While some wounds in U.S. have healed, many remain raw.
By Michael Tackett and Tim Jones
CHICAGO TRIBUNE, IL
WASHINGTON - At one end of the National Mall, Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) is walking into the Capitol for a vote, with students on the steps instantly recognizing him and calling out his name. At the other end, in his 18th year of manning a POW-MIA booth, Chris Horstman sits in a wizened obscurity.
Between them lies the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the dark, brooding, V-shaped wall that begins with Jessie C. Alba on slab 70E and ends with John H. Anderson on slab 70W, commemorating the more than 58,000 war dead. The wall descends below street level and stands in contrast to the nearby soaring tribute to World War II service.
Thirty years after the war's end, Vietnam remains a catch-all metaphor for this nation's most troubled period in the last half-century, still evoking anger, ambiguity and resignation. While memories of the conflict recede, the war continues to affect the nation's politics, military strategy and culture.
Last week, in Kansas City, Mo., Vietnam veteran Michael Smith, 54, waited in line 90 minutes for the chance to spit on Jane Fonda. That is one side of the divide.
Earlier this month, the family of Sheldon Burnett of New Hampshire was able to bury his remains - found last year in Laos - at Arlington National Cemetery, after first learning of his disappearance 34 years ago. That is another side.
Vietnam sparked huge protests on America's college campuses. Today's college students can hardly relate.
"I really don't have any connection with it," said University of Minnesota freshman Kelsey Murphy, 19, from Lakeville, Minn. She also cannot recall whether her parents ever discussed the war. And that is yet another facet of the argument.
There are many others. The mere mention of the word Vietnam can still start an argument, and never perhaps as easily as in Washington. But those strong feelings seem to erode with time and distance. For most young Americans, in particular, Vietnam is just another grainy montage in the study of U.S. history, known to them more for the student protests and music the era spawned than for what happened on the battlefield.
McCain has lived that ambiguity and triumphed over it. A veteran celebrated for his heroic role as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, McCain said he had hoped this country had moved on. But when the issue surfaced so prominently in the 2004 presidential campaign - particularly with the attacks on Sen. John Kerry's war service - he realized it had not.
"Unfortunately in the last presidential election we found that we have not moved on at all," McCain said. "Thirty years, and it still divides us."
"The legacy is that this is still the second-most divisive conflict in the history of our country - the Civil War being the first - and unfortunately, I don't think the wounds will heal completely until those of us who fought in that time pass on. I hate to sound so pessimistic."
Yet pessimism is one of the clearest and cruelest bequests of the Vietnam era to the United States. Some experts believe it started a cycle of civic disengagement, leading to a drop-off in voting and in faith in the institutions of government.
And while Vietnam can still expose raw disagreements, Americans largely share the view that it was a mistake to wage war in the jungles of Southeast Asia. The Vietnam War ended April 30, 1975, with the fall of Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City.
"The public looking back agrees that the war was a mistake, was not a just war," said Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, which has surveyed U.S. attitudes on war for more than 50 years. "But that doesn't mean there can't be all kinds of debates about who performed honorably or not. That is a different question."
As the Democratic presidential nominee, Kerry tried to make his Vietnam combat experience a central part of his personal campaign narrative, as a measure of his credentials to be commander in chief. But instead, that set off a reexamination of his service record and his role protesting the war when he returned.
Although service in Vietnam helped to launch the political careers of Kerry, McCain and others, it by no means proved a gilded credential with voters.
Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 despite criticism that he avoided service in Vietnam. Then George W. Bush, who secured a spot in the Texas Air National Guard that almost certainly ensured he would not go to Vietnam, defeated Al Gore, who did serve, and then defeated Kerry four years later.
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R., Neb.), who served in Vietnam in 1969 along with his brother, Tom, believes, unlike McCain, that most soldiers "have put it behind us. And we should."
The 2004 campaign, he said, was "more about one Vietnam veteran than it was about the war."
Beyond Washington, memories of Vietnam are kept alive largely by war memorials and POW-MIA groups.
On college campuses, Vietnam is seen through a more general lens of war, largely the stuff of academia and movies.
To Bob Herman, 68, a professor of genetics at the University of Minnesota, the legacy of Vietnam has been mostly forgotten.
"For me," he said, "it's what a big mistake the whole thing was, and I don't think we've learned a thing. Now, here we are in Iraq."