usual litanies of battlefield injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“With American troops at war for more than a decade, there's been an unprecedented number of studies into war zone psychology and an evolving understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder. Clinicians suspect some troops are suffering from what they call ‘moral injuries’ - wounds from having done something, or failed to stop something, that violates their moral code,” reported AP staff writer Pauline Jelinek.

“Though there may be some overlap in symptoms, moral injuries aren't what most people think of as PTSD, the nightmares and flashbacks of terrifying, life-threatening combat events. A moral injury tortures the conscience; symptoms include deep shame, guilt and rage. It's not a medical problem, and it's unclear how to treat it, says retired Col. Elspeth Ritchie, former psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general.”

Here’s where the US news media’s reporting on a touchy topic involving the military too often ends. But Jelinek and other AP staff members kept digging. What they found and reported is news for even military veterans who’ve been trying to follow the twists and turns of PTSD directives from government agencies:

“Dr. Brett Litz, a clinical psychologist with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Boston, sees moral injury, the loss of comrades and the terror associated with PTSD as a ‘three-legged stool’ of troop suffering. Though there's little data on moral injury, he says a study asked soldiers seeking counseling for PTSD in Texas what their main problem was; it broke down to ‘roughly a third, a third and a third’ among those with fear, those with loss issues and those with moral injury.”

The AP reporters sought out veterans who have suffered this seldom-discussed injury. 

“Lumping people into the PTSD category ‘renders soldiers automatically into mental patients instead of wounded souls,’ writes Iraq vet Tyler Boudreau, a former Marine captain and assistant operations officer to an infantry battalion.

“Boudreau resigned his commission after having questions of conscience. He wrote in the Massachusetts Review, a literary magazine, that being diagnosed with PTSD doesn't account for nontraumatic events that are morally troubling: ‘It's far too easy for people at home, particularly those not directly affected by war ... to shed a disingenuous tear for the veterans, donate a few bucks and whisk them off to the closest shrink ... out of sight and out of mind’ …"

The only problem with this startling news report is that it could have been done a decade ago, when US forces invaded Iraq in a massive assault that killed large numbers of civilians—or for that matter, four decades ago during the Vietnam war.

In 1973, however, there was no terminology, such as post-traumatic stress or moral injury, for what a generation that fought in Vietnam brought home. But many veterans raised moral issues in protests against the war's continuation, including a 1971 demonstration in Washington where hundreds of veterans hurled war medals over a crowd control fence at the Capitol building, an event widely reported in the news media.  

Here is what a Marine veteran of that war discovered and has been writing about for years in Internet postings.

“The observation that some human beings become moral casualties because of their experiences in war is not new. Historically, many societies have recognized war’s deleterious moral effects and required returning warriors to undergo elaborate atonement and purification rituals,” notes Camillo Mac Bica, who left the Marines to become a philosophy professor. “These ‘therapies’ provided the means and the opportunity to cope with the moral enormity of their actions in war.

“Tragically, the moral injuries of modern warriors, however, have been virtually ignored, overlooked, or disregarded by the conventional therapeutic community … Focusing, instead, upon stress and trauma, most moral symptoms presented by returning soldiers are either not taken seriously or assimilated under the diagnostic umbrella of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Consequently, the veterans receive the signal that an inability to forget, to put the war behind them, is either weakness or, perhaps worse, illness. … Unfortunately, in most cases, moral injury neither responds well to medication nor can it be rationalized away,” Bica added.

Coming home from war, he noted, “I realized that Vietnam had profoundly affected my life, that war takes its toll on body, mind and spirit. I realized as well that America had little tolerance, interest or understanding for its returning warriors. I was called a drug addict and baby killer by many in the general public and ostracized even by fellow veterans from previous wars for being a crybaby and a loser, for lacking dedication and effort, for disgracing the ‘uniform,’ ourselves and the country for contributing to what was widely regarded as America's first lost war. This realization that I was alienated and alone and that no one seemed to understand or care about what I was undergoing, made me sad at first. Soon after that sadness was replaced by anger and resentment. 

