A thoughtful interview with a Vietnam Vet

[Immortal]

Tim O Brien never intended to fight in the Vietnam War. In fact, after graduating summa cum laude from Macalester College in MAy 1968, he planned to study politics at Harvard. When the draft notice arrived in August of that same year, O'Brien reluctantly left his home in Minessota and was assigned to the Quang Ngai Province of Vietnam, where he served with the 46th Infantry, 198th Infantry Brigade. O'Brien came to understand the soldiery experience awith horrifying intimacy, and each night he wrote bout what he saw. These foxhole scribblings are now lost, but the memory of Vietnam continues to burn throughout his writing.

Q:The prison abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib has become a defining moment of the war. Are you surprised that prisoners were mistreated in Iraq?

A: No, I'm not surprised in the least. I would have been surprised if they hadn't been mistreated. War is nasty and brings out the worst in people. Violence is sanctioned, and you're an 18 year old kid, and nobody is overseeing you. The nastiness comes out. It was seen on a daily basis in Vietnam with prisoners. This was usually done by kids, and even if they were officers they were still only twenty-two or twenty-three years old. There is a disbelief that Americans could do this sort of thing, but it's a common occurence in war.

Q:You write about the abuses by soldiers in your novel In the Lake of the Woods. Do you think that abuses like Abu Ghraib can be prevented during times of war?

A: Once you start making war, the consequences are, at least they seem to me, almost inevitable. I don't mean they can't be discouraged with good training and oversight--perhaps they can even be reduced in frequency--but I really don't think abuse like this can be entirely eliminated. If you don't like nastiness of war, you shouldn't be making wars in the first place.

Q:What effect do you think the prison scandal will have on our troops over there?

A:I think it will be sobering, of only in the sense that soldiers might be thinking to themselves, "Now we'd better be careful, keep it quiet, don't do it because we might be caught." It won't be avoided out of any sense of repulsion or outrage or horror.

Q: Our soldiers have seen their medical benefits cut and their tours of duty extended. Aside from being demolarised by this, what else do you think might be going through their minds right now?

A: A sense of futility, because there is no frontline, no rear, nowhere is it safe. It's much like what we saw in Vietnam. There's no happy ending. They're not aiming for berlin or Tokyo with a sense of destination or goal.

Q:What do you imagine the soldierly experience to be like there?

A:No matter what the war--whether it's a glorious war like World War II or a stinky wat like Vietnam-- the facts are always the same when you're a soldier. THere's death and horror and maiming and widows and orphans. Wars are all alike. The Crusades were the same, I'm sure.
In a war, you're up against not just your own morality, but you're up against a lifetime of memory. Wars don't end when you sign a peace treat. They goon and on in memory. My friend Chip Merricks
keeps soaring into a tree after he steps on a land mine. And he never stops going into that tree, and I never stop having to climb up and peel him off and throw him back down. It doesn;t stop. That's what the
guys in Iraq are up against. That's what wars in general are all about. They're about people gonig up one way, and coming back another way.

Q:What type of war stories do you thinkour soldiers will be returning with from Iraq?

A:I think the stories will be very similar to what we returned with from Vietnam. Who's the enemy? And where are they? And how do we find them? Frustration. Anger. watching all your friends die around you. An
absense of clear purpose for it all. A sense of guilt for all civilian casualties and the difficulty in finding the enemy.
The reason why we so overwhelmingly supported the Iraq War early on was to find weapons of mass destruction. We were terrified after 9/11 of anthrax and chemical weapons and nuclear weapons. And to find outthat it was all inaccurate does something to a soldier because he's the person over there paying a price for this.

Q: Do you think the United States has learned anything from Vietnam?

A:I thought so up until two years ago. You known, Kurt Vonnegut has this incredibly great line in Slaughterhouse-Five where someone asks if this is an anti-war book, and VOnnegut says. "I could no more write an anti-war book than an anti-glacier book." I'm starting to share that sad cynicism that we just don't learn. The answer is no, I don't believe we have. I'm starting to feel an uncanny sense of deja vu. It's as if I'm watching the same headlines and the same story except now it's set in a desert world and not in a jungle world. Everything else seems very similar.

Q:What lessons from Vietnam do you wish America had learned?

