Vietnam Veterans: Have We Forgotten?

We went to a parade this past Sunday and it was nice, but it brought back memories of a war that many people now seem to either forget or just wish to ignore. That was the Vietnam War. Just in the recent week, CBS was showing the “Amazing Race” and their voyage through Vietnam, but they forgot about the Vietnam War and used the backdrop of the downed B-52 bomber, where 4 men lost their lives. Then to add insult, they showed the players singing with the Communists a song devoted to the Communists of Vietnam! We have to wonder why CBS did this. But getting back to the parade, we noticed a Vietnam veteran wearing a hat with that right across the front. He was standing there, but no one cared about him. They paid a lot of attention to a man wearing an army uniform.

As the parade went by the Soldier with the uniform got kisses from the ladies marching in the parade while the Vietnam veteran who was sitting in a scooter got nothing. It was kind of sad but the veteran of the Vietnam era did not jump up and lay claim to try and steal the Soldier’s glory. He just sat in his scooter and watched and caught the stuff thrown his way every once in a while. At this point we as a nation must sit back and consider just what may have been going through the Vietnam veteran’s head as he watched that display of love and honor towards the soldier dressed in his uniform. Does the Vietnam veteran have any of those memories from when he wore the uniform?

We can remember ourselves the times of Vietnam when a soldier moving through almost any airport was not greeted with love nor honor. Most were either spat upon, insulted, or called baby killers. The veterans of the Vietnam era are like a lost group. They are the forgotten veterans, they hold onto their terrible times of their service during that Vietnam War with a slight insult from the very people that they had believed they were protecting from the Communists and Socialists that our nation now almost glorifies by placing them into our Congress as representatives of the people while they all entertain the very ideas that killed a lot of the Vietnam veterans!

Has our nation gone this far, to ignore the veterans of other wars, especially the Vietnam War where young men, just turning 18 and in some cases 17, went into the battlefields and rice paddies of Vietnam never to return? From what we witnessed at the parade Sunday, they are a forgotten group. Most do not care, even though the pain of the neglect seems to be growing, and it almost seems like they have been thrown aside for those now fighting for nearly the same objective they did. Most Vietnam veterans will not come forward and state that it does hurt a lot to see the veterans of today being honored and welcomed as they are. As a matter of fact they are proud to see this, it makes them feel good to see that they had gone off to a foreign shore or joined the service to fight for their nation. What bothers the Vietnam veteran the most is the sense of loss due to the way they were treated when they served the same nation.

Back in the late 1960′s and early 1970′s the population was a different bunch. We had Hanoi Fonda going to North Vietnam and betraying United States prisoners of war; “Hanoi Jane,” as many called her after her visit. Jane Fonda was given a note to give to a representative of the United States by several prisoners as they shook her hand. They had the thought that Jane Fonda would give the notes to their loved ones and others. Jane Fonda betrayed them big time, she handed the notes to the North Vietnamese army and they in turn beat those that wrote the notes killing a few of them. Many veterans from the Vietnam War, upon returning home, were not greeted as the veterans of today’s wars. No sir. They were greeted by angry young people who had been taught by the very people they had fought in Vietnam that the veterans were bad and had no place in the very society they were now coming back to.

The Vietnam veterans are the same type of veterans as those today. The major difference of their time and today is the respect shown to today’s veteran compared to the way the Vietnam veterans were treated when they came back. Most Vietnam veterans we know today would drop everything to defend their rights, their country, and their homes. Nearly every Vietnam veteran is greatly insulted by the actions of the people in Washington, D.C. with the way they go about trying to disarm the veterans just because they are veterans!

As the parade moved on a few people noticed the Vietnam veteran and tossed him what they had. He sat in his scooter that he was given due to injuries he suffered during his service to his country, but the sting of the way he was treated and the way the veterans are treated today seem to simmer just under the surface of his smiling face. The time he proudly wore his uniform just to be spat upon, or cursed just for wearing the uniform, that is a pain that is very hard for him to contain with just a smile, but he does because if he were called to defend his nation again he would do it regardless of his pain, injuries and problems. You see, that Vietnam veteran is I and I remember the days of my time where if I walked the streets of New York, I had to wear civilian clothes or be ridiculed for my service. I see the same type of people in today’s halls of Congress. Their names are well known. They are the enemy we fought against in Vietnam, but now they are in Washington, D.C. making laws that are turning this nation into a nation of Socialists instead of free United States Citizens! They have even been so very bold as to make it known widely that they are the very Socialists the Vietnam veteran fought in Vietnam and now face at home!

Yes, the names are well known; names like, Xavier Becerra, John Conyers, Barney Frank, Alan Grayson, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Dennis Kucinich, Henry Waxman, Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, and the list made public, showing some 70 people that are proud members of the Socialist Democratic Party were also some of the very people spitting on, yelling at, and insulting the Vietnam veterans as they came home fighting a war they believed was right to throw Communism back into the ice ages, but now those very type of people that the Vietnam veteran fought against are sitting in the great halls of Congress, writing laws that make no sense and laws that destroy what the veterans of all times fought for, FREEDOM!