by James Ruhnke

Created on: January 15, 2007   Last Updated: September 17, 2009

Here is something you will never read anywhere else. I am a Vietnam veteran and I will explain the mindset that turns "good boys" into mass murderers.
In 1969 I was drafted into the US Army. I had been brought up watching John Wayne war pictures and it was a given that everything America did was good and all of our enemies were inherently evil. Soldiers saw themselves as carrying on the tradition of their WWII fathers. I arrived in Vietnam in November of 1969.

Immediately, there was a sense that something was wrong. The people did not welcome us as I had envisioned. They looked at me as though I were something to avoid, something to be feared and something they wished would go away. Whenever they did approach us it seemed it was only to get our money. Whether it was sex, drugs or a can of Coca-Cola, they dispensed those items as if they were selling their souls to a devil.

As they were at a military disadvantage, the tactics that they used against us were ambush and booby traps. You rarely actually saw an enemy soldier. You only saw the aftermath of their "sneaky" attacks. The attacks were successful and it was difficult for an American soldier to accept that he was being beaten fair and square. There must be cheating going on and we transferred our attention to what we could see. The civilians were coming into our sights.
Every Vietnamese became an enemy. We started to see them as less than human and something to be exterminated. After all, it looked as though it was the only way to win that war. There was a saying, "Kill 'em all and let God sort them out". We had all of this firepower and nothing to shoot at. So, like a pheasant hunter, frustrated at the end of a fruitless hunt, we started to shoot at anything that flew. Remember, we were only 19 or 20 years old.

We knew nothing of having our own children and how wonderful they are. All we were seeing was smaller versions of the same enemy. Indiscriminate firing into populated villages became the norm. We were no longer trying to save a country from communism. We were trying relieve our boredom, survive and go back home. We called home "The Real World" as if Vietnam were some fake movie set.

This is what happens when a war has no sound basis for starting it and when there is no strategy for winning it. Killing becomes the strategy. It is up to the leadership to ensure that this does not happen again. The leaders are older, have children and have the experience to know better. But then maybe they do not. Iraq is looking very familiar to me.

Learn more about this author, James Ruhnke.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.