One of our rhetorical tics, so common and so universal as to be unremarkable, is the shared assertion by liberals and conservatives alike that our soldiers are our heroes. We may disagree about foreign policy, but soldiers are the bravest and the greatest. That mainstream politicians should make this claim – Obama and Bush, McCain and Kerry – should provoke little surprise, but it flourishes as a trope among the anti-war left as well. Political strategies reverberate through time as we refight our last discursive war.

In the heated years of the War in Vietnam there was a palpable anger by opponents of that war that was directed against members of the military who bombed the killing fields of Cambodia, Hanoi, and Hue. While accounts of soldiers being spat upon were more apocryphal than real, used by pro-war forces to attack their opponents. According to sociologist Jerry Lembcke in his book The Spitting Image the story was an urban legend, but it is true that many who opposed the war considered soldiers to be oppressors, or in the extreme, murderers. This was a symbolic battle in which the anti-war forces were routed, and such language was used to delegitimize principled opposition to the war and to separate the young college marchers from the working class soldiers who were doing the bidding of presidents and generals. In the time of a national draft, college students were excused from service, making the class divide evident. (For the record, I admit to cowardice, fearing snipers, fragging, and reveille. I was a chicken dove).

After the war, war critics learned a lesson. No longer would the men with guns be held responsible for the bullets. All blame was to be placed upon government and none on the soldiers, even though the draft had been abolished, and the military became all-volunteer (and the working class and minority population continued to increase in the ranks).

By the time that American adventures in the Gulf and in Afghanistan became part of our political taken-for-granted, so did the rhetoric of soldier-as-hero. Perhaps these rhetorical choices were strategic, but they also served to give our military a moral pass.

When Barack Obama was a candidate he assured voters that he would conclude this national nightmare. Yes, politics involves bluster and blarney, but bringing the troops home in an orderly process seemed a firm commitment, a project for his first term. I trusted that this hope and change was not merely a discursive sop to those who found long-term and bloody American intervention intolerable. Here was a war that seemed hopeless in year one and now in year eleven it seems no more hopeful. To be sure it is a low-grade debacle, but a debacle none-the-less. If, as some have suggested, we invaded Afghanistan to put the fear of God into the hearts of Pakistanis, the strategy has been charmingly ineffective. It seems abundantly clear that our choice is to determine when we will declare the war lost, and when Americans and Afghans will no longer die at each others hands.

Wars cannot be conducted without the connivance of soldiers. Soldiers are the pawns that permit State policy. I recognize that in parlous economic times there are many strategic reasons for desiring the benefits of a military life. And spittle is not political philosophy. But choice is always tethered to responsibility. Members of the military are accepting and even benefiting from a misguided and destructive policy. The nation of Afghanistan deserves self-determination free from our boots on the ground. And the absence of complaint among the all-volunteer military underlines the complicity of our soldiers.

So I do reject the choices of the members of the military whose presence and obedience makes possible the fantasias of foreign policy strategists. They have moral responsibility for their decisions. But the responsibility is not theirs alone, but ours. That we have been unable, unwilling, or unconcerned to stop an unending war against a nation that did not attack us is a mark of shame. It reveals the American public as timid and craven.

Are soldiers responsible for their actions? Surely. Should soldiers be hated? Not until the rest of us are willing to hold a mirror to our own acquiescence in a system that reveals in our political priorities that War and Peace matters far less than Standard and Poors.

On May 6^th, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF) announced the names of five American servicemen that were being inscribed on the black granite walls of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (The Wall), and will be read for the first time on this Memorial Day, at 1 p.m. In addition, the designations of eight names are being changed from missing in action, signified by a cross, to confirmed dead, symbolized by a diamond. The criteria and decisions for being included on The Wall are set by the Department of Defense. With the additions, the total number of names inscribed (killed or remaining missing in action) is 58,272.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund was established in 1979 by a group of veterans led by Jan Scruggs, and, over the years, has been “dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D. C., promoting healing and educating about the impact of the Vietnam War.” In July 1980, President Jimmy Carter authorized the Fund to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on a site near the Lincoln Memorial in Constitution Gardens. The Fund explains that the resulting monument “was built to honor all who served with the U. S. armed forces during the Vietnam War. It has become known as an international symbol of healing and is the most-visited memorial on the National Mall.”

The Memorial consists of more than the well known Wall that was designed by Maya Ying Lin. The other sites for remembrance are the Flagpole that was installed in 1983 around which the emblems of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard are displayed; the Three Servicemen Statue, designed by Frederick Hart and dedicated in 1984; the Vietnam Women’s Memorial designed by Glenna Goodacre and dedicated in 1993; and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commemorative Plaque, also called the “In Memory Plaque, ” dedicated in 2004 to honor veterans who died after the war as a direct result of injuries which were incurred in Vietnam, but do not qualify for inclusion on The Wall. An education center is being planned.

The names of American military casualties of the Vietnam War are the core element of the Memorial. The initiators wanted to insure that those who were sacrificed would not be forgotten. Inscribed in the black granite, the names are a powerful symbolic expression, which brings many visitors to tears. Among the current 58,272 engraved names are the ones of those designated as missing. Not included are veterans who were casualties of Agent Orange, an herbicide considered carcinogenic by many, the victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder related suicides and the fatalities among non U. S. military personnel. The memorial also leaves unnamed millions of Vietnamese military and civilian casualties inflicted by all sides during the war. Statistics on Vietnamese casualties are spotty at best, in part because North Vietnam wanted to conceal the hardships it was enduring, and in part because the narratives that have been told in the United States have been focused on Americans, not the Vietnamese.

© 2003 Seth Rossman | Wikimedia Commons

Notwithstanding this lack of inclusiveness, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial may be considered a gateway and turning point in Vietnam War meaning and memory making. With the creation of the Memorial, a memory block was eliminated, and an outpouring of remembrances and representations ensued.  The discussions that led up to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the approval process, the building of the memorial, and the visitations to the memorial helped legitimize more open public discussions about and representations of the war, providing a stimulus for personal, interpersonal, collected and collective memories about the Vietnam War. A proliferation of Vietnam War contributions appeared in the media, popular culture, art and academic works.

The project to build a memorial came to fruition through a bottom up approach to civic action. It emerged from kitchen table politics, an example of the “politics of small things” as Goldfarb puts it. While the design elements of the Memorial have been controversial over the years, they have been implemented to accommodate competing memories associated with the Vietnam War and the need to heal relative to continuing divisions. Associational activities inspired by individual contributors with a vision yielded the creation of the memorial, revealing many competing memories associated with it. Approving, funding, creating, building, opening, maintaining, commemorating, and facilitating visiting and accessing the Memorial helped open the creative flows of Vietnam War representations that followed, and influenced the reception of them.

Small things matter relative to the establishment of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial including: the personal initiatives of Jan C. Scruggs, president and founder of the VVMF, to establish the Memorial; the leadership of Diane Carlson Evans to create the Vietnam Women’s Memorial; and the thousands upon thousands of personal actions of individuals who have left behind objects at The Wall which have been preserved by the National Parks Service.

“When people freely meet and talk to each other as equals, reveal their differences, display their distinctions, and develop a capacity to act together, they create power,” Goldfarb maintains about the politics of small things. In this instance, the power developed into associational efforts to help shape memories of the Vietnam War and heal a nation.