 Author's program note. I woke up lathered in sweat again, the way I had most every frightening night when every "dream" was a nightmare. As is the way with dreams, each disconnected scene was supremely real, surreal, always accurate in the way the brain renders accuracy. And, of course, that made what played in my anxious brain so influential. I was dressed in khaki and went, alone, into a cave in an area which "Charlie" traversed with impunity and murderous effect. Everything was as it should be; thus profound terror emanated from the most normal, prosaic of features... the real world rendered into a thing of peril and hazard. I entered a world of filtered light, where every sound from the receding reality above was muffled, indistinct. There was no sign of menace... and yet I knew the most profound of menaces was here, fully present, and lurking; ready to change everything in an instant. ... And then that instant came... I hardly felt the bite; thought, "just another irritant in a jungle of irritants", and softly cursed every person who had anything whatsoever to do with my present position on the highway to Hell, that included the mother who bore me and told the world I was destined for greatness, able to handle anything, including my present situation. But she was wrong... Then I saw it, saw it up close and horrible, its scales glistening; a mixture of fear and nausea seized my body and high jacked my mind. Its tail was tied to the ceiling of the cave... its mouth was deep in my face, my left eye now blinded, blood and venom the cocktail of death, running down my face. One summer I had almost drowned at Lake Michigan. Before the life guard pulled me out, I discovered the truth of something I had long heard but was skeptical about, namely that as death approaches your life does indeed flash before your eyes... it was happening again now... fast, so fast I couldn't grasp every image as it sped by, but I knew each was passing for the last time... ...the way my young mother looked at me as she read when I was 4 and still an only child... a long forgotten incident when my grandmothers came to blows about whose sailor suit I should wear to the park... and the day I learned my best friend had died tragically and achingly young. I was working on a book in this very room and sobbed at this desk... but I finished my quota. Both of us were that way... and he came at the end, in this dream to smile and reassure... Now I was woozie. The snake still bit deep, its work already sufficient... but death had one more macabre refinement. Thus before I woke up, as one always does in a dream, I turned to see a cave filled with such reptiles; all impaled up-side down, mad with hunger and in sight of their easy prey... These snakes were coming for me now... And then I woke up... exhausted, appalled, disoriented, another casualty of a war that was killing everything I loved about America. An article in the daily paper on Vietcong atrocities had captured my attention. And this was the dread result... Against this background of rancor, hatred, contempt, malice, recriminations, unremitting bitterness, lies, distortions, rage, and disdain, one man of the old school of journalism and history set out to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the most tragic episode in our national life. He chose to tell the truth about the Vietnam War, 1955-1975. 19 years, 5 months, 4 weeks, and 1 day. 58,156 dead... over 580,000 pints of blood, an ocean of life force wasted... each drop eroding our civility, our values, our life, liberty and our once sacred honor. His name was Stanley Karnow, and this is his story. The facts. Every great nation is great in part because it never forgets and makes it a point to honor its historians, keepers of the critical facts of national identity. These people must put aside their own, often profound and adamant, viewpoints and put mere opinions on the side, for their job is not to pontificate infallibly, but to discover, consider, confirm and know... then to report honestly on what they find, even if that starkly and completely contradicts what they may think or believe as private citizens. Each true historian enlists under the stern banner of the Greek muse Clio, the muse of history. Her service is difficult, often thankless, needing energy, an infinitude of patience, the ability to see a thing in its wholeness, not merely in (perhaps erroneous) part. Such people spend much time alone; they need peace, quiet, time to gather the essential facts, the ability, like King Solomon, to make often exquisite judgements. Most will provide their essential service to humanity with scant recognition, if any recognition at all. They will work for minimum recompense, riches a notion, rarely a reality. One word sums up historians in general and Stanley Karnow in particular: integrity. Integrity means a consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, outcomes and, above all, the kind of honesty it takes a lifetime to hone and perfect. Karnow had it... it defined him, his work, and now his place in Clio's eternal gallery. Born in New York 1925. Historians may, of course, come from anywhere, but those from the Big Apple are blessed. They live surrounded by every good thing on earth, including the most shrewd and clever of savants and partisans. It is a great advantage. Karnow, for all that his father was just a salesman, had it. And, like so many New Yorkers with ambition in their blood, he gravitated to media early and for life; starting by writing high school radio plays, writing for and editing the school newspaper. Harvard took him, of course; they were good for each other. After Harvard, almost automatically, came Paris, of course. Harvard people need savoir faire, require polish; Paris is, therefore, de rigueur. And, if he stayed longer than most (10 years), he emerged as a man of sophistication, wit, the right word rightly used with devastating effect, mordant, aphoristic, eminently quotable. By luck of the draw, his first book (for books there must be) was "Southeast Asia," an illustrated Life World library release published in 1962, before the United States committed ground troops to Vietnam. Thus, at a crucial moment in our history, as the number of troops swelled, the right man to scrutinize and report events was available and on the spot; which is what is meant by destiny. And so he, uniquely, covered the mounting horror of apocalypse from its first two American fatalities to the unimaginable humiliation of a country and city he had once loved, like he had loved Paris; all the time reporting the plain truth, as all good journalists are trained to do. People who adhered to the standard Pentagon and White House lines excoriated him but truth was never their mission as it was his. "What did we learn from Vietnam?", Karnow later told Associated Press. "We learned that we shouldn't have been there in the first place." But, you see, the key point isn't the conclusion he arrived at, but the means he used to get there. For Karnow started where most of us started, supporting our government because we believed each president who advanced the "Domino Theory" and its every refinement. However, as Karnow, who was arguably the nation's #1 authority on the matter, scrutinized the data closely and arrived at the truth, as conscientious researchers will do, he changed his mind. Thus by stages, he understood, and as he did he grieved for the Great Republic which his work, no matter how controversial, always served. Now this man of truth, of discernment, of judgement is dead. But he has left us a masterful repertoire, including "Vietnam: A History", published in 1983 to coincide with a 13-part PBS documentary series. It was honest, complete, without rancor or bitterness. 9.7 million viewers tuned in per episode. Each viewer was grateful, for they, too, wanted truth, not the party line, left or right. That is what they invariably got with Stanley Karnow, "the fortunate son." Envoi In 1969, Creedence Clearwater Revival released a bitter song called "Fortunate Son". It was written by John Fogarty and if nothing else it showed how very different the music of the Vietnam War era was from that of World War II. It is featured in the film "Forrest Gump". Listen to its acid lyrics and ask yourself if you could have been invariably and consistently fair-minded, like Karnow, as the greatest nation on Earth destroyed its essential community in futile pursuit of a goal which cost us everything and gave us nothing. As I ask you the question, so I ask myself. |
