For the Record; 103; Bobby Muller

it's been is by these production funding for four the record is provided by a grant from the perry foundation the voice as an artist and we have techniques to get through that i reached mind that the idea that all of the land mines in the area that something

from the miller center of the university of virginia a conversation on politics policy and the presidency for the record with charlie mcdowell our guest today on for the record is bobby muller a vietnam veteran who returned home to become the co founder of the vietnam veterans of america and the viet nam veterans association foundation dedicated to helping war victims around the world in it unites only found another organization the international campaign to ban land mines and that group was awarded the nobel peace prize thank you for joining us mr malo unwelcome this damn war was a turning point in your life and you spent years trying to making a turning point for the rest of us must go back to what set up this particularly when you order to be a man was really nineteen sixty seven had to feel about it i actually tom

was leaning into it i enlisted in the marines i tell the story that when i was in college i was five foot eight and around a hundred and thirty pounds but i was in good shape so there's no reason not to serve in one day on campus they had a marine corps recruiter and this guy honestly was six foot four around two hundred and thirty pounds so when you're alone when i am you see somebody like agassi yeah that's my flight i joined up with the marines and now and if you've ever seen stanley kubrick's film full metal jacket you understand a little bit of what happens in the process of marine corps training i know it was an extraordinarily good fiction and i wound up guiltily john wayne character demanding vietnam was on him and i could have had any job i wanted i demanded infantry and i got my desires i want to be you know a lot of people don't realize that calm junior offices in vietnam where over eighty five percent casualties i wanted to feel would set new tenants all seven of the other lieutenants were medivaced before mia less than it was before to blow to the chest and in fact there were

more us marine casualties in vietnam then there were us marine casualties in the entirety of the second world war on a canal you wouldn't any insight and you know all of that we had more years we can't be so for those of us that were actually involved in fighting a war on it was a big one and also rock n soc from that tell us about becoming an activist isnt at war advocate on i took a bullet through the chest com go on up the hill held by north vietnamese soldiers and it was really the miracles of modern age where we had medivac helicopter is already coming in saigon literally means a medical evacuation of the shot and would my lock the hospital ship the uss repose was right off the coast where i got hit i gotta medivaced hospital ship got tremendous medical care but nonetheless they put in my medical records that had i arrived one

minute later i would have died since both lungs had collapsed so i came back to new york and you're sitting with a veterans' hospitals been here yet kingsbridge and you know going back at hospital ship just for a second i was in intensive care for days and they sent a psychiatrist and he says reading you wanna talk about your presumably because those of the palace from the chest down and i said to him on yap how come i could sit down as i had literally a couple of days before and you know you want multiple wanted that got as i said is there something wrong with me how come this doesn't affect any more and he said look you know you've been in an extreme situation you mind creates its own defense mechanisms you go back to the states and then the word the time those mindsets of them are on them evaporate and you'll come back to more normal sensitivities and i got it and maybe obvious but it was true coming back and having a year in hospital reflecting on what i did in vietnam what i saw in vietnam noted

which matched the expectations of what i had going to vietnam let me to conclude you know that this war was was crazy that then the violence that we we're unleashing on the people you know couldn't be justified in his suppose that the same color really we were the enemy you can read them or you just activist that when you saw the truth of whatever you saw it as ordered that is on the grunion yeah that's a you know you don't come out of an armored combat where the juice is a flawed and you know basically i don't think any of my guys got into philosophical discussions about it because right wrong was based on the color of the uniforms is you know we're going out and doing that was it only come back you go through you know reflection and then you start asking questions that you never really asked going in and they sought to talk to other people and you realize wait a second you know not

only did this not fit what we've been told the holding wanda being crazy so it was a gradual process of becoming ultimately a failing militant activist against the war so you had gone to in amman sixties nineteen sixty seven and lloyd raises sixty seven when vietnam sixty eight ok n and by the mid seventies you had founded to be at ma'am veterans associations tell us how they evolve and what were they what were their missions the most important missions justice for vietnam vets will plain and simple and when i came back on the hospital that i spent a year in kingsbridge va hospital in new york city in the bronx wound up being on the cover of white man using as a scandalous expos amy use my ward while i was there and it was the second largest selling issue life magazine you never put out because it showed the conditions at least some of us is returning vietnam veterans

have to deal with it was overcrowded it was understaffed it was physically dilapidated you know what what the magazine piece didn't capture really was either the suspension literally of the despair that permeated the place the fact that eighty of the guys from spinal cord injury service committed suicide including my closest friend i think was somewhat better testimony to the conditions that were there when president nixon vetoed the veterans' medical care expansion act which would've improved spieth want clinics and other aspects of the outgoing vetoed on the grounds that was fiscally irresponsible and inflationary that's the day i left the playing field went down to times square and got a whole bunch of old people wheelchairs and we watch the traffic and said hello this is this is nuts and and that really was you know get justice you know decent medical care all recognition and respect from vietnam vets that apple and waited years for somebody would normally seem to do it pretty well leo tell a story you want to first get them

just returned to the waters as president of the vietnam veterans of america you know we were there in the national group of vietnam vets and i felt it was important that we begin a process of reconciliation the war had ended years ago and i don't think anybody could you know really get ahead of the vets in terms of extending a hand to the former enemy and say you know what let's get beyond the war plus we had concerns in a lot of american troops were exposed a jar of which was than fully use that to me contain that's an infinite services but i didn't say we can tell you which guys were exposed and therefore we get to study so we don't always sit well with the laboratory vietnam no accountability is there that were heavily saturated with spying people of live their baby eating food and drank the water let's look at what their health consequences were so for that plus the counting of the missing from the war we went to hanoi and eighty one as the first group of american vets and offered a

