Paralysis from the chest down as a result of serving in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War may sound like devastation beyond reconciliation, but for Ron Kovic, it became a transformative and politically enlightening experience. The two-tour veteran amplified his activism a few years after being discharged from the army with honest and insightful writing about what serving in this war was truly like. His best-selling memoir, “Born on the Fourth of July,” was published in 1976 and later was made into a film adaptation directed by Oliver Stone.
He continued his activism, most notably with his second book, “Hurricane Street,” following his nationwide organization of the American Veteran Movement, which fought for improved conditions in VA hospitals. Akashic Books recently published Kovic’s third book in his autobiographical trilogy— “A Dangerous Country: An American Elegy.”
In this book, Kovic explores his realization of empathy for the enemies he had been trained to hate and how it was the first step in the development of his anti-war position. “In the intensive care ward in Da Nang, days after I was wounded ... They brought a wounded Vietnamese gentleman, a man right across from me. They told me he was a Viet Cong. So I had the enemy directly across me. How ironic, how strange. And he had been wounded severely and he was literally fighting for his life, as I was at the time. We were across from each other. And I remember looking at him and, I didn't see the enemy anymore that I'd been taught to hate, to kill.”
He relates his experience to what is currently occurring in Gaza and Israel, “...We may not be sending troops to Ukraine; we may not be sending troops right now to Gaza, to Israel. We may not be sending our young men as we did in Vietnam but nonetheless, we provided tons of ammunition, bombs, bunker busters. Many of those casualties happening just the other day are consequences of our own country's involvement, our own country's contributing of these violent weapons of war and so we continue. I think we are dangerous in this world, dangerous to ourselves right now.”
Kovic wonders if the “average citizens who vote to go to war, in these different polls that come out before any war is ever fought … really know the true consequences of [what a] war does,” and hopes his books can trigger an awakening in the American public about what a danger this powerful country has become. Ron Kovic joins Robert Scheer on this week's episode of Scheer Intelligence to discuss the third installment of Kovic’s books about the dangerous culture of war profiteering that has taken root in American society with forever wars that serve no one but the war machine.
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