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University News - Feature Issue: 10/26/05 Dropping The Bomb on Vietnam Myths By Monica Tomutsa/News Editor Last week, co-author of Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation was Robb ed of its Heroes and its History BG Burkett, shed light on wide-spread and completely false misconceptions surrounding the Vietnam War. While trying to raise funds for a Texas Vietnam memorial, he realized that the media's influence and false coverage had altered the memory of Vietnam for the worse. Correlating Burkett's lecture and the Vietnam War with something the UD c ore esteems, Thomas G West, politics professor, drew upon Plato's image of the cave in his introduction. "We here at UD read Plato's Republic and are shown Plato's cave, but what does that mean in the real world? Plato's cave suggests that the human condition is that we are all living underground chained in, with our eye s riveted on the wall in front of us where we see nothing but shadows ma de by people hiding behind us. We think the shadows are reality," he sai d West explained how Plato's Cave is still pertinent today. "If that image is true, it means that we as Americans and UD students for the most part believe a lot of nonsense; An other thing that we learn from the philosophers is just how hard it is t o get out of the cave. We talk about the cave, but most people who talk about it are still in the cave. They say, 'well I've done the UD core cu rriculum-I'm out of the cave, I'm wise, I'm a philosopher' but when you ask them about current events you get the standard opinions," he explain ed. Burkett graduated from Vanderbilt University before he toured Vietnam wit h the 199th Light Infantry Brigade from 1968-69. When he returned, he mo ved to Dallas where he has been a stockbroker for the last 35 years. He was also an adjunct professor at UD for three semesters. Burkett grew up in a military neighborhood and his father was a World War II airforce colonel. "Going in the military was not something my father necessarily encouraged or discouraged; it was just an accepted thing that when I got out of co llege I was going to go in the military. I had other siblings and paying for a bunch of kids to go to college was expensive," he said. During his senior year at Vanderbilt, Burkett went down to the Little Roc k airforce base and enlisted to go in two weeks after graduation. "The fact that there was a war going on didn't really enter into the ques tion one way or the other, and actually for most of us who served in Vie tnam. Call it the stupidity of youth, but there was a little bit of exci tement that we weren't just going to practice the game for three years w e were actually going to get in the game. After serving in the military from 1966-1969, Burkett went to graduate sc hool in Tennessee and then moved to Dallas. In the mid-1980's, a friend of Burkett's from Vanderbilt told him about an organization that was try ing to build a Vietnam memorial in Texas, but was having trouble raising funds. He asked if Burkett would be interested in going to a meeting wi th this group and he agreed. There virtually wasn't a communit y in the state that wasn't touched by the losses at Vietnam. We realized this organization didn't know what they were doing and were already in debt $100,000," Burkett said. "Being in the financial world, I knew how to approach the foundations and corporations. So we found another partne r and my friend, Paul Russell, and I jumped into it. Burkett was in charge of fundraising, Rus sell handled all construction and city-permits, and the other co-chair, because of his connections, became the rainman. Burkett said the universal response from foundations and corporations whe n he solicited donations, was "Why would we give any money to those bums -meaning Vietnam veterans?" The guys I served with were the crea m of the crop, and a lot of them came from Ivy League schools. I realize d very quickly I didn't have a fundraising problem, I had a public-relat ions problem," he said. Burkett decided to find the root of the problem, and called the Departmen t of Labor to find employment statistics for Vietnam Veterans. The unemployment rate in the econo my at the time among all males was 6%," he said. "But among the men who went to Vietnam it was 39%--the lowest unemployment rate of any major g roup in America. Burkett looked into the apparently high suicide rate among Vietnam vetera ns and found it was not even remotely true. "Vietnam veterans have one of the lowest suicide rates in America. The tw o years after the war there was a slightly elevated rate that was only m odestly higher then our peers who never went into the military. Widespread Vietnam Veteran homelessness is another myth. "Back, around the late 70's Teddy Kennedy had a $10 million government gr ant to have a building in Boston for all the homeless Vietnam veterans. Several of guys gave testimonies about how they ended up on the street a fter Vietnam, but I got the military records of those individuals and vi rtually none of them were Vietnam veterans," he said. Burkett said other investigations have shown that very few "homeless vete rans" were in the military. Another myth he dispelled was the incarceration rate of Vietnam veterans. The prisons are not full of criminal veterans, Burkett said. "I went to the bureau of prisons and got the statistics, the demographics . As I mentioned 90% of Vietnam Veter ans do have a high school degree. You can't get in the military with a f elony conviction and 80% of the incarcerated have a felony conviction as a youth offender. About 75% came from broken homes, but about 80% of Vi etnam Veterans came from a 2-parent home," he said. Another falsity surrounding the war is the exceptionally young age of enl istees and draftees. Burkett explained that the draft starts with men in their mid-20s and wor ks down. "The average age of Vietnam Veterans was 23 at the mid-point of their tim e in Vietnam," he said. "Of the 18 and 19 year olds that died in Vietnam , 97% of them were volunteers." Burkett said drug rates were also low among Vietnam veterans, partly due to surprise inspections. But when you're living in a bay with 40 guys and you may be g oing into combat, I can guarantee if you're doing drugs-marijuana or oth erwise-the 39 other guys are going to report it because they're not goin g into combat with some pot-head," he said. Drug rates increased at the end of the war, due to the bitterness and bor edom among the troops waiting to come home, Burkett said. "By that time, over 90% of anyone who had served in Vietnam had already c ome and gone, so the high drug rate occurred among just that 10%. And th e vast majority, whatever they were taking, they quit taking the day the y came home," he said. Burkett said race was another politically incorrect myth he tackled. Because of less access to medical care and lower educational rates, black s failed the physical and aptitude exams at a higher rate than whites. "Nobody's ever telling the real story of the black man in Vietnam. Twenty won the Medal of Honor, 100 won the Distinguished Service Cross and dozens upon dozens won the airforce cross and the Navy Cross. "Nobody knows that about 300 went on to become admirals or generals in th e armed services of America," he said. Burkett also refuted the idea that it was only the poor or middle class w ho served and died in Vietnam. Contrary to an explosive story that said rich kids stayed home, Burkett s aid high per-capita income communities like Beverly Hills, and Grosse Po inte, Mich. actually had significantly higher casualty rates than the no rm. Burkett countered the argument that there was widespread desertion and ch aos amongst the ranks by comparing Vietnam with WW2. He also said person al problems-like a dying father or unfaithful girlfriend-were the preval ent cause. "There were 250 desertions in Vietnam over a 12-year period and only 24 o f those gave the war as an excuse for desertion. Similarly, Burkett refutes the popular media claim that Vietnam was the w ar of atrocities. "I didn't hear of one single atrocity from my unit in the six years I was there. Over the 12 years of war t...
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