By SARAH DORSEY
Observer Staff
Nov. 8, 2007

Photo by Janine Cooper

The founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial said the wall has changed the way America greets returning veterans, including today’s service members in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jan Scruggs, a wounded and decorated Vietnam veteran, said the memorial – which will reach its 25th anniversary this week – was the symbol that taught Americans to separate the war from the warrior.

Today, even opponents of the Iraq war praise the troops who fight it. Scruggs attributes this to the healing brought about by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

“If you died in those days, aside from a public funeral, you got little recognition,” said Scruggs.

“But those who died would have the last laugh,” he said, because their names are permanently etched in the wall’s black granite face.

Scruggs said Phillip Caputo’s graceful and elegiac writing inspired the memorial.

“There are no memorials, for memorials are reminders, and Americans don’t want to be reminded,” Scruggs recalls reading in a Caputo book about Vietnam.

Scruggs became determined to create a place where veterans of the war would no longer be forgotten.

It seems to have worked. Today, according to Scruggs, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial hosts about four million visitors per year-more than even the Lincoln Memorial, which only gets about three million.

According to Scruggs, the site set a precedent in America, where it used to be rare for mourners to leave artifacts at memorials. Over 100,000 items have been left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Scruggs said, and the practice has become commonplace at other sites, including the site of the World Trade Center.

Scholars have tried to understand the wall’s almost religious effect on visitors. Scruggs quoted professors like the
University of

Wisconsin’s Edward Linenthal, who said people make “pilgrimages” to the Vietnam memorial to be “transformed” spiritually. Scruggs noted that visitors’ reverent behavior resembles the solemnity you normally find in church.

Scruggs said the Vietnam memorial’s power comes from the key role it had in America’s national reconciliation. It’s no accident, Scruggs said, that the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial lies in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial.

“The most divisive event in our country was the war between the states,” Scruggs said. “The second most divisive event was the Vietnam War.”

Scruggs said after the Vietnam War, Americans needed a way to transcend their political differences over the war, and to come together to mourn, and they found that in the wall.

The lesson is an important one for today’s troops serving overseas.

American service members in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting an unpopular war, and, Scruggs said, their attitudes remind him of those of Vietnam veterans.

“If you ask Vietnam veterans if fighting in the Vietnam War was a wise course in American foreign policy, their attitudes mirror those of the general public,” said Scruggs.

Iraq war veterans, he said, are the same.

Since most Americans disapprove of the war in
Iraq, that means many service members must be having similar doubts.

But according to Scruggs, the climate has changed since the
Vietnam era. Vets frustrated with the mission face a public that agrees with them – but still openly appreciative of their service. In fact, honoring the military has become an important part of public discourse about the current wars.

Scruggs recalled John Kerry’s 2004 presidential nomination speech in which he spoke against the war, but said, “We have learned to separate the war from the warrior.” Scruggs said he was amused that the message he and his fellow veterans pushed when they created the memorial had made it all the way to the speeches of presidential candidates.

Patrick Coy, the director of the Center for Applied Conflict Management at Kent State University, cautioned against overstating the poor treatment of troops during the Vietnam War.

“Much of the popular perception that troops were rejected and abused and spat on was apocryphal, was fictional,” he said. “There’s truth to some of that, but much of it was overblown, especially with regard to the peace movement.”

But Coy said the popular perception that the troops were abused after the Vietnam War helped create today’s climate, in which people on all sides of the debate over the current wars praise the troops who fight them.

Coy says the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was the single most well-known symbol of that national change in attitude. And he said the new focus on supporting the troops has enabled the peace movement to expand the dialogue.

“They do it in very creative ways,” he said. “They talk not just about the troops, but also about the troops’ families. . . but also about the Iraqi civilians. If you want to be concerned about the human element, then they say let’s expand that concern.”

Those who want to reflect on the toll of war will have plenty of opportunities at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial this week. Ceremonies marking the wall’s 25th anniversary will continue through this Veterans’ Day weekend.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell will give the keynote address at a parade this Saturday, and a reading of the over 58,000 names of the dead will continue at the wall each day through Saturday night.

For more information about events for the 25th Anniversary of The Wall, click here.