Max Cleland on Salon

[whometense]

An excerpt from a new book, Patriots Act: Voices of Dissent and the Risk of Speaking Out

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2006/04/03/cleland/index.html

...I find myself today, going on sixty-four, a washed-up, dried-up prune of a military veteran who has been thrown on the scrap heap of time and looking back wistfully and saying, "I wished I'd done more to prevent the current disaster in Iraq that's exactly mocking the first disaster in Vietnam that I was personally a part of."

I go to Walter Reed Hospital now for trauma counseling. For my own self. Because it never ends. I've got post-traumatic stress disorder. Didn't know I had it. Anxiety and fear and all that crap. And it never goes away. But you can submerge it into a higher cause like politics.

So here I am, back at Walter Reed, thirty-seven years later, dealing with the trauma of Vietnam. I never got the counseling back then. But I look down the hall, and it's still 1968. Seeing all these young Iraq War veterans blown up, missing arms and legs and eyes, I just can't stand it. It triggers all of my stuff from Vietnam. And these young men had the same grit and courage that we had going off to war. You go up to 'em, and say, "How ya doing, son?" "Fine, sir!" they answer. But years later, it will take its toll. They just don't know yet.

I'm seeing the full circle of the Vietnam experience. What's happening today is that a certain number of young Marines and Army guys are doomed to get killed and blown up and have missing arms and legs and eyes, and maybe they'll be on the phone twenty to thirty years later talking to some guy writing a book about them. I have seen this movie before. I'm terrified that I'm seeing Vietnam all over again in my lifetime....

[_dynamicdems]

1. My God, that is heartwrenching. I love Max Cleland.

I hope he knows just how many of us really love and admire him. He's not at all a "dried-up prune of a military veteran who has been thrown on the scrap heap of time." He has more heart and more compassion than all of those GOP bastards who maligned him combined.

How sad that he has to see this all over again. How terribly sad that we haven't learned from the past that war is not a game and that it should never be undertaken for political or philosophical reasons. Or as John Kerry said, "Only as a last resort."

[Luftmensch067]

2. Thank you for posting this, Whome!

Everything I've seen about Max Cleland makes me love and admire him more and more. I wouldn't have seen this, if not for you. It must be a total nightmare for these Vietnam vets to watch their worst memories coming to life again.

[beachmom]

3. I read an article about the VA some time back

And it said that not only were they being flooded with PTSD cases from returning Iraq War veterans, but also from Vietnam veterans, who've had all of their bad memories come out from seeing another counter-insurgency war on their TV screens every night. And you know, this didn't have to happen. It wasn't inevitable for Vietnam vets to get sick again. My prescription for them would be to avoid the news and do like Max Cleland and reach out and help their younger brothers.

I wonder if Vietnam nightmares are once again disturbing the sleep of baby boomer vets across the land . . .

[ginnyinWI]

4. so sad that this history has been repeated so soon after Vietnam.

Our leadership has no excuse: Vietnam happened within their lifetimes, and they didn't learn the lessons.

Did anyone see Zinni on Washington Journal this morning? He spoke for an hour and took calls. Says this is Vietnam all over again, in the way it's been mishandled in so many ways--mainly by the civilian leadership. The military brass DID learn lessons from Vietnam, for the most part--it's the civilian leadership who didn't.

[ProSense]

5. Thanks for posting that.

Max Cleland is a great human being. I'm speechless. The story is gut-wrenching: how horrible it must be to watch this play out again, especially with the despicable characters involved.

[whometense]

6. Max is a genuinely tragic figure.

He's so brave and works so hard to stay positive, that it only makes it that much more awful to read how much he's suffered at the hands of these bastards.

The sheer evil of it all. That they skipped out on the war of their youth, failed to learn a single one of its lessons, and then ignorantly repeated every single mistake. It's mindboggling.

[Island Blue]

7. Thank you for posting.

My uncle suffers from PTSD (due to time served in Viet Nam) and I understand him much better now than I did before, due to the words of people like John Kerry, Max Cleland, Del Sandusky and others. (Too bad I think my uncle voted for Bush.) I saw what Viet Nam did to my uncle, and it pains me to think that the same fate awaits some other poor, 18 year-old kid.

