Tag Archives: Vietnam War

What Everyone Ought to Know about America’s Vietnam War

By .
20 Replies

 
 
 

The representation of the Vietnam War still dominant in America at the beginning of the twenty-first century is based on a series of fantasies originally constructed from 1954 through the 1970’s and then elaborated and embellished during the 1980s and 1990s, especially under the Reagan (1981-1989) and Bush (1989-1993) administrations. Among these fantasies are the following falsehoods, accepted as true by most Americans—or rather by most Americans other than those who simply prefer not to know anything about the war:

  1. Before the United States became involved, there were two separate nations called South Vietnam and North Vietnam.
  1. South Vietnam was a democracy with an elected government.
  1. South Vietnam was being invaded by North Vietnam, a communist dictatorship.
  1. This invasion was supported by China and the Soviet Union as part of a communist attempt to take over the world.
  1. In response to this invasion, the United States provided economic and military aid to South Vietnam.
  1. Then in 1964 North Vietnam attacked U.S. destroyers in the international waters off the Gulf of Tonkin, and the United States responded with a brief retaliation.
  1. North Vietnam then attacked U.S. advisers in South Vietnam, and the United States responded in 1965 by sending in troops and bombing North Vietnam.
  1. The 1968 Tet offensive by the “Viet Cong” and North Vietnam was really a military victory for the United States, but it was turned into a political defeat by the news media and politicians.
  1. The United States lost the war because we “weren’t allowed to win” and we were fighting with “one hand tied behind our back”; that is, the military was unduly restrained by politicians, the news media, and the antiwar movement.
  1. The United States may have lost the war but it never lost any battles during the war.
  1. The United States didn’t lose the war; the bombing of Hanoi in December 1972 forced North Vietnam to accept Washington’s peace terms.
  1. Before the Vietnam War, the United States had never lost a war.
  1. When American veterans came home from the war, they were routinely spat upon and abused by antiwar activists. Read More»
  1. After the war, North Vietnam secretly kept hundreds or maybe even thousands of American prisoners of war, to be used as slave laborers or hostages or “bargaining chips” or sources of technological information about U.S. aircraft or simply victims to be tortured. Read More»

[So, what’s the truth about America’s Vietnam War?]

—

This article is an excerpt from the book
Vietnam and Other American Fantasies»

Reprinted with permission.

Related Posts:

The story begins with Mrs. Hunt

By .
10 Replies

 

 

The other children called her Mrs. Hunt the cunt, but I had no idea what that word meant. I had just graduated from the 4th Grade class of an unknown American poet named Mr. Palefsky.

He liked trees and New Jersey history. I still carry a bit of his poetry, a line about the weeping willow, on the tip of my memory: “of all the things a tree could do the willow chose to cry.”

I think about that line a lot. It turns in my mind like a mantra. It’s almost a part of me now.

I think I remembered it so completely, so deeply, because at that time in my life, when Mr. Palefsky read it to me, I was crying a lot. And the idea that a tree chose that for its life, maybe that made me feel better about my own life. I don’t know.

The deeper point is this: Mr. Palefsky fed me poetry for an entire school year. Even better, he made it into a contest of memory—awarded a prize for each poem memorized. I had never won anything in my life.

 

I think it’s important at this point to tell you a bit about the young Charles Bivona—Little Charlie, as my family called him.

My father, of course, was Big Charlie—a stocky 5’8” carpenter with a barrel chest and gorilla shoulders. He had survived one of the worst battles of  the entire Vietnam  War [circa '67] and had the shrapnel in his leg , and the PTSD, to prove it.

The 38 year old PhD student, Charles Bivona, discovered this fact about his father a few months ago. But when I was Little Charlie, I had no idea what was wrong with my dad. I was just terrified of his temper and his violence.

And since living in fear is intolerable for anyone, I slowly trained myself to hate my father instead. It’s how I survived my childhood. Eventually, in my teens and into my 20s, I would rebel against everything that even resembled the man behind the sperm. I would almost destroy myself striving to not be him.