A: One is the quality of patience. WE need to be more patient with the world. We have a quick-fix mentality. Usually though military means we think we'll repair the problems of the world, but real enduring fixes aren't quick because they require diplomacy and an understanding of history. Another lesson is underestimating the enemy's capavity for endurance. We thought that if enough bombs were dropped, and enough people were killed, and enough infrastructure was destroyed, that could change the situation. It didn't work. We then doubled the tonnage of bombs, and that didn't work wither. I don't think we learned that lesson at all. With the war in Iraq, we thought that by overthrowing a regime, that all the pieces
would fall tidily into place.
But there's no bright light at the end of this tuinnel that I can see, and I don't think any soldier can see it either. After all, we've won the war, we've deposed Saddam, we've actually got him as our prisoner, and it's still not over. In fact, it's worse now that we've captured SAddam. And it's alot worse, not just a little worse, alot worse. What do we have to do to win? We've got capital in our hands. What if we had taken Berlin and captured Hitler and the war was getting worse, not better? The objectives that the soldiers were given in Iraq have all been achieved, and yet it's not getting any better. The casualties are piling up, and frustration is climbing, and the citizenry of Baghdad--you can see the anger in their faces. These people were cheering us in the street not long ago as liberators. It's not that way anymore.

Q:Are there other lessons we missed?

A:Yes. Another has to do with what happens when a bunch of white faces show up in a culture with few white faces. Even if it's not formally an occupation, it sure looks like one. Imagine a guy, a barber, some guy
cutting hair in downtown Baghdad, and he watches a bunch of white faces go by with rifles. It feels like an occupation to him and it looks like one.

Q:Why did we forget the lessons of Vietnam?

A:It's part of our nature as a country. We look forward as a nation, and we tend to erase our flaws like the genocide of the American Indians, and slavery, and and Jim Crow laws. We forget these things, these flaws, these misdeeds. It's a part of our character for some reason to view ourselves with complacent rectitude.
I was talking in TExas at a school before the Iraq abuses came out. I talked about how our country was so upset about our soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. Yet when we displayed the
corpses of Saddam Hussein's sons there was no outcry or disbelief. Some kid in the back of the room got really angry at me and said, "You can't compare American soldiers to the evil sons of Saddam Hussein." I tried to talk buot MYLAi, what I'd witnessed, what American soldiers can do , but he just got up and walked out. HE was really angry. ANd then this [Abu Ghraib] comes up. On the one hand, I feel that my point has been made again, but on the other hand, I feel a sense of weariness about it all. When are we going to learn that we're as capable of evil as the next guy in the next country?

Q: Do you think Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield knew what they were getting into with Iraq?

A:No, they thought they were going to go overthrow a bad guy, and find some weapons of mass destruction, and set up a democracy, adn then walk away. That's what they thought, more or less. There was some
rhetoric about it taking time, but I don;t think they anticipated the guerilla warfare going now.

Q: Do you think it will get worse before it gets better?

A:Yes. THe abuses of the prisoners are going to compound the outrage of the Iraqis who don't want us there in the first place. Every day that goes by I think it's just going to get worse, not better.

Q:John Kerry's experience in Vietnam are shaping his Presidential campaign and I was wondering what your opinions of his is , as a veteran?

A:I don't thik he himseld is bragging about being a hero. I don't hear that from him. I think he's self-effacing about it all and says that he went over there to do his duty. He's been attacked recently by the republicans who said something like, "You weren't wounded so badly the first time, it wasn't that bad". But he was shot three or fourtimes, and the people attacking him were safely in the NAtional Guard or in graduate school. THese are the very same people who are forcing a new war no us. THey didn't put their bodies where their mouth is. Back in the old days, Geronimo and Crazy Horse led the troops and so did Julius Caesar. That's not true anymore. THe truth is that our politicians send other people off to do their dyiing, usually the poor people, especially from the rural South--they're doing the dying. There ought to be a law where it's fine to be for war, but you should send your own son or faughter, not somebody else's. Ten I think there would be a little more caution, and a little more patience, and a little more diplomacy. Then we wouldn't be quite the quickdraw nation that we are.

Q:There has been some discussion about what KErry did with the medals he recieved in Vietnam. WHat have you done with your medals?

A:The isn't political; I just don't know where they are. I just I got eight or nine of them and my mom at one point put them in a dresserdrawer in the basement of our house in Worthington [ Minessota ]. I had a room in the basement, and we had a flood. Where they went after the flood--I was in gradschool at the time--they vanished. Medals are meaningless, really. THey gave them away in Vietnam like Cracker JAck toys. We used to laugh at them, except for couple of them. THe Purple Heart was meaningful because it meant that you were hurt. But even there you could have been hurt badly or just a scrape and you'd still get a Purple Heart. THe one that really mattered to me was a thing called the Combat Infantryman's BAdge, which wasn;t even a medal. It's what you got agter being in combat. It meant that you were there, and that you weren't in TExas.

Q:CAn you leave Vietnam behind and heal? ISthat possible?