“After several years of isolation and denial, trying to avoid ‘contaminating’ friends and family and the stigma of being a Vietnam veteran, I was convinced by another vet to seek help at the Veterans Administration (VA). Almost immediately, I was assailed by VA clinicians who ‘diagnosed’ my inability to cope, alienation, nightmares, etcetera as personal inadequacy and weakness, probably due to some pre-existing condition, perhaps a personality disorder, maybe even schizophrenia. Most likely, they hypothesized, my difficulties had something to do with my mother being overweight or my being toilet-trained too early. What was peculiarly absent from all this analysis and testing and the ad hominem attacks, however, was any reference to the war. 

"So, I blamed myself for my weakness and my mother for her eating habits and for how she raised me, and resigned myself to the fact that, for all intents and purposes, at 25, my life was over. Was I crazy, a baby killer, a crybaby, a coward? Perhaps I was all of these. Needless to say, I wasn't very pleased with myself, with those around me, or with the fact that, other than a heavy regimen of Thorazine, what some refer to as a ‘chemical lobotomy,’ VA doctors and clinicians weren't offering much help and guidance. So, it became apparent to me that if I was going to salvage what remained of my life - and I was not at all sure healing was possible - I needed to do it myself, to come to an understanding, perhaps even an acceptance, of what I had done and what I'd become.”

The question now is how much has changed for the current crop of war veterans? If moral injury is not officially acknowledged and seriously addressed, could this account for the on-going suicide epidemic among veterans and active duty troops?

The AP’s special report doesn’t ask these questions.  Instead, it veers off track:

“Many in the armed forces view PTSD as weakness. Similarly, they feel the term ‘moral injury’ is insulting, implying an ethical failing in a force whose motto stresses honor, duty and country,” writes Jelinek, who covers the Pentagon for the AP.

“At the same time, lawyers don't like the idea of someone asking troops to incriminate themselves in war crimes — real or imagined.

“That leaves a question for troops, doctors, chaplains, lawyers and the military brass: How do you help people if they don't feel they can say what's bothering them?”

A fuller report would have added the insights of dissenting veterans like Bica, who resigned from a Marine officer’s post, signed himself out of a VA facility to study philosophy and continued over the years to ask fundamental questions.

“Acknowledging the existence of moral casualties in war demonstrates that the clinical model - pathologizing a veteran's readjustment difficulties as mental illness - is inadequate and requires further evaluation,” Bica wrote in a blog post. “On the positive side, it enhances our understanding of the war experience and its devastating effects, expands our area of concern beyond trauma and PTSD, and allows us to more adequately meet the needs of our returning servicemen and –women.”

For more information:

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/im-monster-veterans-alone-their-guilt http://www.zcommunications.org/the-invisible-wounds-of-war-by-camillo-mac-bica

Update: Agent Orange’s Toxic Trail

Boys with birth defects, Vietnam (photo/Brendan Wilcox)

In the seaside city of Da Nang, Vietnam, a clean-up is underway to remove dioxin-contaminated soil at a former U.S. military air base. Some 8,500 miles to the east, another clean-up is underway to remove dioxin hot spots along the Passaic River in Newark, NJ and upstream, where tides and floods have washed the worrisome stuff into a county park and into mudflats along a popular stretch of water where high school rowers race and families often relax along the banks and fish. 

Long after the Vietnam War ended, the toxic trail left by dioxin-laced Agent Orange stretches from Newark, where herbicides were manufactured for the military in a way that created a long-lasting contaminant, to Southeast Asia—where millions of gallons of the supersized plant-killer were sprayed on jungles, mangrove swamps, military bases and airfield perimeters during a decade of war starting in 1962.  

Unveiled by the Internet’s astounding accumulation of news and government reports, the toxic trail of testing, transporting and trying out these chemicals—which were made in New Jersey, Michigan, West Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas—further extends to South Korea, Australia, Canada, Guam, Panama, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Mississippi, Florida, Maryland, New York and many other states.

This alarming drumbeat of news reports began in the late 1960s, as the chemical spray operations aimed at exposing enemy ambush sites and supply routes in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand set off rising waves of concern about rashes of health problems among Vietnamese villagers.