But at this point  in the story—the beginning—Little Charlie just made himself invisible. The way to avoid dad’s beatings, I quickly learned, was to not attract attention. So, I became a shy and quiet loner. I was the chubby kid with the thick Coke-Bottle glasses — Four-Eyes. And I sucked at sports because my father had always told me I was too fat to run.

But that’s another chapter. And like I said, the story begins with Mrs. Hunt.

—

Continue Exploring
» Sang Lee is dead. »

—

Or
Check Out

Poetry & Poetics w/ Charles Bivona
CLICK ON
#CBAnthology
—

OR

You May Need a Mental Health Break
Please Remember To

#BlogParty!

» ENTER HERE «

 

» Chapter Two «

—

» PREFACE «

Related Posts:

Waking Up is Painful

By .
16 Replies

 

 

Waking up is painful—
she said with her hand

on my forehead—rocking
to the rhythm of  my sobbing:

a heave from my pelvis raking my
throat—gravel like fossilized vomit.

This life has never felt warm,
felt safe to you. She, kneeling beside,

holding me, whispered:
poor battered child of war.

 

—

Continue Exploring
» Sang Lee is dead. »

—

Or
Check Out

Poetry & Poetics w/ Charles Bivona
CLICK ON
#CBAnthology
—

OR

You May Need a Mental Health Break
Please Remember To

#BlogParty!

» ENTER HERE «

 

 

Related Posts:

The Rain, My Father, and the Vietnam War: a narrative of fragments

By .
6 Replies

__________

The rain makes me think of my father.

He hated the rain.  He said it brought him back to the jungle—especially a summer rain.  One sticky day by his pool, a thunderclap sounded, a downpour just started.  Muggy days, a sudden rain, startling thunderous booms—my father’s face was twitching.  He had known this place before.

We share associations—loud noises: panic, sticky weather: panic.  All my worst childhood horrors were acted out in shorts.  My father returned to the jungle—yearly—from June until September. I hate the summer.  My father trained me well. We share the same eyes. I saw the panic in his.  He noticed the sadness in mine.

____

We were sitting in the cafeteria of the VA hospital.  My father needed psychiatric care.  He suffered from PTSD.  I insisted on calling it shell shock.  He suffered from survivals guilt, too.  I didn’t understand that.  He couldn’t explain.  I hated being there.

I was trying to be a son.  I desperately wanted my father. He said he heard the helicopters on the horizon.  He cried whenever we were there.  I went with him every week.  We got lunch between group therapy sessions.  He was frazzled.  Disabled veterans swarmed from everywhere — a man with missing hands, another without legs, and one whose face was bleached white by some horrible chemical warfare.

I hated coming here.

My father said I should never support a war.  I could never support this carnage, I spouted out proudly with a mouthful of liberal cob salad.  Then the bleach faced man walked in. He looked like a pure vampire with perfect white skin, clumpy white hair, no lips, no eyelids. I stared.  I couldn’t help it.  It was something from a movie suddenly made real.  When he caught me, when our eyes locked, the look in his whole eye-balled stare was: Oh God I’m so sorry.  I didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t mean to stare.  I know I’m a freak. No, please, I didn’t mean to make you…  please forgive me. The bleached man walked out.  I cried in my hands.  My father consoled me. He said I should never support war. I haven’t.

I can’t write about my father.  I don’t know why.  It’s raining.  The rain makes me think about him.  And I can’t seem to put him in words.  I think I miss him.  I think I miss what we could have had if only he were healthy.  I think I miss what was stolen from me by the Vietnam War.  I think I miss what we would have had if proper treatment was more readily available—if the U.S. Army had cared. But I don’t want to get political.  I really don’t care.

I just remembered that my father hated the rain.  He clawed at his chest and wiped the sweat from his brow.  It was August and it was raining.  It reminded him of the jungle.  That’s what he said.  He said it to me.  He whispered it in my ear.  He kept it between us. It was our little secret. Only people like us understand.

______________

Related Posts: