Friday, February 06, 2004
Flashback: Mike Royko
So I'm in the upper peninsula over Chuckmas break and I decide to contribute to the local economy by purchasing a used book from the local library for a dime. "Sez Who? Sez Me" by Mike Royko*. Below is one of his columns included in the book.
The Hollow Ring of Peace
January 24, 1973
Mike, the newsstand man, was alone at State and Madison, shivering in the cold night.
“Nah, nobody’s been around celebrating,” he said. “What’s to celebrate?”
The end of the war. Mr. Nixon said it on TV, half an hour ago.
He shrugged. “That so? Now maybe we can take care of things in this country, huh?”
A young couple came around the corner, heads down in the wind. They disappeared down the subway ramp and the corner was again empty.
It wasn’t like 1945, when the end of the war brought a million people downtown to cheer.
Now the president comes on TV, reads his speech, and without a sound the country sets the clock and goes to bed.
And that’s as it should be. There is nothing to cheer about this time, except that it is over. Even the announcement could have been put more simply. Mr. Nixon’s efforts to inject glory into our involvement were hollow. All he had to say was that it is finally over.
“Peace with honor.” He had to use the wilted phrase that has been with us most of the war. He said we obtained it.
It is hard to see the honor.
We have just finished ten years of pounding a little country that most of us hadn’t heard of until we were there.
We threw everything, short of The Bomb, at them. At one point we put more than half a million troops into it. We killed them up close on the ground and from high in the air. We used old-fashioned infantry tactics and modem electronic warfare. We scorched their forests and bombed their cities. Nobody will ever know how many of them we killed.
With all that, we got a draw.
Before it ended, the word “frag” was introduced into our vocabulary. That’s when enlisted men murder their own officers. Drug addiction replaced VD as the GI’s ailment. Before it ended, we had put our own men on trial for murdering civilians; pilots were refusing to drop any more bombs.
After all that why even talk about honor?
“Let us be proud,” he said, “of those who sacrificed, who gave their lives that the people of Vietnam might live in freedom.”
More hollow words. Almost twenty years ago another war ended in a draw and we were told that our boys had died for somebody’s freedom. Now the South Koreans live under a dictatorship.
And so will the South Vietnamese. If it isn’t communism, it will be some other form of iron rule. They will be told what they can say, write, read, or think. They are almost there already. When they step out of line, they will be tossed in jail.
Why kid ourselves? They didn’t die for anyone’s freedom. They died because we made a mistake. And we can’t justify it with slogans and phrases from other times.
It was a war that made the sixties the most terrible decade in our history. It tore us internally. It left many with a lust for revolution, and others with a lust for repression. It saw young people crossing borders or going to prison rather than fighting.
If we insist on looking for something of value in this war, then maybe it is this:
Maybe we finally have the painful knowledge that we can never again believe everything our leaders tell us. For years they told us one thing while they did another. They said we were winning while we were losing. They said we were getting out while we were going in. They said the end was near when it was far.
Maybe the next time somebody says that our young men must fight and die somewhere, we will not take their word that it is for a worthy cause. Maybe we will ask them to spell it out for us, nice and slow, and nice and clear.
And maybe the people in power will have learned that the people of this country are no longer willing to go marching off without having their questions answered first.
I hope we have learned these things, because there is nothing else to show for our longest war. If we haven’t, then we are as empty and as cold as the intersection of Madison and State.
# # #
Not bad for a dime, huh?
*Mike Royko began his career as a columnist writing for the Chicago Daily News. When that newspaper folded, he moved to the Chicago Sun-Times. He quit there the day the paper was purchased by Rupert Murdoch. Royko finished his career at the Chicago Tribune, where since 1984 his column was syndicated nationwide. He was an admired though sometimes controversial commentator on local and national issues, always concerned with the plight of working-class people. His awards include a Pulitzer Prize (1972), The National Press Club Lifetime Achievement Award (1990), and the Damon Runyon Award (1995).