The herbicide spraying on the other side of the world forty-some years ago still reverberates here at home, especially among Vietnam veterans.

“They sell huge shrimp in stores here—check the package to see where it’s from. They grow shrimp in bomb craters in Vietnam,” says Jim Fallon, of Hoboken, who developed bone cancer in his right arm after serving as a U.S. Army medic in Vietnam.

Fishing Health Advisory in New Jersey

Besides Vietnamese fish ponds, Fallon notes, fishing spots here at home are affected as well. In August, New Jersey officials issued an updated warning against eating blue craw crabs from the lower Passaic River and Newark Bay. The latest fishing advisory notes that in 2005, when the state sued chemical companies for dumping in the river, “dioxin concentrations in Passaic River crabs and fish were among the highest in the world.”

“While some crabs may appear healthy, contaminants found in blue claw crabs and some fish pulled from these waters can be harmful to fetuses and infants,” New Jersey’s environmental protection and health agencies warned. “Women of child-bearing years, pregnant women and nursing mothers, in particular, are urged not to ingest these crabs from this region. Children are also at risk of developmental and neurological problems if these crabs are eaten.”

Jim Fallon, like many Vietnam veterans, has become acutely attuned to news about Agent Orange and dioxin—and the questions that arise with each lifting of the veils of secrecy that government officials long maintained regarding this issue.

“They were always telling us it was mosquito repellent,” Fallon said of spraying operations when he was stationed at Long Binh military base in 1968-69. “Every once in awhile, it had a different smell, a kerosene smell.” One day, he went on a helicopter medevac mission to a forested area he had previously flown to. “It was dead—there wasn’t a leaf on a tree,” Fallon said.

  

He first learned of the potential consequences of exposure to these chemicals in 1990, Fallon recalled, when a doctor in New York treating him for complications from bone cancer, said “You know, this is from Agent Orange.”

In 1991, after more than a decade of calls by veterans to investigate their health concerns, Congress passed legislation ordering a federal review of health studies regarding dioxin and that health care be provided to affected veterans. This was a sea change from previous official denials that Agent Orange caused the severe illnesses that hit many veterans shortly after the war ended in 1975. These ailments included often rare cancers in young men on the cusp of age 30 and spina bifida in children whose fathers served in Vietnam.

In the past two decades, hundreds of thousands of veterans have filed Agent Orange health claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has paid out more than $3.6 billion to veterans or their survivors, according to military.com. Another 230,000 claims are in the VA’s over-stretched processing pipeline.

The VA’s latest list of illnesses associated with dioxin exposure—including cancer, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease and diabetes—reads like admissions files at nursing homes. Yet these folks, now primarily in their 60s, often developed these debilitating ailments years ago, when they were much younger.   

And the ranks of those whose health may be affected by Agent Orange continues to grow.

'Blue Water' Navy Exposure

“The Australians have done three complete studies of their naval, air, and ground service personnel who served in or near Vietnam. That is how we in America discovered how the Blue Water Navy veterans were exposed, which was independently verified by the special review of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences last year,” Rick Weidman of Vietnam Veterans of America advised fellow vets in May. “The desalinization units on Australian and American ships had the perverse effect of concentrating the dioxin that was contained in the herbicide mixed with kerosene or JP-4 fuel, thus keeping it on or near the surface many miles out to sea, where it was taken in by our warships to produce potable water.”

In Vietnam, where the U.S. Agency for International Development is overseeing an estimated $43 million cleanup at the Da Nang airfield, the biggest worry about the residue of dioxin is birth defects.

“As many as one million people in Vietnam have disabilities or other health problems associated with Agent Orange, the Vietnamese Red Cross has estimated, citing local studies,” CNN reported in August. A detailed look at birth defects in Da Nang and other areas of Vietnam is provided in a recently published book, Scorched Earth: Legacies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam, by Fred A. Wilcox.The book includes numerous startling photos of children with birth defects in Vietnamese cities taken by Brendan Wilcox, the author's son.

What happened in Vietnam is "a tragedy that, unlike earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and wars of limited duration, has been maiming and killing people for decades," writes Wilcox, an Ithaca College professor who wrote one of the first investigative books about this issue, Waiting for an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange, published in 1989.

