“Damn it,” Travellers continued, “that argument, that image, hurts black pride more than it enhances it. It pushes people who believe the racist-war theory into a victim-sucker self-image. Is that you, Ty? Calvin? Rodney? You want to live that stereotype? Maybe you want that to be your story because it excuses you from overcoming the very real racism we are up against.
“Black soldiers in Viet Nam, in general, like white soldiers, did an outstanding job of soldiering. It was the first war in which the armed forces were truly integrated, and the physical closeness and interdependency of blacks and whites created intense and meaningful friendships. This had never before happened in America on such a massive scale. That the media missed that story and instead chose to report racist fraggings says to me those reporters and editors were more interested in the sensational than the truth, no matter the consequences. Perhaps the vested interest in racism is not held by the capitalists but by the journalists.
“Consequences!” Travellers balled both his fists, placed them on his thighs, leaned forward in the witness chair. “The consequences of the race-war story are a new and deeper polarization between races in America. That was unnecessary. It is tragic.
“U.S. policy wasn’t antiblack. There were other social and cultural phenomena working in America in the sixties that created the early bias and the lopsided results. For example, the percent of blacks in The Old South was higher than in the rest of the country, and The South was the most promilitary, or the most patriotic, region in the U.S. That led to higher enlistment rates. The percent of southerners killed is significantly higher than troops from other regions. But southern blacks and southern whites were killed at rates proportionate to their regional demographics.
“I examined serious incident reports, too. Fraggings, mostly. I don’t know how pervasive fraggings were, but the black director of the army’s Office of Equal Opportunity reported that in Viet Nam 1970 was the worst year. That year two hundred GIs were wounded or murdered by fellow troops in racial incidents; two hundred out of 500,000 in twelve months, including rotations. It is significant, but keep it in perspective. That’s one in every twenty-five hundred. And it can be argued that the racial tension that led to many of those incidents was stirred up by inaccurate and misleading media reports. That’s their vested interest again.
“I strongly believe that the separation of white and black America today, and the resurgence of hate groups, is directly tied to the misinformation aired by the mass media about blacks and whites in Viet Nam. I also believe that the decline, economically and socially, of the three-quarters of all African-Americans who did not advance under the Civil Rights laws, is a direct ramification of this misinformation, which robs black vets and the black community of their pride, and fills them with additional and unnecessary resentment at government and at whites in general.
“What would have happened had the media focused on interracial harmony, interracial cooperation, interracial camaraderie that existed in Nam? Let me project a different scenario. What if the media had told a different, and in reality a more accurate, story? What would have been the ramifications to the present?”
“Objection,” Sherrick spoke up. “Conjecture.”
“Overruled,” Wapinski countered. “He’s only asked the question, not answered it.”
“It’s still leading,” Sherrick said.
“Screw it,” Travellers snapped. “These guys don’t want to hear this stuff. It interrupts their self-image.”
The Last Session—5 November 1981—All week the vets had bickered, aided, cajoled or snubbed each other. The weather turned colder. High Meadow lay shrouded in a thick mist. Inside the barn Vu Van Hieu took the witness stand. He was neither prosecution nor defense witness.
“I will just say some things and you use how you like,” Hieu began. He then related his experiences after the fall of Saigon, told of the imprisonments, tortures and killings he’d seen, of the extrapolation of thousands of refugee reports into the conclusion that a bloodbath—70,000 killed in the first ninety days—had indeed occurred. “Maybe the media,” Hieu said, “say little about this because we are not Americans. Or maybe because that would shame them because they say earlier no bloodbath will happen.
“Viet Namese people do the same. We too were blind. Before we lost our country many of my friends say we live under the yoke of American imperialism. My countrymen were free to say that. Even members of my family called for us to support this communist five-point plan or that communist ten-point plan.
