A Vietnamese native thanks veterans for window to democracy

During a day of eloquence and emotion, the “whaddya know?” moment came from Khoi Tran, a writer, editor and former president of the Vietnamese Association of Pittsburgh.

He was one of 13 panelists at the recent conference, “Vietnam: A Working-Class War,” at the Allegheny campus of the Community College of Allegheny County.

After hearing from veterans and peace activists, the assembly heard from people who had a current perspective on Vietnam. Mr. Tran looked out into an audience heavy with veterans and told them their service had been a gift to many in South Vietnam, where he grew up.

American soldiers had protected the little republic’s tenuous hold on what a democratic future might look like. The people enjoyed the right to free expression, to free enterprise, to vote, even though the choices were dreadful and corruption ran rampant.

Even though the United States imposed the president it wanted on South Vietnam, he said our military presence was the reason why, today, in a unified country, the south is culturally ahead of the north and the south is more prosperous. He pleaded with veterans to be proud of that.

As dozens of veterans in the audience dabbed at their cheeks, I realized they had probably never been as properly thanked for their service as they were right then.

I was warmed by Mr. Tran’s gratitude to our veterans who, after coming home, got lost in society’s mass shaming.

The shame belonged on the government and military brass who deceived us, lied to us, kept our people and their people slogging through a decade of carnage, telling us how well it was going when they knew it wasn’t.

Panelist Sandy Kelson, an Army veteran, labor lawyer and past president of Veterans for Peace, damned the war machine for using people as tools for the profit of manufacturers of military systems and weapons, for “commercial, industrial competition, for markets, for resources. When I am thanked for my service, I look people in the eye and say, ‘Are you the head of a major international corporation?’” If not, he said, “You have nothing to thank me for.’”

The moral imperative of joining allied forces in World War II cannot be argued.

The motives behind every war since can. Meanwhile, the United States is now in a state of perpetual wars, with soldiers in more countries than most of us know about, and with growing hostilities here at home.

Conference panelists called for unity, what Pat Conroy called “a common America, not a ‘me first’ society. People are profiting from polarization. Resist that. Understand that the country is all of us.

“Sometimes, you put others before yourself,” he said. “That was a lesson I learned watching men die trying to help other men live.”

A Marine who served two tours in Vietnam, Mr. Conroy said, “We don’t have to lay down our lives, but for society to survive, we have to learn that lesson.”

From Jack Wagner, a Marine veteran of that war and a former city councilman and state senator: “My greatest fear is that we are withdrawing from participation” as citizens, “and from the responsibility we have as citizens for getting us into war.”

It hit me that going to war doesn’t mean leaving home. In the late ’ 60s, hostility bubbled into violence in our own streets as cops billy-clubbed and tear-gassed activists of all kinds exercising their civic and human rights.

Panelist Rick Adams started his peace activism at Westinghouse High School amid so much drama and violence, he said, “that you could inhale history.” While young black men headed off the war, he said, “I saw people fighting for liberation in Selma [, Ala.].”

The home front always provides the most compelling reasons to stand up for human rights and against abuse of power.

In the ’ 60s, that patriotism met resistance from what I call the shut-up people —”Love it or leave it!” they said, in the belief that you should leave your country if you aren’t docile and unquestioning of it.

Consider Mr. Tran’s gratitude, then consider our gift.

If we don’t knit back together and defend what we have — not as warriors but as citizens — we will be left with a tenuous hold on our own democracy.