Why Were Vietnam War Vets Treated Poorly When They Returned?

There are those who are responsible for perpetuating the Vietnam Veteran stereotype in which they paint all of us who served with a very broad brush. Almost ALL of us Vietnam veterans came back with sound minds to an ungrateful country and quietly resumed our lives without incident or fanfare. The promised government jobs that were mandated into law for returning Vietnam veterans never materialized as the hiring managers were all non-veterans who got their own non-veteran buddies into those jobs. There are still many who are of the same ilk as traitor Hanoi Jane Fonda who gave aid and comfort to the enemy while our POWS were (and are) still in captivity. Very few returning Vietnam veterans had problems-the stereotype of mental illness and instability that they claim that Vietnam veterans possess that many misguided people claim is totally false.
There are those who have swallowed the false history-standard loss of Vietnam lies hook line and sinker. Americans and South Vietnamese prevailed in every battle-bar none. In fact, TET 1968 was a decisive victory for the South Vietnamese and American forces-the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces were decimated. Of course, the American mainstream media claimed it was a victory for the communists. North Vietnamese General Giap credited the American mainstream media with giving them new resolve.
As to the so-called “anti-war protesters”, they only wanted one thing–to save their own skins–nothing more. In fact, when the draft ended, so did the protests. Even present-day “uber-patriot” Ted Nugent got in on the act, defecating and urinating on himself and not washing for a month before appearing before the draft board–he was sent home. He stated that Vietnam “was not his war”…
The American Vietnam war was not a civil-war but was an INVASION by the communist North Vietnamese, who wanted control of the whole country. The INVASION was allowed to continue when American troops left and South Vietnamese troops were not resupplied.
Those who have watched the Ken Burns’ schlockumentary on Vietnam, in which he built up the North Vietnamese while exacting harsh criticism (lies) on the American and South Vietnamese troops were exposed to Burns’ lies and fabrications. Of course, to his credit, Burns let it slip that the re-education camps contrary to communist claims (actually prisons) would be in operation for approximately six months after the war was over, it turns out that many former South Vietnamese were detained for as long as twenty years.
Post-war Vietnam was so wonderful, tens of thousands of boat people risked life and limb to escape that communist paradise [silence].
Ask the Vietnamese who live in garden Grove and Westminster California what they think…

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Thought provoking article, with many astute comments. We all had our own experiences in the war, depending on where, when and what we did during the conflict.
Neal Thompson’s points are valid, however in my opinion the elephant in the room is the Vietnamese themselves. The South Vietnamese government and military were rife with corruption and inefficiency during the war, the military sometimes stayed in the barn, or even switched sides during a fight. Moreover, the South Vietnamese civilians….along with many in the government and military, weren’t all thrilled with us being there, for whatever reason. I traveled the roads in the Central Highlands quite extensively, and the looks we received from the citizenry were not looks of love.

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Good article. I was not looking for a parade, but I did not like the welcome home I received. From the negative comments to the vile treatment of not only me but others. On the plane home in CONUS stews would not serve us, other passengers would not or requested not to sit near us. Now those same people my age thanks us for our service and often make excuses why they did not or could not serve. I would rather they keep their thanks and not try to provide me their excuses. They call us “heroes” we are not heroes we just did our job, followed the law, and want to forget the way it was for most of us. I often think they are ashamed of their actions.

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I read this essay and those linked to it, and I must say that I am amazed at the dishonesty that pervades any discussion of society’s repudiation of the men who fought in Vietnam. Whatever we do, we must assiduously avoid any discussion of deliberate conduct by the antiwar left, particularly people like John Kerry and his VVAW comrades, and I think that it is time to raise some points that have been too long ignored, elephants in the room as they are called.

The antiwar Left had done so much to alienate ordinary Americans by 1969 that many historians, like Adam Garfinkle, author of Telltale Hearts, have concluded that the antiwar movement actually helped prolong the war through the image it conveyed. Vietnam Veterans against the War, complete with uniforms, wounds, and medals to discard, helped blur if not eliminate for many the clear lines between those who served and sacrificed and antisocial radicals for whom the war represented more opportunity than tragedy. VVAW served to provide both the antiwar movement and the war crimes industry it promoted with respectability, but on closer examination, it becomes apparent that VVAW’s leadership was anything but honorable, and its only real accomplishment was legitimizing and embedding deep within this society an image of veterans as morons and misfits, psychopaths and sadists, drug addicts, drunks, cowards, fools and criminal degenerates.

