{"id":48384,"date":"2021-05-31T09:18:36","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T13:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=48384"},"modified":"2021-05-31T09:18:41","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T13:18:41","slug":"op-ed-on-memorial-day-a-beer-for-billy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=48384","title":{"rendered":"Op\/Ed: On Memorial Day, A Beer For Billy"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Walt Herbert<\/strong>, Special to The Times<\/em><\/div>\n
\n

\"\"<\/a>When Memorial Day comes I think about Billy Rountree, the star center fielder on my high school baseball team who was destroyed in Vietnam. Two of my teammates were killed in Vietnam; Billy had worse luck coming home. When the team got together in later years, we would raise a ceremonial glass and say \u201cA Beer for Billy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Rountrees were a decent and devout Methodist family, the father an expert carpenter, and their firstborn Billy was everybody\u2019s favorite kid. He was big and strong and handsome and hard-working, with abounding good cheer.<\/div>\n
\n

The Billy who went to Vietnam was an Eagle Scout who had completed the requirements for the God and Country Award. The Billy who came home was insane.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

He was hateful to the preacher, hateful to his parents, hateful to his old buddies. No way he could keep a job. His parents were horribly ashamed. They believed that going off to war was a test Billy had failed, and that they had failed as parents.<\/p>\n

Billy was venomous, really scary. \u201cBullshit\u201d he would hiss at people who tried to talk to him; sometimes he shouted \u201cbullshit\u201d at nobody in particular. People stayed out of his way. He became a drunk and a derelict and eventually disappeared into a slum in Tampa, Florida.<\/p>\n

Still, his old buddies claimed him. \u201cA Beer for Billy\u201d we would say. We felt a kinship, craziness and all.<\/p>\n

I grew up to become a professor and a student of American history, and now believe that Billy went mad because he was betrayed by the America on which he staked his life.<\/p>\n

The best book on Vietnam is Neil Sheehan\u2019s A Bright Shining Lie<\/span><\/em>, which spells out the official falsehoods put forward as truth in that misbegotten adventure. In later years I wrote a book called Faith-Based War: from 9\/11 to Catastrophic Success in Iraq<\/span><\/em>.<\/p>\n

A widespread public faith holds that America has the strongest military in the history of the world, so we can fulfill our God-given mission of spreading democracy and defending free societies against their adversaries. Freedom and democracy are to thrive worldwide, so we believe, at gunpoint. We believe that American weapons can force people into embracing freedom.<\/p>\n

This orthodoxy has been crashing against the rocks of reality for better than half a century now. Our military forces failed to install\u00a0 democratic regimes in Vietnam, in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

No politician wants to get trapped between cherished public delusions and the realities that expose those delusions. Fear of entering this dangerous zone is a major reason why Congress has ceded to the President its Constitutional authority to decide on going to war.<\/p>\n

Wars become \u201cforever wars\u201d because politicians dread being branded as losers. We sacrifice additional soldiers not for the sake of victory, but for the sake of protecting high officials from the political consequences of admitting defeat.<\/p>\n

Strategic thinking has become politically dangerous. We see ourselves as virtuous winners, and don\u2019t know how to figure out how we got to be losers, or how to change course.<\/p>\n

Nor do we reckon with the real-world political cost of abandoning allies who put faith in us \u2014 from the South Vietnamese to the Kurds, and now the Afghans. You don\u2019t have the strongest military in the world if your allies can\u2019t trust you.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s far worse to betray your own people, as the fate of Billy Rountree shows. How many of the crazed hooligans who attacked the Congress on Jan 6 were enraged on behalf of working-class buddies who ended up in military service for what?\u00a0 It\u2019s not hard to hear Billy\u2019s cry of \u201cbullshit! bullshit!\u201d echoing through that mob.<\/p>\n

The Congress must stop dodging their responsibility for sending sending young men and women off to war. I\u2019ve written to Representative Chrissy Houlahan, Senator Bob Casey, and Senator Pat Toomey asking them to abolish the the Authorization for the Use of Military Force adopted in 2002, which wrongfully transferred that Congressional power to the President.<\/p>\n

As you celebrate Memorial Day \u2014 please write to your elected representatives. Honor those who have lost their lives, and the Billy Rountrees who came home wrecked.<\/p>\n

Walt Herbert is a resident of Kennett Township.<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Walt Herbert, Special to The Times When Memorial Day comes I think about Billy Rountree, the star center fielder on my high school baseball team who was destroyed in Vietnam. Two of my teammates were killed in Vietnam; Billy had worse luck coming home. When the team got together in later years, we would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7426,326,13854,13295,8026,13853],"class_list":["post-48384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","tag-featured","tag-memorial-day","tag-remembrance","tag-soldiers","tag-vietnam","tag-wars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48385,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48384\/revisions\/48385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}