Butcher Shop
March 13, 1995
Vince says I was courageous to avoid that butcher shop.
Which makes me as courageous as Bill Clinton,
Dan Quayle, and 60% of the rest of my generation.
Bob says he was a fool to go to war,
and Tim O'Brien (in The Things They Carried)
even says he was a coward.
Well thanks, fellows, but no thanks.
I may be a coward, but I won't be a liar and a hypocrite.
They were brave.
I was not.
Bravery is when the man says,
"Put your ass here, no matter what,"
and you put it there.
They thought it was right, and so they went.
That took guts.
I wouldn't take that from them, even if I could.
No, I salute them, especially the ones like Bob
and Ron Kovics and Oliver Stone and the VVAW
who first said yes, and then said no
and thus were two times brave.
I'll turn out for their parade, anytime.
I thought it was wrong, so I didn't go.
That wasn't guts.
I would have gone to Canada, but I lied at the physical
and lucked out, then lucked out again on the lottery,
the same one the President lucked out on.
Was that guts?
I checked a few wrong boxes on the questionnaire
and got in to see the shrink. I didn't think I had a chance,
any more than I'd had to pass the CO test.
"Tell me about your mother," the shrink said.
I couldn't believe it. I'd read some Freud, too.
"Well, she's very attractive..." I began,
and looked distraught, which wasn't hard at all.
I had a beard then, too, which might have helped.
Or maybe he just wanted to give me a break.
Then I found a civilian shrink to confirm the diagnosis –
"Schizoid blah blah blah" – meaning the war was crazier than I was.
A "mass neurosis," the doctor called it.
A great understatement, I thought.
Smart? Naw, not hardly.
The smart ones, like Bill and Dan, played their cards better
and made it to the White House, where they can fight their wars
in comfort, with no blood, no pain,
and no guilt. After all, the people elected them.
I was just lucky.
Now about stupidity.
Bob says it was a stupid war
and how could they have been so stupid?
That was my question, too, a long time ago
and then I buried it, because there was no answer.
I could believe that Johnson was a stupid man (not true)
and that Nixon was just plain depraved (true)
and that my countrymen were patriots
because that's how we were brought up.
But what about those Harvard guys –
the Bundies, the Rostows, the Kissingers,
the best and the brightest, the Whiz Kids?
I knew I wasn't smarter than they were.
I couldn't even get into Harvard.
But any child could see it.
The national security at stake in Vietnam?
Not even close.
"Saving face," they called it, in the end
and more tens of thousands died
conquering nothing, defending nothing,
least of all us, or freedom and democracy
under slimeball dictators named Ngo and Ky and Thieu
whose names were as unspeakable as they were.
"Hell Ngo, we won't go!" was my only answer then.
I could never get my mouth around the other stuff, like
"Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today!"
Weren't we all Americans, somewhere down the line?
How could our own government be the enemy?
Absurd.
But how could they be so stupid, when they weren't?
An unnecessary war, and they refused to stop.
What could be more stupid, or immoral?
Then, as Bob says, they added stupidity to stupidity
and didn't fight it properly.
How could they be so stupid?
There was no answer, so I stopped asking.
Then finally it ended, and the historical consensus grew
like grass over the graves: "A well-intentioned error.
Uncle Sam is innocent, Uncle MacGeorge and Uncle Henry
and all the other uncles, on the grounds of stupidity.
They didn't know the war would cost so much –
$570 billion, accounting for inflation,
and all those lives. How tragic."
But my question was never answered.
Until I saw Jack's head snap back
and all that blood come out of my TV set.
I knew then, because I was hit
and nothing hits that hard but the truth.
I couldn't prove it, but I didn't have to.
I was my own Exhibit A.
Later, when I read about JFK's withdrawal plan,
my mind caught up with my gut
and I knew where all the blood was coming from.
It was the blood of my dead brothers.
They had found me.
I felt their pain, which was much greater than my pain,
and their anger, which was much greater than my anger.
I had become a conduit, having tapped somehow a giant reservoir
of blood and bile deep in the bowels of the earth.
I felt like a volcano, watching itself erupt.
I knew it was them because they found me,
not the other way around. I wasn't even looking.
I was sound asleep. Never had the slightest curiosity,
never read a single book or article about the assassination,
knew nothing of the evidence, never connected it with the war.
I was a victim, too.
They lost their lives, and I lost my mind,
like Rip Van Winkle, for a quarter of a century.
But I'm back now, motherfuckers.
I know the answer to the question.
It took me 25 years to figure it out
but now I know.
It's the wrong question.
They weren't stupid.
They were lying.
An unnecessary war, and they refused to stop.
What could be more stupid, or immoral?
Then, as Bob says, they added stupidity to stupidity
and didn't fight it properly.
How could they be so stupid?
There was no answer, so I stopped asking.
Then finally it ended, and the historical consensus grew
like grass over the graves: "A well-intentioned error.
Uncle Sam is innocent, Uncle MacGeorge and Uncle Henry
and all the other uncles, on the grounds of stupidity.
They didn't know the war would cost so much--
$570 billion, accounting for inflation,
and all those lives. How tragic."
But my question was never answered.
Until I saw Jack's head snap back
and all that blood come out of my TV set.
I knew then, because I was hit
and nothing hits that hard but the truth.
I couldn't prove it, but I didn't have to.
I was my own Exhibit A.
Later, when I read about JFK's withdrawal plan,
my mind caught up with my gut
and I knew where all the blood was coming from.
It was the blood of my dead brothers.
They had found me.
I felt their pain, which was much greater than my pain,
and their anger, which was much greater than my anger.
I had become a conduit, having tapped somehow a giant reservoir
of blood and bile deep in the bowels of the earth.
I felt like a volcano, watching itself erupt.
I knew it was them because they found me,
not the other way around. I wasn't even looking.
I was sound asleep. Never had the slightest curiosity,
never read a single book or article about the assassination,
knew nothing of the evidence, never connected it with the war.
I was a victim, too.
They lost their lives, and I lost my mind,
like Rip Van Winkle, for a quarter of a century.
But I'm back now, motherfuckers.
I know the answer to the question.
It took me 25 years to figure it out
but now I know.
It's the wrong question.
They weren't stupid.
They were lying.