|
just showed a portion of a "Welcome Home" event that was held in Branson, MO for Vietnam Vets. It's called Vietnam: Homecoming. If this is a repeat or if you have seen this already, I apologize. I was thinking earlier about the kids that will be coming home eventually from Iraq. Many will be physically broken, most of them mentally fragile if not broken also. HC followed two vets from Nam and they each told a little of what has been going on with them for the last thirty years. Not a good picture at all; alcoholism, multiple marriages, kids who walked on egg shells for fear of upsetting dad, bad dreams, psychiatrists, narcotic meds,the list just goes on and on.
What our government asks of our kids is too much. Back in the early 70's when many of them were coming home, we owned a bar and restaurant at the Jersey Shore. You could immediately tell who was just home. At first they tried to fit in and make up time with their old friends from school, etc. After a while, they would become quiet and just observe. They couldn't possibly mix in with these old friends who had been spared the horrors they had seen and been a part of. Their old friends had gone on to college, gotten good jobs and were living the life the vets were entitled to also. Many of the "old friends" were of the upper middle-class, go figure.
An extra 20,000 troops is an exercise in futility. Sending our children off to become either maimed or killed is an insanity of a different kind. Where is our outrage, why are we allowing this? Because we're not feeling any of the sacrifice; plenty of food, plenty of gas and oil, life goes on daily and if it wasn't for the media, who'd know a war was going on?
The Vietnam vets in tonight's show are now in their 60s and my heart goes out to them. Their lives will never be the way they want it to be, too much damage has been inflicted on them. One of the daughters said that the wives and kids had their own Vietnam, and I believed her.
Even after this nightmare comes to an end this country will be paying dearly through its children for a very long time.
|