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One Story Among Many of How Our Veterans Continue to Lead and Inspire Us

Posted by DCA Theater on February 20, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, INCUBATOR Series: The Vet Art Project

by Janis Clark Johnston, Ed.D., Licensed Psychologist and Vet Art Project collaborator

The stories of our Vet Art participant veterans are powerful in their recreations of the daily tragedies of war. Not only has the Vet Art program stirred up many war-related memories in my mind, it has rekindled a desire to be more politically active.  I am grateful to a veteran who inspired me to write a letter to President Obama about the purpose of the current wars.
 
In the recent (February 9, 2009) Newsweek article, “Obama’s Vietnam,” I was struck by the article’s comparison of our current wars to the horrific situation my generation faced in Vietnam.  Military expert Douglas Lute’s statement that the U.S. has “never been beaten tactically in a fire fight in Afghanistan” is akin to the Vietnam era military expert Harry Summers’ exchange with a North Vietnamese Army expert.  When Summers had stated, “you never defeated us in the field,” the Vietnamese military officer simply replied, “That may be true.  It is also irrelevant.”

It is time for the U.S. to be “relevant” on so many fronts.