Vietnam War Wrongly Cast Some of Us as Forever Anti-Military

Americans love happy endings. The time is fast approaching for one between President Clinton and the military.

Like star-crossed lovers, Clinton and the Pentagon went their separate ways years ago, each convinced that the other was to blame and guilty of that most serious of breaches--a betrayal of trust. Now 20 years later, they meet again face to face, and, not unexpectedly, the reunion has been awkward. Hurt feelings, power struggles, needless provocations--all the tip-offs that long-harbored suspicion lingers on both sides.

If the world were all sugar and spice, the American public could live with some squabbling between the President and the Pentagon. After all, a little peacetime civilian-military spatting is no big deal.

But all of a sudden, we’re talking about war again, or at least the prospect of committing soldiers to combat in the Balkans. With the stakes suddenly elevated to that level, the country has the right to expect that Clinton and the Pentagon represent a united front.

No president in modern times has come to the White House with as heavy an anti-military dog tag as has Clinton. And before he can be an effective commander-in-chief and in good conscience subject soldiers to possible death, Clinton and the country have to make peace with the past.

No one could accuse George Bush of sending soldiers to do something he hadn’t done. As a World War II fighter pilot who risked his life while still in his teens, Bush earned his credibility. When Bush said, as he did repeatedly during the Gulf War, that he knew what it meant to be sent into harm’s way, no one could challenge him.

With no such military history to invent for himself, the Bosnian situation shapes up as one of the critical challenges of Clinton’s first term. If he handles it correctly, he can square for an entire generation of Vietnam protesters its feelings about the military.

It was inevitable, but not altogether true, that one of the main legacies from Vietnam was that Clinton’s generation despised the military. By extension, it was presumed that that generation would oppose all future wars.

What got lost was that those of us in that generation grew up with positive thoughts of America’s role in World War I and, especially, World War II. It was, after all, our father’s war. Anyone who thinks we didn’t recognize their sacrifices in the ‘40s didn’t understand us.

When, at his inaugural, Clinton acknowledged President Bush’s years of service and his generation’s military heroism, I suspect it was said much more from the heart than people recognized. I can only apply my own experience: I’ve had many a conversation with my baby boomer cohorts and, to a man, we are in near-awe of the wartime exploits of our fathers’ generation.

We are not anti-military. That is not the same as saying we were not anti-military during the Vietnam era. There’s no doubt that we were, but neither Bill Clinton nor anyone else protesting then needs to apologize for that today.

Clinton was a few years ahead of me in college, and while he probably thinks his anti-war conversations at Georgetown were more enlightened than mine at the University of Nebraska, I can at least assure him that ours lasted every bit as long into the night. I think I’ve got a pretty good idea how Clinton and his buddies felt about the war.

That’s probably why I had such an immediate reaction to Clinton’s now-famous letter to his draft board, made public during last year’s campaign. Where some saw deceit and slipperiness, I saw a college man’s eloquence and anguish.

The Vietnam hawks never grasped that level of rage--and in my collegiate circle of friends that was the operative word--over the prolonging of the war. When the hawks saw war protesters, they didn’t see rage; they saw cowardice.

Yes, many of us came to hate the military but only as a tool of the government that, at least for a time, we also came to hate. We were never pacifists or classically anti-military, and it’s silly for us now to be painted into that corner.

What we became was profoundly skeptical, both of the military and the government. It’s a skepticism that Clinton no doubt carried into his adult public life but not something that disqualifies him from commanding the troops.

We’ll discover, probably sooner than later, whether Bill Clinton is up to it.

At this stage of his presidency, the military thinks Clinton doesn’t understand it. They see him reaching out to other segments of society, but not to it.

That is the opportunity awaiting Clinton in his first real military test. If he acquits himself well, the Vietnam War protest generation can finally be put into perspective--the protest of a specific war, not the denunciation of all things military.

It’s time for Clinton to pass the pipe to the military. The peace pipe, that is.

It’s time for everyone, including the President, to inhale deeply from it.