In most ways, I was a product of my generation, a typical baby boomer who came of age in the ‘sixties. My Carson Valley cohorts plunged headlong into the culture of muscle cars, motorcycles, sports, rock music and mild rebelliousness. Sparsely populated, the Sierra region exposed us to hunting, fishing and the basics of outdoor survival. Our high school’s bigger-than-life outlets were football, basketball, track and winter sports. I was a Douglas High School honor roll student and supported my varied rolling stock interests by working after school and summers at a gas station on U.S. Highway 395.
All of this played idyllic sans a building background noise, the escalating war at Vietnam. In my first year of high school, President Kennedy’s assassination left Lyndon Johnson the task of carrying out America’s military “advisory” role at Vietnam. Elected in 1964, President Johnson soon escalated Vietnam into the largest global military adventure since WWII. The rapidly expanding draft, stories of draftees shipping promptly overseas and the persistent drone of the six o’clock news sent a clear message to America’s young male adults.
The political tone at a rural Nevada community was largely conservative. Conformity and Cold War jingo served as teaching standards. Our U.S. History teacher relied upon Department of Defense newsreels to explain America’s role in the world, and most of my forty-eight classmates had trouble separating U.S. foreign policy and Vietnam objectives from winning a Friday night football or basketball game. Few, if any, questioned the U.S. involvement at Vietnam.
Everyone deserves one or two scholastic mentors. I was fortunate to have two, and one was my high school Government and Civics teacher. Mr. Jarrett offered a test the first week of class that covered the entire semester’s content. I scored in the mid-nineties and spent the semester in the library, researching and writing six-week reports while independently studying for the class’ scheduled exams.
While my classmates labored through the thick textbook, I read Newsweek magazine and, by choice, digested the politically-motivated works of Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Dalton Trumbo, W.E.B. DuBois, Sinclair Lewis and Howard Fast. I shared my six-week reports with the class, earnestly curious youth whose eyes quickly glazed over. When I graduated from high school with the Daughters of the American Revolution history scholarship in hand, I possessed a thorough understanding of American history and the tenets of the United States Constitution.
The test of my convictions came in the spring of 1968, following a pre-induction physical for the draft. I was a healthy, military-capable specimen with a likely ticket to Vietnam. As recruiters’ business cards found their way beneath my apartment doorway on East 15th Street in Oakland, it was time to put my values on the line. Like George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and many others, I considered the beaten paths of least resistance: joining a National Guard unit or maintaining a student deferment. Close high school friends had taken the National Guard option, and I might have pulled that one off. Gnawing at my conscience, however, was the fact that I simply did not support the role our postwar military played in world affairs. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George Washington, John Adams and other founding fathers held a similar view when squaring off with the British Empire.
I considered my few options. There was resistance to the draft, which led to a mandatory prison sentence. A long shot took into account that a four-year member of the National Honor Society with a high GATB score might end up well behind the lines, punching typewriter keys with a 45-caliber pistol at hand. For the luckiest, a crapshoot assignment to West Germany might provide a chance to see Continental Europe and enjoy a taste of Old World cultures.
Then there was the issue of conscience. And my conscience recalled the Second World War, the Holocaust and two atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Wasn’t that message clear? War was no longer a viable way to ameliorate differences. Didn’t WWII bring the world into a community capable of resolving issues collectively, without mayhem? Hey, weren’t we technologically in the nuclear era of mutually assured destruction and past the point that conventional warfare served as foreign policy?
This sounded like a basis for objecting to contemporary war in general, and my conscience had its hard-won place in the Selective Service System: classification I-O, better known as Conscientious Objector. I filed Form SS150 with my local board at Minden, Nevada, thoroughly aware that rejection of my petition for C.O. status would require an appeal to the Nevada State Board for Selective Service. Failing that appeal, the options were induction into the military or prison.
Working at Oakland, California, I waited each day for the mail reply, preparing myself for the verdict. Support letters from a Jesuit priest and an Episcopalian minister, each of whom knew my family and our anti-war convictions, surely played a role in the local board’s decision. I made C.O. status on the first round. In the spring of 1968, I joined the handful of Nevada Conscientious Objectors and quickly pursued a suitable Alternate Service role. From 1968-70, I worked for Paradise Valley Hospital at National City, California, serving in the engineering department as the fleet mechanic for the hospital’s support vehicles and maintenance equipment.