Among VVAW leadership, Marx, Mao, and revolution were very popular, a fact that even those sympathetic to VVAW accept. The Maoist Revolutionary Union, a “far left radical group, formed in California from both the Communist Party USA and SDS [Students for a Democratic Society],” had many of its members in “important leadership positions in VVAW.” [Gerald Nicosia, Home to War, 227] And dishonesty within VVAW’s ranks was endemic.

Marxist radical Al Hubbard was one of VVAW’s national leaders who appeared with John Kerry on Meet the Press in the spring of 1971 to denounce the war. He claimed to be an ex-captain who had been wounded and decorated while serving in Vietnam. According to the Air Force, however, “there is no record of any service in Vietnam [emphasis in the original], but since he was an aircrew member he could have been in Vietnam during brief periods during cargo loading, unloading operations, or for crew rest purposes. His highest grade held was staff sergeant E-5.” [Burkett and Whitley, Stolen Valor, 136–137] Hubbard was a complete fraud. Michael Harbert, another of VVAW’s national leaders, was also a phony. He claimed that he had been a sergeant who had flown forty-seven combat missions over Vietnam. Harbert’s official records, however, show no Vietnam service. He was stationed at McClellan Air Force Base in California. A stay in Taiwan is as close as he ever got to the war zone. [Stolen Valor, 137] Another of VVAW’s national leaders, Joe Urgo, was a self-proclaimed “revolutionary Communist” who traveled to Hanoi on behalf of VVAW and there declared his allegiance to the Communist cause. “I will work with them on any level they want.” If you had served in Vietnam, he said in 1994, “You were nothing more than a murderer, a rapist, a baby killer.” [Richard Stacewicz, ed., Winter Soldiers, An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans against the War, 430]

As for John Kerry, he showed up in Vietnam as a stop on the campaign trail (his grand political ambitions were apparent at the time to all who knew him) and stayed just long enough (3 months in a line unit) to make the record he thought would help him run for office. After his failed first run for Congress (in which he displayed none of the radicalism for which he would become famous), he went rogue, joined VVAW and threw the rest of us under the bus in order to appeal to a liberal electorate at the end of the war. He appeared before the Senate and maintained that Vietnam veterans were war criminals who raped, tortured murdered our way through Southeast Asia “on a day-to-day basis,” as a matter of official policy and “with the full awareness of the officers at every level of command.” He stated that he was “ashamed” of his service. On Meet the Press, Kerry accused this country of “genocide” and declared that “thousands” of his fellow veterans, whom he described as “monsters,” committed war crimes that, according to Kerry, were “ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down.” To ensure that he indicted as many of us as possible, Kerry stressed that “[t]hese were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.” As for the officer corps, Kerry was clear: “I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.” He doubled down on this in 2001 on Meet the Press, saying that he stood by “everything he said went on over there.”

In his recently published autobiography, Kerry again states that his 1971 claims represented the truth even as he criticizes the American people for the shabby treatment of the veterans, noting “the confusion that some Americans showed in blaming the warriors for the war itself, [which] was tragically misplaced. Our veterans did not receive the welcome home. Our veterans did not receive either the welcome home nor the benefits nor the treatment that they not only deserved, but needed, and the fundamental contract between soldier and government simply was not honored.”

Why, one wonders, would anyone want to extend a grand welcome home and respectful treatment to a generation of degenerates who, in Kerry’s repeatedly stated claims, “personally raped,” tortured and murdered their way through a “criminal,” “genocidal” campaign, “on a day-to-day basis,” as a matter of official policy and “with the full awareness of the officers at every level of command.” And of course, nobody is willing to note that it was Kerry himself who failed to honor that “fundamental contact” when he launched his vicious, partisan attacks on the veterans themselves and that he continues to breach that contract every time he repeats his claim that he told the truth in 1971.

In summary, while no one denies the shabby treatment afforded the men who fought in Vietnam, we remain unwilling even to discuss, much less impose responsibility upon, those who are clearly and deliberately at fault, and it is time we acknowledged their ugly contribution to this chapter in American history.

Neal F. Thompson
F/8th, 1972-1973
Author of Reckoning: Vietnam and America’s Cold War Experience, 1945-1991.

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