High time

Woodstock Nation turned 40 over this past weekend or something.

As it is obviously time for some reminiscing and introspection, we’d like to invite the Nation down to Fort Campbell, Ky. to start making some amends.

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) -- Tears filled the eyes of some Vietnam veterans who were warmly greeted with cheers from their family and friends Sunday -- unlike their original return from the war, when they were often met with angry demonstrators and harsh headlines.

The ceremony was a first for the 101st Airborne Division and the Army, said Maj. Patrick Seiber, an Army spokesman based at Fort Campbell in Kentucky.
"Our hope is that other units and other posts will follow our lead in having this type of ceremony," he said.

Mickey Leighton, a 72-year-old Army veteran from Naples, Fla., said listening to the applause and praise from the community was very emotional.

Leighton, who started his military career at Fort Campbell in 1956, served two tours in Vietnam including the Tet Offensive. He returned in 1972 in the midst of angry anti-war protests that often placed blame on the individual soldiers.

"We were treated very shabbily," he said. "In some cases they would throw eggs at us, they would throw empty beer bottles at us and they would call us baby-killers."

One of the beauties of this country is that we learn and we have effective changes of heart. Enough Americans came to believe that slavery was wrong that we fought a war over it with our own countrymen and brought them back into the fold "without malice". And later, during the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s, enough Americans came to believe that segregation and polling place discrimination was wrong that legislation was put into place to drive a stake through the heart of Jim Crow.

And now, we have come to embrace the fact that our treatment of Vietnam War veterans was despicable and that there needs to be an atoning for this sin and it started with the very different treatment we gave to returning troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and which really started back in '91 during the first Gulf War.

Let the process for completing the circle continue. Lead the way, Boomers. It's long overdue.