"The war in Vietnam was not the first time that a nation resorted to a scorched earth strategy against an enemy in war; however, it was the first time in human history that ... a government inadvertently poisoned its own army, then waited for this army to die," Wilcox writes in his latest book.  

In response to complaints by veterans who for years were told to prove they were exposed to Agent Orange spray on a certain day in a specific location, the VA now says that all 2.6 million military veterans who served in Vietnam are presumed to have been exposed. Among the recognized illnesses it provides health care or compensation for, the agency lists spina bifida as a birth defect associated with dioxin poisoning.

Many veterans worry whether their exposure to Agent Orange caused other birth defects. “I ran into a guy from my unit. He said two of the guys had children born with holes in the heart,” says Jim Fallon, speaking of his New York-based Army Reserves medical unit that served at the 74^th Field Hospital in Vietnam.  

Noting the wide variety of other birth defects reported among Vietnamese children, veterans who monitor this issue contend that our government has repeatedly delayed reviewing studies of dioxin’s potential effects on a troubling range of birth defects among children and, in some cases, grand-children of Vietnam veterans.

“We now know that when we expose troops to toxins during their military service, we subject their children and future generations to the effects of those same toxins,” Alan Oates, a retired Army first sergeant who heads Vietnam Veterans of America’s Agent Orange/Dioxin Committee, noted recently. “That is why it is important for us to get answers and action before we leave this world.”

   

A version of this article appeared in the Jan. 27th issue of The Record newspaper in New Jersey.

Winning Hearts and Minds

War Stuff from 'Nam                (photo/Jan Barry)

Fifty years ago, I turned 20 in Saigon, a very drunk and slap happy soldier in the service of the US Military Assistance Command Vietnam. We were making war, when we weren’t doing Happy Hours in every bar from Soc Trang to Da Nang, under slick counter-insurgency slogans like “Winning Hearts and Minds,”  “Operation Ranch Hand” and “Only You Can Prevent a Forest” (motto of the US Air Force missions that were spraying the countryside with herbicides).

O, we were so damn clever and full of ourselves. Nowadays, Vietnam veterans feel lucky to live to retirement age and not be stricken by cancer, heart disease or some other damn malady from exposure to Agent Orange and other military follies.

Some of us tried to tell America when we came home that things in sunny Southeast Asia were not so rosy as portrayed in official pronouncements and the news media. It took years to find fellow Americans willing to hear what any of us had to say. So bewildering war experiences stewed in our brains and bodies’ startled responses to life events and night sweats—until a barrage of rage burst out, in drunken curses, flying fists, squealing tires, or—if we were lucky—published stories and poems.

That is the genesis of a collection of writings that I helped to edit and publish as the war was officially winding down in 1972, called Winning Hearts & Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans. One of the outbursts in that book was a poem I’d jotted down that tried to convey an unwanted, unheralded war souvenir.

The Longest War

The longest war is over
Or so they say
Again

But I can still hear the gunfire
Every night
From
My bed.

The longest nightmare
Never seems to
Ever
Quite come
To
An end.

That poem and others in WHAM, as we called that anthology, were reprinted in The New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications across the country, including the Friday Review of Defense Literature, circulated at the Pentagon. That book, published by ourselves with the help of fellow vets and friends, launched the writing careers of a number of contributors who forged distinguished careers in journalism, education, medicine, law, government service, business and other enterprises. A novel by WHAM contributor Gustav Hasford, for instance, sparked the war film Full-Metal Jacket.

“Winning Hearts and Minds touched the lives of thousands of people and made them better for it. It touched my life, leaving me with a permanent fascination in the power of words. It made me want to be a poet – not just a doodler or a hobbyist, but a writer. It opened the way to the life I have lived ever since,” writes W.D. Ehrhart, who’s the author of 20 books including, most recently, Dead on a High Hill: Essays on War, Literature and Living, 2002-2012.

“The success of WHAM was so undeniably wonderful. It found readers and purchasers and believers. It was timely. The splendid review in the Sunday NY Times Book Review was only a small portion of it; excerpts appeared on the op ed page of daily NY Times as well. Does poetry ever appear in any major newspaper now?” notes Michael Casey, author of Obscenities, Check Points and other poetry collections. 

