Phony-Baloney Veterans

March 2, 2015

From a veteran who doesn’t use reserved veteran parking:

I was a major university faculty member for 20 years until retiring last year at age 70. Because I was in the Marine Corps Reserve from 1962 to 1968, I was classified as a ‘war veteran.’ However, the truth is that during that six-year period, the Corps never sent me closer to Vietnam than San Clemente Island, which is just off the coast of Southern California, near enough to hear Dodger radio broadcasts. I have never claimed, hinted, or even allowed anyone to assume that I’d served in Vietnam, yet the University explicitly designated anyone who served during the 1960’s or 1970’s as a “Vietnam-era veteran.” On a few occasions, I was embarrassed to be among University employees receiving applause “for service,” even though when I enlisted as an officer candidate in 1962, I was convinced that there was absolutely no likelihood of the U.S. going to war anywhere in the world in the ensuing six years. I joined because I thought the experience would do me good, not to fight communism. My experience might be unusual, but I don’t think so. There is a surprising number of “war-era veterans” – just like “war-zone journalists – who never got close to bullets or shrapnel. They are no more deserving of plaudits than those who run drone programs from far off computers or, for that matter, who snipe with high-powered rifles at these presumed enemies from hundreds of yards off. I wonder how many phony-baloney “veterans” like me use these specially marked parking places.

Posted with permission.