VLVL Vietnam: new book reviewed

[pynchonoid]

August 30, 2003
The Red Badge of Knowledge
A Review of TDY by Douglas Valentine
By ADAM ENGEL

Remember Pete from college, circa 1971? Older than
most under-grads--early twenties. Quiet, introverted,
so it's no big deal if you can't place him. Didn't do
anything special except lead that small chapter of
Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and there
weren't many veterans on campus, so why should we
remember Pete?

Well, Pete's seen some things we're not supposed to
see, that nobody is supposed to see, except maybe the
CIA. It's not Pete himself--after all, he's only
Pete--but what he remembers that should concern us
now, for what Pete remembers about being conned into
accepting a TDY mission (military talk for "temporary
duty," a one-time gig) that blew his mind with a truth
so hot as to be almost useless, like napalm, has not
only happened before, to Pete and his whole generation
in South East Asia, it's happening again all over the
world. Bigger, scarier, more intense, with less
accountability for a few and more despair and misery
for the rest.

[...]  No, Pete's not all that important--again, he's
only Pete--but his memories, what he has seen and
done, described vividly in Douglas Valentine's
masterfully concise"TDY," are extremely important, for
they tell the usually unspoken and unspeakable story
of America's experience in Vietnam. Thousands of
Americans were suckers, conned into playing a game the
y didn't even know they were playing, not even after
the game allegedly "ended."

But Pete, the narrator and protagonist of "TDY," to
quote another Pete, "Won't get fooled again." Will we?
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. But not necessarily,
and not always. It is possible even for us--and most
of us are not as sharp as Pete--to learn from
experience, which is probably why books like "TDY" are
written: to prevent us, for the love of Pete, from
being fooled again and again and again.

So how'd Pete get into this mess? Same way we all get
into all our messes (even Iraq): first gradually, then
suddenly. Pete was a more or less "ordinary" guy who
went to college in the mid-sixties, intent on becoming
a photographer. He misplaced his priorities, flunked
out of school, joined the Air Force to avoid being
drafted into the Army.

[...] So when a TDY comes his way, Pete signs on. The
mission was to last a couple of days, nothing
dangerous, his superiors assured him. They just needed
an experienced photographer to take photographs.

But things get creepy. First gradually, then suddenly.

[...] Pete and the TDY crew touch down not in South
Vietnam, but Laos. They are frightened and confused,
particularly since they're staying near a village of
Montagnards (mountain and jungle dwelling tribes
recruited as mercenaries by the CIA; wouldn't know Ho
Chi Min from Lyndon Johnson). The Major and his
security team draft a crew of Montagnards to assist
with the Mission. [...] The Air Force suspects certain
Americans of dealing opium with drug lords in Laos.
Pete and the technicians are there to collect sounds
and photographs; the security team is there to ensure
the safety of this material and, as a second priority,
the lives of the technicians. 

[...] But Pete is not a soldier, he just works for the
Air Force Corporation. 

[...]  Thus Pete loses his "innocence" about good guys
versus bad guys in record time. There are people,
mostly CIA people, who are making money off the war.
Lots of money. And living like royalty in relatively
inexpensive South East Asia. While American soldiers
and Vietnamese civilians are dying by the truckload in
order to pursue the fantasy war described in the
American Media.

Instead of hanging around an Air Force base bored,
waiting for the CIA to kill him, he accepts a gig in
the relative safety of Vietnam, where he will not see
combat, but work as an English Language Instructor to
South Vietnamese, and get his share of the action on
the "black market."

"Money was the name of the game and I learned how to
play the game well. I taught four hours a day, five
days a week, and that's all. The rest of the time was
mine, and in the afternoons the Vietnamese Air Force
and Army officers would pay me as much as two hundred
dollars a session to go to their homes and give
private English language instruction to their
families. It was a gold mine, and once the money
started pouring in from my extracurricular tutoring, I
moved out of the MACV annex into a hotel on Trung
Huang Dao Street. My Vietnamese lover was living with
me, I was making about three thousand dollars on the
side, and I was doubling those earnings on the black
market by changing military script and money; and by
selling all sorts of commodities, from liquor and
cigarettes to major appliances and marijuana."

[...] Douglas Valentine's "TDY" is dense with action,
dense with meaning. Pete is an allegory not just for
the typical American soldier, but for the typical
American of his age and era, and "TDY" is America's
Vietnam parable.

Pete wasn't anxious to join the military, but if it
would help him pay to continue his education, and he
could join the Air Force rather than end up a grunt in
the Army, he had no strong feelings against the war.
Once in the Air Force, Pete is offered money for a
special "TDY" mission he is assured will be safe. Why
would his superiors lie to him? When he finds out the
mission is definitely not safe, he figures it must be
important, otherwise, why would the Air Force pursue
it? And so on, down the line of lies, deceptions,
subterfuge, greed and violence until Pete himself,
coming to believe that there are no "good guys" or
"bad guys," engages in the very practices the Major
died to prevent.

To learn the extent to which this existential Odysseus
navigates the "moral ambiguity" that changes his life
(and America's) over the course of the Vietnam War, I
refer you to "TDY," by Douglas Valentine. Or you can
travel to Iraq or Columbia and experience your own
"TDY." Just because the average sucker is not quite
the sucker he used to be (pre-1967), and "knows" a
little more about how things work, it doesn't mean he
will use this knowledge to pursue the general good
rather than his own financial portfolio.

After all, how many of the soldiers and CIA operatives
the American Empire has stationed all over the planet
were even born when Pete experienced the animal
adrenaline rush of his first kill?

<http://www.counterpunch.org/tdy08302003.html>





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