“I was de-cluttering my basement and found my copy of Winning Hearts and Minds. I bought it in a small bookstore in Rochester, Mn in 1973 a few months after getting out of the Army. It cost $3.95. I love this book and the poems. It was very helpful in the post-war years trying to figure out what was going on with me and has been a tool in my own attempts at writing,” notes Tim Connelly, author of The Agent Orange Book of the Dead and other works.

Winning Hearts & Minds was born out of intense discussions in 1971 initiated by Larry Rottmann, who wanted to publish a collection of writings by Vietnam veterans, and included Basil Paquet, myself and others involved in Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In another room at the VVAW offices in New York City, an intense “rap group” of vets huddled to create an action plan for something that was hard to name, but was later officially called post-traumatic stress disorder.

Unable to find a publisher, we decided to do it ourselves and start with a poetry anthology, followed by other books. We named our publishing collective 1^st Casualty Press, after an old saying: “the first casualty of war is the truth.” Our publishing house was my apartment in Brooklyn, NY. Our funders were fellow vets, family members and friends. Our literary contribution was to describe the war we’d waged, and still raged in us, in our own words. When the war ended, we still had plenty to say, which led to compiling a sequel, Demilitarized Zones.   

Due to the hurricane that upended the New York metro region, a 40^th anniversary celebration of publication of Winning Hearts & Minds was postponed last fall. The new date is February 9. Besides commemorating a book of poetry that tackled nightmares of the Vietnam war, the event is a fund-raiser for Warrior Writers, a writing workshop program for veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Global War on Terror. 

Readers at the WHAM event include Bill Ehrhart, myself, Gerald McCarthy and Peter Mahoney, contributors to Demilitarized Zones, the 1976 sequel; Warrior Writers Nicole Goodwin,  Justin Jacobs, Jennifer Pacanowski and Eli Wright; and veteran poets Allen Hinman, Jim Murphy, Walt Nygard, Dayl Wise and Walter Zimmerman. Tamra Hayden, an extraordinary Celtic singer and musician, will join us.

Many of the veterans of our latest wars are women, who have their own take on the often unspeakable experiences in war and its aftermath that civilians at home have a hard time acknowledging. Here’s one of the poems by an Iraq war combat medic who will be participating in the WHAM happening:

Parade

Jennifer Pacanowski

The funeral procession from Syracuse airport to Ithaca NY was over

   50 miles long,
Dragging his dead body through town after town of people, families and

   children waving flags.
The fallen HERO had finally come home.
I wonder how many children who saw this will someday want to be dead

   HEROS too.
I did not wave a flag that day or any day since my return.
I still can't help but think that could have been me, but it wasn’t.

The hero was hit by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle, struggled to live

   but didn’t make it.
That was not me.

I was missed by IEDs, bullets, mortars, RPGs.
Is it luck?
Was it training?
Was it GOD?
Was it the Devil?
Why did I survive only to come home to a war with an invisible enemy

   in my own skin?

I live in a dream called my life. Where the good things don't seem real

   or sustainable.
I live in the nightmares of the past called Iraq and PTSD that never run

   out of fuel.

Is it better to be a dead hero?
Or a living fucked up, addicted, crazy veteran?

Suicide rates soar, but no one calls them heroes.
So, on this day, I'm going to have my own parade for those brave young

   men and women that killed themselves.
I was not brave enough to follow through and I admire them.

These dead decided they couldn't live with who they became, who they

   are, accept what happened or find healing.
The barriers and obstacles that they weave through, while carrying the

   burden of war, consumes them with despair and failure.

And their actions are branded on the soul as reminders of what they did

   "over there"…
These failures are punishable by death.
To those who were able to escape death in a combat zone like true

   warriors,
But could not thrive in a society that does not understand them or

   help them understand themselves,
I wave my motherfucking flag.

The parades run every 80 minutes, blood drips from the small towns to

   the big cities, the grief consuming millions of miles.

Than I wonder,
WOULD those flag wavers ask....
Why are we there?
Why are we at war?
Why are the soldiers and marines killing themselves at home?
What have we done?
How can we stop this?

