jj-nam

Subject: Vietnam

Mr. Cop,
It seems most of the world has forgotten about another group born too late
to serve in Vietnam.

I was born in 1956 so when the draft started around 1964, I watched as
thousands of guys marched away - some never to be seen again. My brother was
5 years older and saw many of his friends go and never return. Many of these
friends were my friends also. This was a very bad time for us and a very bad
time for America.

I spent the next 10 years wondering when I would have to go to a war that
seemed would never end. It seemed that many guys of my age had an attitude
of "who cares about the future, we're going to die in South East Asia."
This lead a lot of us to care more about "today" and use "dangerous narcotics",
(like the dreaded killer of youth and "gateway drug" - marijuana.

Strange how no one I knew went on to heroin or harder drugs. I guess we missed
out on those scientific studies), or alcohol as a form of escape. Test scores
plummeted, suicides skyrocketed, fear and hate for the government was
raging. Protesters were being killed by national guard soldiers and all the
while, school counselors and deans told us to "just stay in line and keep
quiet. Remember, if you keep protesting our governments war, you'll be
thrown out of school and die in Vietnam." I joined the army in 1973 and
saw many guys still being held at Fort Knox unable to return to society due
to mental stress problems from being in that "good little war" that some
politicians today still hate the protesters for.

Any politicians that still hold animosities for protesters of that war must be out
of their minds to think they can sway my opinion about President Clinton.
I applaud him for his stance against that war and I truly feel he is the
greatest American President of my lifetime.

Thomas Jefferson supposedly said that this country needs a revolution every
10 years or so to root out the bad wood in government. It looks like we're
about 22 revolutions short.