The Fog of Peace

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Is it forgiveness or a desire to forget that greets a young traveler to Vietnam?

There is one question that we must answer after every war: Can there be forgiveness? Laurel Wamsley, the daughter of a Vietnam-era veteran, went to Southeast Asia looking for the answer and was surprised to find herself so welcomed. Edward Tick, a psychotherapist who works with war veterans, regularly leads reconciliation trips to Vietnam. On these journeys, he has learned about war's impact on a people and their land, and one culture's openness to forgiveness. We bring you their articles because we think in this time of war in Iraq it is important to look back in order to see where we are headed. -- The Editors

My father remembers. When I ask him why he volunteered to join the Air Force in 1972, he remembers: "Because otherwise I would have been drafted into the Army. My draft number was 38." When I ask him how he knew he had to get out of the service in 1976, he remembers: "There was a crash. My friends hadn't gotten any sleep because they'd had to fly the hardest route: from the Philippines to Japan to Tacoma. They were exhausted -- they made a mistake. And when they died, everyone in the chain of command blamed someone else. Finally, they blamed my friends, who were dead on the side of a mountain."

John Kerry remembers the war, and so do John McCain, Daniel Ellsberg, and Robert McNamara. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton remember it, too.

No matter what you were doing at the time, you remember. And even people my age, just 20 years old -- we feel like we remember. We have seen the movies, heard the stories and the sound tracks. Vietnam is our country's most famous mistake, and we can't forget it. Always there are voices that tell us that if we forget, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes we made there. That if we don't remember, if we don't make the pilgrimage to the black granite wall in Washington, D.C., the Americans killed in Vietnam may have died in vain. We may have lost the war, but we want to think that still something was gained. We are wiser now, surely.

I went recently to Southeast Asia because I had no doubt that the Vietnamese remembered. I wanted to sit along the Mekong River with a middle-aged woman who would tell me how it was during the war, and how she would never forgive us for it. I wanted to come to terms with what we did to their country not so long ago. I wanted proof that we were screwing up the world -- I wanted witnesses.

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