So I'm in the upper peninsula over Chuckmas break and I decide to contribute to the local economy by purchasing a used book from the local library for a dime. "Sez Who? Sez Me" by Mike Royko*. Below is one of his columns included in the book.
The Hollow Ring of Peace
January 24, 1973
Mike, the newsstand man, was alone at State and Madison, shivering in the cold night.
“Nah, nobody’s been around celebrating,” he said. “What’s to celebrate?”
The end of the war. Mr. Nixon said it on TV, half an hour ago.
He shrugged. “That so? Now maybe we can take care of things in this country, huh?”
A young couple came around the corner, heads down in the wind. They disappeared down the subway ramp and the corner was again empty.
It wasn’t like 1945, when the end of the war brought a million people downtown to cheer.
Now the president comes on TV, reads his speech, and without a sound the country sets the clock and goes to bed.
And that’s as it should be. There is nothing to cheer about this time, except that it is over. Even the announcement could have been put more simply. Mr. Nixon’s efforts to inject glory into our involvement were hollow. All he had to say was that it is finally over.
“Peace with honor.” He had to use the wilted phrase that has been with us most of the war. He said we obtained it.
It is hard to see the honor.
We have just finished ten years of pounding a little country that most of us hadn’t heard of until we were there.
We threw everything, short of The Bomb, at them. At one point we put more than half a million troops into it. We killed them up close on the ground and from high in the air. We used old-fashioned infantry tactics and modem electronic warfare. We scorched their forests and bombed their cities. Nobody will ever know how many of them we killed.
With all that, we got a draw.
Before it ended, the word “frag” was introduced into our vocabulary. That’s when enlisted men murder their own officers. Drug addiction replaced VD as the GI’s ailment. Before it ended, we had put our own men on trial for murdering civilians; pilots were refusing to drop any more bombs.
After all that why even talk about honor?
“Let us be proud,” he said, “of those who sacrificed, who gave their lives that the people of Vietnam might live in freedom.”
More hollow words. Almost twenty years ago another war ended in a draw and we were told that our boys had died for somebody’s freedom. Now the South Koreans live under a dictatorship.
And so will the South Vietnamese. If it isn’t communism, it will be some other form of iron rule. They will be told what they can say, write, read, or think. They are almost there already. When they step out of line, they will be tossed in jail.
Why kid ourselves? They didn’t die for anyone’s freedom. They died because we made a mistake. And we can’t justify it with slogans and phrases from other times.
It was a war that made the sixties the most terrible decade in our history. It tore us internally. It left many with a lust for revolution, and others with a lust for repression. It saw young people crossing borders or going to prison rather than fighting.
If we insist on looking for something of value in this war, then maybe it is this:
Maybe we finally have the painful knowledge that we can never again believe everything our leaders tell us. For years they told us one thing while they did another. They said we were winning while we were losing. They said we were getting out while we were going in. They said the end was near when it was far.
Maybe the next time somebody says that our young men must fight and die somewhere, we will not take their word that it is for a worthy cause. Maybe we will ask them to spell it out for us, nice and slow, and nice and clear.
And maybe the people in power will have learned that the people of this country are no longer willing to go marching off without having their questions answered first.
I hope we have learned these things, because there is nothing else to show for our longest war. If we haven’t, then we are as empty and as cold as the intersection of Madison and State.
# # #
Not bad for a dime, huh?
*Mike Royko began his career as a columnist writing for the Chicago Daily News. When that newspaper folded, he moved to the Chicago Sun-Times. He quit there the day the paper was purchased by Rupert Murdoch. Royko finished his career at the Chicago Tribune, where since 1984 his column was syndicated nationwide. He was an admired though sometimes controversial commentator on local and national issues, always concerned with the plight of working-class people. His awards include a Pulitzer Prize (1972), The National Press Club Lifetime Achievement Award (1990), and the Damon Runyon Award (1995).