[whometense]

8. He's so smart. It was a loss to more than Georgia

when that buffoon Chambliss cheated him out of his job in the senate. I still believe that election was the trial run for the theft of 2004.

There are some amazing quotes in that article. I love this one:

John Kennedy once described himself as an idealist with no illusions. In conflicts outside the boundaries and waters of the United States, you better be a realist. The history of the world teaches us that no foreign power is going to invade some country without tremendous opposition. We ran up against the Oriental mind-set in Vietnam. In the Middle East, they think in thousands of years: "Though it takes a thousand years for revenge, I'll get ya."

Sooner or later, the impact of the politics of unmitigated war in the Middle East will be felt here in America. But it will take time as the impact of these policies is felt in our pocketbook, in the gut, in the minds and hearts of American people. There is a great line by Benjamin Franklin. Coming out of Constitution Hall in Philadelphia, a lady asked, "Dr. Franklin, what kind of government do we have?" And he said, "We have a Republic -- if you can keep it." So this sense of an American experiment is not a given thing.

It does make sense that he endorsed Kerry.

[Island Blue]

10. I would love to sit back and just listen

to a conversation between Kerry and Cleland. They both seem to understand and care about how US actions impact the rest of the world (unlike the current administration*, who couldn't care less).

[fedupinBushcountry]

9. I had 2 brothers

and my husband that came back from Vietnam, and all 3 of them ended up with drinking problems. My husband came back from his first tour and I noticed his drinking more, and then when he came back from his second tour, after his ship had been attacked and 5 guys on board got killed, his drinking went out of control. It took a good 8 years for him to realize what was happening to him.

It got to the point where I put the ultimatum to him either me and the kids or his drinking. Luckily, that shook him up enough and he hasn't had a drink since. I wish I could say the same for my 2 brothers. My oldest brother who was a gunner on a helicopter to this day will not talk about Nam.

You are so right, this fate awaits so many more. Max is right, the Vietnam vets know exactly what these soldiers are going through and it hurts to see it happen all over again.

[whometense]

11. There have been so many terrible

hardships as a result of Vietnam, and there are so many stories that are still untold. Eight years. That's a terrible thing to have to go through, to feel all that stress and worry, to watch what someone you love so much is doing to himself, and to be powerless to change anything. And you know your experience will be repeated over and over again in the generation that's fighting now. All completely avoidable. It's almost too much to comprehend that elected leaders can be so heedless of the repercussions of their decisions. How do they live with it???? I know - no conscience. Makes life a lot easier.

The horrible irony is that all this is so much harder on exactly the kind of people (tough, strong, resolute) who tend to go into the military, because they find it so much harder to talk or accept therapy - or even accept the idea that they might need help.

[Island Blue]

12. My uncle doesn't like to talk about it either.

He served as a grunt in the Marines. He was there in '68, and it took more than 30 years for the VA to get his meds adjusted properly. (He's still not well, but he is doing somewhat better.) I wish I could remember what he was like before he went to war, I was only four years-old at the time though so I don't.

Sometimes I wish I could talk to him about his experiences, but I just don't know how. I'm thankful that leaders like John Kerry continue to fight so hard for veterans benefits. I don't know where my uncle would be today if he hadn't received some type of help.

[fedupinBushcountry]

13. So many can't admit

they have a problem. Of my two brothers one has been married 5 times and the other 3 times. My brother was in Nam from '66-'68, he was also in the Marines. I can still remember him bringing one of his friends home for Thanksgiving, and then when he came home for good we asked about his friend and he just put his head down and told us he died. It was so sad. When you ask him about Iraq he just says it is so sad that more soldiers have to die.

[TayTay]

14. That's part of the reason you keep fighting these people.

And buffoons like Allen and Bush and Cheney and all the other chickenhawks who stand in the blood of others and proclaim that they are tough guys. (Tough guys who skipped out when they had an actual chance to actually serve their country in a time of war and pulled strings to get out of harm's way.) Look at how many Rethugs are chickenhawks, willing to admire and push for war in order as long as they don't have to be anywhere near actual death and combat: http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=list&category=%20NEWS%3B%20Chickenhawks

This is yet another symptom of the Great Lie that these bastards tell. It's why they have to be stopped. They have to be stopped.