When Billy Joe Bob Comes Marching Home Again.

It was a very good year when I was 17.  That was in 1967 and the Viet Nam War was going full scale.  LBJ was lying his ass off in order to escalate the war in an effort to win.  He was advised that fighting a guerilla war in SE Asia was liking wading into a pool of Great White Sharks with your jugular vein cut.  He wouldn’t listen.  We wanted to further the aim of “democracy” in SE Asia and help to free the world.  We were afraid of the “domino effect” of losing Viet Nam, and then Thailand, then Cambodia…and so on.  We lost them anyway…or did we?  I just bought a shirt from Wal-Mart last week that was made in Viet Nam.  Damn good quality too.  I thought about it when I put it on, and wondered how much American blood went into that shirt.  I took it back and exchanged it for one made in India.  Far as I can remember, we haven’t had any American boy’s die over there yet.

I almost had to go to Nam, but my number never came up.  I don’t know why.  If it had, I would have gone.  I couldn’t have shamed my Dad and my family by being a coward or a shirker.  I was against the war then…but never one of the ones that went out in the streets and protested, or marched on Washington.  I wrote letters to Congressmen, Senators and the President.  I got no answers from any of them.  Today, maybe you would at least get a form letter.  After all most of them are better financed today, thanks to all the lobbyists.  I felt sorry back then for all the Billy Joe Bob’s that were coming back to Georgia from Nam.  They didn’t get the respect they so richly deserved.  They were pawns in an unpopular war, and were just doing their duty.  There wasn’t a thing that any of them could have done individually to change anything.  Yet, they were derided and disrespected.  It was a mistake for people to have blamed them for what the Government was screwing up.

One of these days, we are going to have some more boys coming home from a war that is becoming increasingly unpopular.  I wish nobody’s kid had to go over to the sands of Ninevah and sweat it out every day, riding up and down the road looking for trouble and often finding it in the form of an IUD somewhere.  I could never see the logic in going there, and still can’t.  That’s the way I try to look at things, logically.  I kept thinking “The US has NEVER attacked another country unprovoked, they won’t do this!”  I guess that’s what Saddam thought too.

Oh man, is thing EVER complicated now.  It would take a book ( and by the way some politician or analyst comes out with one about every other week now, explaining THEIR point of view on things, what they would have done, or could still do) to even begin to explain how complicated extricating ourselves from this mess is going to be.  I am really not sure it can be done.  God knows I wish I had an answer, I would certainly share it with everyone.

I guess it’s best on my part to leave that alone.  I have my own feelings on this thing, and no matter what you say bout near 50% the people are going to think you are wrong and 50% are going to think you’re right.