Or would they just duck their heads and wave their flags?

For the dead heroes.

The 40^th anniversary celebration of Winning Hearts & Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans is Saturday, February 9, at 7 p.m. at Puffin Cultural Forum, 20 Puffin Way, Teaneck, NJ. For directions, see the Facebook events page: https://www.facebook.com/events/446231955425079/

        

Obama’s Peace

Should President Barack Obama return his Nobel Peace Prize? That’s the sobering question posed in a stunningly serious satire posted on the online humor site TFE.

“Thorbjorn Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, said today that President Obama ‘really ought to consider’ returning his Nobel Peace Prize Medal immediately, including the ‘really nice’ case it came in,” the thought-provoking piece by Tony Hendra, a former National Lampoon editor, began. 

“Jagland, flanked by the other four members of the Committee, said they’d never before asked for the return of a Peace Prize, ‘even from a damnable war-criminal like Kissinger,’ but that the 10% drawdown in US troops in Afghanistan the President announced last week capped a period of ‘non-Peace-Prize-winner-type behavior’ in 2011.  ‘Guantanamo’s still open. There's bombing Libya. There's blowing bin Laden away rather than putting him on trial. Now a few US troops go home, but the US will be occupying Afghanistan until 2014 and beyond. Don’t even get me started on Yemen!’

“The Committee awarded Obama the coveted prize in 2009 after he made a series of speeches in the first months of his presidency, which convinced the Peace Prize Committee that he was: ‘creating a new climate of...multilateral diplomacy...an emphasis on the role of the United Nations...of dialogue and negotiations as instruments for resolving international conflicts...and a vision of world free of nuclear arms.’” 

In a  final twist that cuts knife-edge close to the reality of Obama’s unrelenting lethal actions chasing the ghost of bin Laden around the world, the TFE piece concludes: “The White House had no comment. It later announced an aggressive new covert CIA initiative to identify and apprehend Al Qaeda operatives in Scandinavia.” 

Indeed, what are peaceful folks around the world to make of an American president who gives soaring speeches promoting peaceful actions and secretly issues orders for drone missile attacks on homes and vehicles in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere that may or may not contain people on a White House-approved “kill list”—but which in many cases kill children and other bystanders, according to a report by researchers at Stanford and New York University law schools.

Can you imagine the outrage that would rise across America if some other country sent in drones to blow up targeted enemies strolling amid Times Square crowds, stuck in Los Angeles traffic and hanging out in suburban homes.

“A new report on targeted killing by C.I.A. drones in Pakistan’s tribal area concludes that the strikes have killed more civilians than American officials have acknowledged, alienated Pakistani public opinion and set a dangerous precedent under international law,” The New York Times reported last September.

“The report, by human rights researchers at the Stanford and New York University law schools, urges the United States to ‘conduct a fundamental re-evaluation of current targeted killing practices’ including ‘short- and long-term costs and benefits.’ It also calls on the administration to make public still-secret legal opinions justifying the strikes.”

Needless to say, Obama’s secret drone missile warfare opinions and orders were not addressed in his reelection inaugural speech on Monday. Instead, as American troops continued to kill and die in Afghanistan (and kill themselves in the war zone and at home) at a rate exceeding the carnage during the Bush administration, Obama gave another soaring paean to peace:

“We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.  Our brave men and women in uniform, tempered by the flames of battle, are unmatched in skill and courage.  Our citizens, seared by the memory of those we have lost, know too well the price that is paid for liberty.  The knowledge of their sacrifice will keep us forever vigilant against those who would do us harm.  But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war, who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends, and we must carry those lessons into this time as well.

“We will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law.  We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully - not because we are naïve about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear.  America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe; and we will renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad, for no one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation.  We will support democracy from Asia to Africa; from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom.  And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice - not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes:  tolerance and opportunity; human dignity and justice.” 

That is the vision the Nobel Peace Prize committee honored at the beginning of Obama’s first term in office. Satire aside, that award really ought to be rescinded if Obama continues waging secretive, morally obtuse war operations in his second term.