A:No. I don't beleive in healing. I don't believe you heal from horror and evil. You deal with it, cope with it, pledge to do better. You try to learn and try to be more morally courageous. Healing is an inapropriate word. Some sores are best left open so that we don't forget, so that we learn and remember. In the end, I'm a fiction writer, not a politician, and I'm trying to wrtie stories that aren't about war, per se. They're not about bullets annd bombs and military maneuvers and tactics; this stuff never interested me. But what does interest me is what happens to a human beign's soul when stress is put on it, and not just physical stress but moral stress. Should I kill that person, or not? Should I goto war, or not? When is it right to say no to your politicians? Is it tever right? I don't have answers to any of these questions. ALL I ahve are a bunch of stories about human beigns making their way through an uncertain world.


Interview by Patrick Hicks
This was published in July 2004 edition of the PRogressive.

[Immortal]

i searched the entire web for this interview but I couldn't find any links. I have a copy of the July 2004 Progressive so i decided to type the whole article out. IT has some grammatical errors here and there as you can all see, I deeply felt this article.

[Trauma-san]

^ because he supports your view.  Since he has an almost opposite view of what I believe, I don't feel it at all. 

[Immortal]

^ because he supports your view.  Since he has an almost opposite view of what I believe, I don't feel it at all. 

could you be more specific? Explain...

[M Dogg™]

^ because he supports your view.  Since he has an almost opposite view of what I believe, I don't feel it at all. 

that's because you support war, but even at war age, you are not willing to go into a war you support. He doesn't support war, and has gone to war to back his case. He mentions how people who put us in war have not been to war, and someone that wants us out of war, has been through war. I feel it. I don't support war, so I am not going, and if I was a leader, I'd avoid war. My father was in Vietnam, he doesn't support war. My uncle is dying from Agent Orange from Vietnam, and he doesn't support war. But my cousin, who never has seen battle supports war. I feel it.

[Trauma-san]

The point of my post was you found a vietnam vet with similar views as your own.  So of course you 'feel it'.  If I posted an interview with a vietnam vet who supported Bush @ the war in Iraq, you most definately wouldn't feel it.  All you're doing is supporting your own beliefs, you're not learning anything or teaching anything, just like I wouldn't either if I posted some interview with some pro-war supporter. 

[Immortal]

The point of my post was you found a vietnam vet with similar views as your own.  So of course you 'feel it'.  If I posted an interview with a vietnam vet who supported Bush @ the war in Iraq, you most definately wouldn't feel it.  All you're doing is supporting your own beliefs, you're not learning anything or teaching anything, just like I wouldn't either if I posted some interview with some pro-war supporter. 

man ur such an ignorant fool, Im not taking any sides and niether is Tim O'Brien , he has nowhere stated that he SUPPORTS BUSH or KERRY. He is only being real at this war shit and just informing us all of the situation of soldiers and everyone in war. Noone is taking any sides or is supporting BUSH. I suggest u read my AMerica's AMnesia and Abu, Ghraib, USA post. Im not supporting anyone, i only posted these articles as i thought they would bring in some insight bout the war and prison abuses and as to how its nothing new and it even happens in USA prisons from time to time.

Im not even an American, I live in Canada. And im against the war in Iraq anyway, this article and the others I've posted were very thoughtful and informative to anyone. Im not taaking any sides and niether is O'brien.

This was a good interview, I think many soldiers of many nations come to a similar realization. I especially liked this quote : "When are we going to learn that we're as capable of evil as the next guy in the next country?" And the stuff he says about how you're not only at war just your own morality, but you're up against a lifetime of memory, and how it's hell for both sides, and how both sides think they're doing the right thing.

YAll should check your interpretations of these articles and no be so biased.

[Immortal]

^ because he supports your view.  Since he has an almost opposite view of what I believe, I don't feel it at all. 

that's because you support war, but even at war age, you are not willing to go into a war you support. He doesn't support war, and has gone to war to back his case. He mentions how people who put us in war have not been to war, and someone that wants us out of war, has been through war. I feel it. I don't support war, so I am not going, and if I was a leader, I'd avoid war. My father was in Vietnam, he doesn't support war. My uncle is dying from Agent Orange from Vietnam, and he doesn't support war. But my cousin, who never has seen battle supports war. I feel it.

Exactly

[Trauma-san]

Well, Einstein; him saying we're as evil as the people we're invading doesn't strike you as an admonisment of the Bush administration? Are you really so blind that you can't see this guy is clearly speaking out against the war? LOL

[Immortal]

Well, Einstein; him saying we're as evil as the people we're invading doesn't strike you as an admonisment of the Bush administration? Are you really so blind that you can't see this guy is clearly speaking out against the war? LOL

Insert Quote
ppl like u make America look bad, if u love war so much now celebrate the death of ur 1000 soldiers, not to be a bitch but im not appreciating any of your posts.