Monument to a lost cause
Christopher Hitchens
The Great Mall in Washington, which stretches between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, used to be a very impressive place for mass demonstrations against the Vietnam war. Huge crowds used to assemble here and de- mand that the United States give up its im- perial role in Indochina. From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, fiery speeches de- nounced the politicians who lied their way into the war and who kept wilfully exten- ding and deepening it. Towards the end, even uniformed soldiers would appear at these events and tell of the appalling things they had seen and even done. Liberal churchmen would intone about the cons- cience of America, and would justify the refusal of young men to enlist. Police helicopters would clatter overhead, recor- ding the event for the bulging secret files of the Nixon administration.
Last Saturday was supposed to be dif- ferent. There is now a new monument on the Mall: it commemorates the 58,000 American servicemen who did not return from Vietnam. It has taken many years to get this monument agreed, and it differs from the grand and proud statuary of past campaigns which you find over the river in Arlington Cemetery. Two sloping black granite walls have been set into the ground in a vee-shaped incline. On these walls, in the order in which they fell, are all the names of the 58,000. The understatement is significant, and so was the ceremony that officially dedicated the site.
The crowd was large, and casually dress- ed. The veterans, in particular, mostly looked shaggy and plebeian, with cowboy hats and beards to match their ribbons. A lot of them were drinking bottles from the handy beer truck parked nearby. One held up a placard reading, 'Next Time Send the Politicians'. Conversation found many of them unemployed and all of them bitter at what they consider official neglect. One stall was dealing with the grievances of `Agent Orange' sufferers — those who were made to handle deadly defoliant without proper instructions and who suffer chronic illness to this day. A small group of black veterans stood apart with a Black Power flag.
From the platform, various churchmen read specially composed prayers and deplored the waste and incompetence that had brought them there. Jan Scruggs, the energetic young veteran who has campaign- ed for years to get the monument built, read an extract from Rumor of War by Philip Caputo, certainly the best anti-war memoir by a serving soldier to have emerged from the conflict. When the helicopters came winging overhead, they were of course part of an official fly-past. But for a moment it was like standing in one of the crowdsin the good old days.
After it was over, relatives and friends pushed forwards to the wall, searching for the name that meant most to them. Small tokens and messages were left everywhere — like the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. There were a heartbreaking number of wheel-chairs. A young man dressed in bat- tle fatigues and a bush hat suddenly sprang up and played a quavering 'Taps' on a trumpet. The whole crowd stiffened and then cheered. It could hardly have been less of a gung-ho affair.
All the same, the occasion has been marked in other ways. Even before the memorial was opened, it came under fire from the old guard who said it was too
And just where do you think you are taking me, Miss Simpkins?'
apologetic. They proposed the addition of at least a flagpole and a statue of some soldiers. Ms Maya Yin Ling, the Chinese woman whose design had won the open competition, described these embellishinent,5 as 'a moustache scribbled on my drawing Certainly, the proposed additions spoil the symmetry and the modesty of the site. But without them; said the tough guys, the monument would be just 'a ditch'. T°1/1 Wolfe, who believes that the Vietnam was lost because of the liberal media an, who counts himself as a leading foe 0' modern architecture, called it 'a monutnetli to Jane Fonda'. this remark, made in a Washington Post article, drew furious ters from the veterans for whom he clainle' to speak. 'As I recall', wrote one soldier; 'he spent the war years attending cocktail parties and writing articles about the Isle Left and the social set. For his article he sought only the opinions of officers who, I recollect, served at the front only six 0011- the on average before being rotated to title rear. Why not ask the average combat. 1 who spent his whole tour on the lne' Maybe Mr Wolfe couldn't — because inanYd are still trying to pick up the pieces an recover from wounds they still bear front the war and from returning home, wher, the Government doesn't help and .the -1°7 are scarce.' During his election campaign, R°081c1,, Reagan described the Vietnam war as ; `noble cause' and efforts are being made t.; rewrite the history of it in such a manner to break the near-monopoly of the anti-w, writers. General William Westmorelan°. for instance, is even now bringing a raillt!' million-dollar lawsuit against CBS Tel ad, sion for a documentary they recently hr°,1.,t cast on his mishandling of the 1968 Tel offensive. In places where the `rn°r3f majority' are trying to purge libraries ,,
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filth, atheism and evolution, it is noticea; that they also campaign against 1304. which represent the war in a poor Wan And Congress still refuses to grant 5 amnesty to the thousands of American,. who left the country to avoid the draft' °, who received dishonourable discharges from the army for opposing the war. is Obviously, some of this rethinking t due to the gruesome nature of the P°s; American regimes in Indochina. The b° at people and the Khmer Rouge have madeto distinctly hard to romanticise what Used ,,, be the heroic peasant guerrilla. Still, fei"ci people honestly think that the war e°1i,„ have been won or should have been coy barked upon. The argument, reallY, ,s. about the American will in future contlie.kit Will the generally anti-war culture inhivre later campaigns? Will the cry No ilic,)he Vietnams' disable American power in 5 Middle East and Central America? This ' what worries the Reaganites.Arl' Speaking at a different ceremony in ington Cemetery a few days before the "ce nam monument was dedicated, the Defell it Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, alluded t.°. and said: 'But we also learned a left ,e lesson from the Vietnam war — a lesson"
must never forget. We learned that we should never again ask our men and women to serve in a war which we do not intend to win.' This comes perilously close to a 'stab in the back' argument. At his own confir- mation hearings, Weinberger was asked what he meant by using all means to secure victory and replied that he meant just that. Would he then, he was asked, have favoured the use of nuclear weapons to break the stalemate in Vietnam? Certainly he would. The lesson of history, apparent- ly, is that to some people there are no lessons of history.
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