Of all my life experiences, that period ranks high. I expressed my conscience and served the American people in a way that made perfect sense, meeting the health, safety and welfare guidelines of the Selective Service System. Personally, I acquired useful skills that years later I shared with hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens through my teaching, technical writing and illustrating work. I am proud of my service and grateful for the opportunity to take a stand, a position that helped define my adult life…
Given the current economic recession, growing unemployment, wind down from a controversial war in Iraq and the quest to quell terrorists across Afghanistan and the Middle East, the Vietnam War seems of scant relevance to contemporary Americans. Since the Gulf War, and especially the 9/11 tragedy, America has simply moved on from Vietnam. When U.S. troops, air forces and our clandestine agencies left Vietnam more than three decades ago, that nation also moved on. Today, Vietnam prospers within the international community.
The release of my first novel, Indra’s Net, in the aftermath of 9/11 and the Iraq War is no coincidence. As the Bush Administration fomented fear and foisted misinformation upon the American people, the preemptive ‘Shock and Awe’ strike recalled America’s escalation of the Vietnam conflict in the mid-‘sixties. Not unlike the Iraq War, that escalation grew from Washington’s distortion of facts. For Iraq, George W. Bush launched charges of our imminent threat from weapons of mass destruction. In Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson’s manipulation of facts rushed Congress into the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and sanctioned the bombing of Hanoi and the rest of North Vietnam.
In the wake of President Johnson’s then President Nixon’s political and military measures, 58,000 American lives were lost with 300,000 wounded. More than 3-million Vietnamese people died, with matching numbers of Cambodias and Laotians. U.S. use of napalm, conventional bombing and Agent Orange defoliant ruined one-third of South Vietnam’s land area. Applying Cold War technology and precision, the U.S. bombs dropped on North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia amounted to 8-million tons, four times the total tonnage dropped by all belligerents during World War II. Despite this effort, “victory” did not occur against a Third World adversary, a people bent on self-determination and national unity.
Following the initial U.S. aerial attack, a full-scale invasion and the occupation of Iraq, the death toll remains ambiguous. Civilian casualty estimates range from 300,000 to over one-million. The numbers vary because of inaccurate reporting, subterfuge and outright misinformation intended to minimize the damage caused by the United States. As with Vietnam, U.S. news agencies remain quick to report American casualties, skewing the sense of loss.
Like the Vietnam War, the U.S. military roles at Iraq and Afghanistan have polarized Americans. Beyond the maiming and deaths of our fittest young people, many question the rush to arms and overwhelming use of force as a political tool. A past generation recalls the never ending flights of B-52 bombers out of U.S. bases in Thailand and the Philippines, dropping round-the-clock Whispering Death on Asian soil. Will that be the aim of American foreign policy in the Middle East and Central Asia? In an era of advanced stealth aircraft, drones and cruise missiles, will we minimize our own casualties while escalating the number of civilian and bystander deaths, dismissing them as collateral damage?
I conceived Indra’s Net and birthed its characters from a deep respect for facts and people’s values. Whether WWII, Vietnam or Afghanistan, wars claim people and victimize families, communities and cultures. The highest respect we can pay any K.I.A., P.O.W. or M.I.A. is realism about the context of his or her experience.
Neither ideological nor drably statistical, Indra’s Net portrays individuals, families and cultures that survive and reconcile the traumas of war. Indra’s Net is inclusive, devoid of polarized viewpoints that avoid or minimize the tragedy, loss and humiliation of war. Identifiable characters come to life through the sensibilities of the reader. Intentionally, the reader establishes a personal, visceral sense for the landscape and owns the experience.
This blog is an open invitation. While Indra’s Net speaks to WWII and the Vietnam experience, it also speaks to the larger issue of war. War is once again the central theme of American foreign policy, and my blog welcomes earnest viewpoints and founded facts that illuminate the impact of contemporary wars and ways nations can ameliorate political and cultural differences—and defeat terrorism—short of wide-scale military conflict…Take in the novel. It’s up for discussion…
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Indra’s Net
“…this ambitious novel spreads its net across the marches of history, reeling in gold nuggets of intriguing fictional action…One of the best things about this novel is the author’s firm grasp of history, especially as experienced from the viewpoint character Dinh…the comprehensive novel reads like a history book without the boring bits…An engaging, satisfying, and richly lengthy read.”—****Holly Chase Williams, ForeWord CLARION Reviews.
Featured at the New York and Los Angeles BookExpo, Beijing and Frankfurt Book Fairs…Available through all major book outlets and independent bookstores in soft cover edition and Amazon Kindle book.
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