“During the American time my countrymen stick their noses into every ministry and every prison in South Viet Nam and they raise hell about corruption and moral turpitude. They show the world tiger cages. They say their own families are cruel and inhuman. They expose this general for bribery, that one for having a fifteen-year-old mistress. They cheer when an American flag is burned, and when they see pictures of Americans ripping their draft cards, and when the pictures are of someone waving a communist flag on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
“On 30 April we were liberated and we were no longer blind. Even for NLF leaders like Duong Quynh Hoa and Truong Nhu Tang, and opposition journalists like Ngo Cong Duc and Ly Chanh Trung, liberation too gives the miracle of sight. Now they see with their own eyes how all Viet Namese live happily, united in peace and freedom. We are so happy now that maybe two million enemies of the state are locked away in new economic zones, that maybe one million risk escape in tiny boats, maybe half happy to end up as fish food. Since liberation no tiger cages. Since liberation no opposition. Since liberation no prostitutes, no marijuana, no terrorists.
“Since liberation tiger camps! Since liberation opposition stamped into the earth by the PAVN which has more than five million soldiers to control the people. Since liberation twelve Buddhist monks protest Hanoi’s repression by self-immolation. Why are there no pictures in the world press? Why are there no pictures, is because there are no photographers in Viet Nam except those approved by the state? Since liberation prostitutes can only work for party members, dope only sold by government cadre, terrorism only run by the state.
“Yes, now I see. There was much disinformation, and I was blind, but now I can see. If you still suffer disinformation, maybe it covers just how wrong so many were about the war. They say liberation and oppression just happen or are inevitable and not a communist long-term plan. Americans don’t want to believe the communists had their plan and worked their plan and not just in the South but in Laos and Cambodia, too. Americans don’t want to believe there was preconceived malice. The communists have a plan for America, too. To me this is very frightening. They hide from us their intent. Then Americans say communists have no plan. Communists do not enslave Viet Nam. If you gain your sight you too must see, must believe the communists have a plan—for your country, too.”
After the break Tony Pisano delivered the prosecution’s closing argument. He was at a loss as to where to begin, what to include. Wapinski had warned both sides they needed to reserve time for the jury to deliberate and report its verdict.
“Who are we?” Tony looked at the jurors, then the audience. “We are the stories of ourselves. We are the ethos and the mythos. We are our history and our interpretation and selective recollection of that history. This shapes us. This tells us who we are, what our beliefs and ideals are, what our behavior must be to be consistent with that self-image. Upon story one can forecast the future.
“The communists, too, have a story. They were and are determined to remake all Southeast Asia in their own antidemocratic image—no matter the cost, no matter the lives lost, no matter the misery produced. Their determination lured us, albeit as their opposition, into their story. We clashed militarily. We clashed culturally, not so much American versus Viet Namese but free democratic idealism versus rigid Asian communist tyranny. Today’s true story is the story of the clash of these stories.
“We have examined both stories in regard to the war. We have seen how and by whom the comb
ined story was told, where it was accurate, where skewed from reality. We have seen the impact of story on America. We’ve felt the impact. Hell, we are the impact!
“Because of this, we have indicted the media on the charges of collusion, misrepresentation, conspiracy, malicious skewing, and incompetence.
“Remember back to a time when we were young, when we were enthusiastic. Didn’t we believe in our decency? We have always been decent men. In having gone, in having served, we affirmed our ideals, our belief in the value of every human life, in the value of freedom, democracy, self-rule and self-empowerment. Many of us made this choice in the face of ‘anti-war-ism’ and with the full knowledge that we may be wounded or killed. But we went, fought. We upheld an ethical obligation to human rights, and the ethical principles of freedom and democratic aspirations which we believed were the inalienable rights of all humans.
“For this we have been assaulted because the mistelling of our story is an assault upon us. For a decent person to be accused of deplorable acts is devastating. Yet the story told of our involvement has been the story of atrocities, of drug abuse, of racism, of dispirited and incompetent fighting, of cowering at night and bullying by day—all for an immoral cause.
