I hope I can keep this blog short enough. It will be hard, as it’s partially about my dad, and I worshiped the ground he walked on. It’s about looking back at Vietnam with the current perspective of people, mostly neo-cons, who seem so quick to pull the trigger.  And, it’s philosophically about man and war.  That could be ten blogs, but I’ll be quick.

Angry words about Vietnam between fathers and sons were common in my generation. Anger at the breakfast or dinner table over the war and cultural changes taking place were almost a right of passage. I was lucky. Although not escaping testy words with my father, as many of my friends experienced, my father’s life unlike his politics was not actually conservative.

He had fought in the Spanish Civil War and somehow escaped with his life, avoiding Spanish prisons. It was the depression and he saw a flier on a pole offering mechanics work. He ended up in Spain fighting on both sides just to stay alive. He made it home, sneaking aboard a freighter headed with Spanish cork for New York, and then somehow  made it across Omaha Beach and to Paris.  The 13th child and 7th son, he was also a decent artist and a guitar player.  I was lucky to be even born, and have received due warnings of late from my metaphorical guardian angel. (My dad, the Barry Goldwaterite, would never mention that flier looking for mechanics was posted in Chicago by a socialist brigade, but who else would do it? He did say he was hungry.)  Maybe just following Hemingway as he was prone to do. Continue reading →