“The media and the Left have usurped the moral high ground, and have held it tenaciously for thirteen years. Yet it is a lie. In the early sixties, some of America’s most influential journalists, feeling betrayed by LBJ, lost sight of the cause of freedom. Their personal meaning was debased. They projected their own loss of meaning as if it were universal. That is the origin of many of the myths we’ve exposed. That is the reason for the denial of victories and valor. That is why victories, valor and altruism have been lost in the national myth-making process.
“Every one of you here knows of the problems of evil and the possibilities of virtue. The media set out to convince the world of the destiny, the inevitability, the fate of Viet Nam. Essentially they labeled the American effort evil, the communist effort virtuous. The universe is not the Great Machine of the Mechanistic Determinists of centuries past. Predetermination, fatalism, manifest destiny, the lack of free will, and the inability to impact situations for the good are lies that soothe the complicity of the liar.
“We have shown how, by omission, by biased selection, and by ethnocentric focus—AND because of greed as defined by Nielsen ratings—the media-created myth destroyed the American sense of duty that characterized the great bulk of our fighting men in Viet Nam. We have shown that the media’s concentration on American shortcomings and failures was, beyond reasonable doubt, a conspiracy; that this conspiracy has altered the American myth and thusly the American character in negative ways. The tragedy here is that into the void has seeped skepticism, intolerance, and hatred. We tell ourselves we are no good. We are evil. We are sick. We kill infants and civilians. And we accept and assimilate those characteristics as part of our national character. We fret about what we’ve become, and the scapegoat for that fretting is the American veteran!
“Once idealized as a melting-pot of opportunity, American society has become a victim of altered self-perception, has been purposefully polarized by the media to its ultimate gain in both wealth and power.
“We have shown that ‘antiwar’ was not antiwar; that ‘conscientious objection’ was not conscientious; that ‘idealists’ without action or understanding hold no ideals; that the ‘moral high ground’ of the media is a veneer hiding a soulless and greed-motivated multibillion-dollar industry—a mind junkie that few can resist.”
Bobby interrupted. “One minute left, Tony. Speed it up.”
“Oooo. Ah ... The results of the misinformation we’ve come to believe as our story is that we no longer believe in freedom—that will be the downfall of America. Our cause is dead. What is left is money. What is left is, ‘What’s in our national interest.’ The liberty of others is not our concern. We no longer believe in sacrificing to maintain government of the people, by the people, for the people. Our only belief is in economic determinism, the power of money. This is penultimate. It will shatter and we will fall.
“This is not to say we did not make mistakes over there. Nor that some of the lessons we’ve learned aren’t valid. It is to say that the one paramount thing America has grasped from our involvement—call it the Viet Nam Syndrome—is that we can’t, won’t and shouldn’t fight for freedom, for others or for ourselves. I maintain, the abuse of power in the pursuit of freedom does not justify the abandonment of that pursuit. Nor does the abuse of freedom justify the elimination of freedom. Choosing to not defend freedom, integrity and human rights leads to abuses, atrocities and holocausts far worse than war. In war there remains an element of hope; under tyranny, hope is destroyed.
“The media’s role and tactics have been to hold out to us images of suffering and need, then once action has been taken to depict pitfalls and failures, to criticize via negative dialectics that attack the solutions of the problem solvers without offering alternatives. In this way the critic becomes immune to criticism, the media’s projection of its own moral mountain fortress is secure. For the nonmedia what is left is hopelessness. And the hopeless, the disempowered, are easy to control.”
“Time,” Bobby said.
“Just one more point,” Tony pleaded.
“We’re running late,” Bobby answered.
“Knowing what really happened there,” Tony plunged on, “what we did and didn’t do, who we fought and what they did and didn’t do; knowing who we are; knowing that we contributed to this country and the world; it insulates you from all those subtle attacks and all those insidious references and then no one can ever again make you into a second-class citizen. Thank you.”
Tony shuffled to the prosecutor’s table. His head was down. The barn was generally quiet. Tony felt terrible, felt as though he’d failed miserably.
Gary Sherrick rose. This was the moment many vets had anticipated, some with loathing as if they were in an NDP awaiting an enemy assault, some with glee as if payback time had arrived.
Sherrick paced his words. “Walter Cronkite is an evil man.” Sherrick chuckled. He raised his eyes to the rafters. “Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Harry Reasoner—evil, evil, evil.” Sherrick crossed his arms, let his gaze descend to the men in the loft. “Who amongst you,” his voice rose, his head came down, he spun, locked the jurors in his stare, “believes this?! Who here believes NBC, CBS, or ABC had men in Hanoi who met with the communist information minister and reported his propaganda as the sole truth? Or even the sole story?! Were there reports of communist programs? Of North Viet Namese policies? Of Hanoi’s perspectives? Of NLF plans?” Sherrick paused. Then he barked out, “Certainly! The prosecution acts as if the U.S. media should be the propaganda ministry of the U.S. government. Is that what you want?! Is that who you want to control your story? Are you willing to give the government your mind?!”
Again Sherrick paused, stood still. Then he stepped toward the jury, and just above a whisper said, “Gentlemen, think what you are doing here. Collusion with the enemy. We have seen evidence that the media reported Hanoi’s perspectives but we have seen no evidence, let me repeat that, no evidence, of collusion. Not once did the prosecution even suggest that network officials or film directors met behind closed doors with communist leaders to plot against America’s role in Viet Nam. One American actress sitting on an antiaircraft gun is no more collusion than one actor coming down from his mount with his clay tablets and declaring our cause just.
“These incidents are but single grapes in entire bunches; but one sheet of glass amid an entire visible collector array. What of films; what of academia? The prosecution has equated academia with Noam Chomsky and D. Gareth Porter. These are but two men of an entire group. Whether they are right or wrong you cannot convict academia of conspiracy on the expressions of a few individuals who may hold views which oppose your own. Do these men not have every right to their opinions, every right to express those opinions?
“On mis
representation leading to polarization, particularly racial polarization, the prosecution has acted as if Africans were not brought to America in chains to slave in fields for whites—as if the cause for polarization is not deeper than the prosecution’s own temporocentric perspectives; as if, had the racially motivated fraggings not been reported, three hundred years of repression would have been forgiven and forgotten. Please, tell me ... No, tell yourselves, who is misrepresenting The American Story.
“We have been told that there existed a media conspiracy against the government, that this conspiracy caused the debasement of the cause, the loss of hope and meaning, and the ascendance of brain-dead politicians and slick willies. The defense has consistently demonstrated that the media do not, did not, and have not ever spoken in one thematic voice—which would be necessary for conspiracy. We have also examined alternative explanations for the debasement of the cause, and these include the perspective that the cause was indeed debased from its inception. That the administrations may be the stimulus behind the loss of hope and meaning is more plausible to me than laying this charge at the doors of this information branch which is so vast not all the condos in Pittsburgh have enough doors ... well, you get the picture.
“What of malicious skewing? We have seen evidence of misinformation, this is true. And we have seen evidence of skewing and of ethnocentric reportage. The defense does not deny this. But this is not the charge. The charge is malicious skewing resulting in damage to democratic aspirations.” Sherrick snickered. “Perhaps we could rewrite the story and title it ‘The Malice of Walter Cronkite.’ Would that please the prosecution? Humph! Is there malice in attempting to stop bloodshed? Is there malice in bringing into our living rooms proof positive of the failures of our own government policies? NO! This is not malice. This is the identical idealism of which Tony spoke. And if the democratic aspirations of some Southeast Asians were damaged, well, as Hieu said, most of his countrymen were blind to democratic aspirations—”
Carry Me Home Page 87