hand of friendship and said let's start on on reconciliation and dealing with some of the legacy issues of the war and it was a profound experience to go back on it even though i had felt the war was wrong i didn't like to be an easy existence a difference between intellectual process in your emotions and just emotionally and he said a problem going back and the symbolism a scene and meeting with the detainees not in the context of war within that you know possibly the enemy but regular people you get to know plus they get to know the guys who fought against one night in hanoi we talk about the missing in action and we had four of us on one side of the table and six mutinies on the other we talk about how important was forced to get an accounting for a full timers and every one of the six guys on your side and table open the picture and the sorry the balloons are shrapnel wounds or something all of our combat vets and a dental us about knowing their culture how important

is this to have the remains of your debt and we just connected on an extraordinary level and we began programs and medicare systems and and real reconciliation efforts would be had now and obviously back in the eighties one of the key issues that was preventing the politics of reconciliation was what was going on in cambodia due next at hand so we went to cambodia and that's when my life changed really changed on because what took place in cambodia was genocide literally between a quarter and a third of the population died within four years and when i went through torture centers and literally went through killing fields you know we agreed that this would go through these fields and bones would be crushing on dresses as we cross the field to see literally over ten thousand human skull stacked up in a pile and to understand the heart and the brutality that played out almost killing fields on shook me to my soul where bland man's a tremendous factor in that everything you know as as obvious as it is

landmines world war of terror weapon for us in vietnam you know when you go to step one stupid thing i don't even i didn't recognize that when the war ended we put the machine guns would put the artillery pieces with that the tanks helicopters the plank having that way except the landmines that stayed out there buried hidden to do what they were designed to do what they can do for decades going back to asia and realizing that there were literally millions of land mines all over place in cambodia when the fighting had taken place there land mines with a principal weapon and there were more land mines in cambodia than there were people we set up a project because in the capital area mom and when we went there there were thousands of amputees all over the place and a couple of my guys were multiple a big tease because landmines from vietnam we said that something we know a little bit about and we set up a clinic to make one official legs when we did that we not only intellectually understood that this

was a devastating problem but we emotionally connected to the victims it was the poorest of the poor it was a peasant farmer it was a couple years ago a leading victim of landmines in cambodia when they were going into the forest to gather firewood to sell it is a disability and that it's designed not to kill you and want to design a peculiar did designed to mutilate and like my guy said that's still come into the office every day you know they've had fifteen or twenty operations they have phantom pains they literally had a life of continuing you know real pain and suffering because of the design of what this weapon is so you see these poorest of the poor that don't have the ability in a society where muscle power counts to get on with their lives and it really grabs the other point is that these are armed robbery basis it is they need to land and when the wind came into cambodia and tried to relocate hundreds of thousands of refugees from the tidewater back into cambodia they couldn't do it because the lancet villages had been

contaminated with landmines so when you got a wary and societies and its cambodia afghanistan are in polo kurdistan and you'd contaminate the land you denied these countries in the side is the ability to get back on their feet so really this little stupid three dollar weapon is the major de stabilizing factor in third world countries recover from conflict it's only once you understand it which may not be obvious at first then you say wait a second we got to get rid of his weapons and being at the world has said it'll poison gas and chemical biological weapons despite their ability to kill and not acceptable and have the most for been eliminated from conflict we said levine had an impersonal and wants less than seventeen billion other statistics on that killed an ancient things like that the latest measure the terrible impact of these weapons the icrc the international committee of the red cross estimates that there are

over twenty six thousand people overwhelmingly civilian people there getting blown up by landmines each year around the world each year each year it's estimated that there are anywhere between seventy to ninety million landmines in the ground buried in over fifty countries in these buried weapons go on for decades you know it's not like you know the clock runs out on him they say they're able to do what they were designed to do which is to blow the lead off whoever happens to step on it for years and they don't respect peace agreements they don't respect the end of conflict and they go on and we're not one of the first things that we did in trying to deal with his weapon was we went to the pentagon was it a cutlery these millions of landmines and a rap and i was shocked when an announcer then as it will sweeney don't and they said look we've always dealt with landmines as an obstacle on a battlefield and we have

techniques to get through that obstacle to breach mind you but the idea of actually going to lift all of the landmines in an area that's something we've never done so what i'm telling you is that you know just a few years ago nobody really had a concept on how to do humanitarian the mining to lift the land mines out of the ground to return the land from productive purpose is staggering what the weapons that was overemphasized it's hard to imagine that the defense of lemons in nineteen ninety seven twenty four retired four star general's role under president clinton arguing that banning a lamb mine's would compromise us security family in a serious way what's gone on here of those twenty four people to clear out of their car to everest was a building that they think somehow justifies the land they just got called up and said hey we need to support the company alive and that's all that was you know they we had gotten the pentagon on the ropes and they called in their reinforcements we

started off bringing the military into that debate because the fear of gulf war gen schwarzkopf was one of the signatories on an open letter ninety six that we published in the new york times the president's own you're setting your ever does a week we had we had general schwarzkopf we head ah don't dowd former nato supreme allied commander we enjoy hollingsworth who said about defense instructions and korea indicted in star wars all president reagan before chairman of joint chiefs is that no all saying get real land mine for the military reason in the military reason is they were the leading cause of casualties for us soldiers during the vietnam war and according to the defense department's own reports and ninety percent of the cases that our guys the blowup by landmines we got blown up by our own land mines or land mines adhere to our component are the leading cause of casualties for un peacekeepers and our nato peacekeepers lance not only on land mines an indiscriminate weapons between civilians and combatants but they're also indiscriminate between good guys and

that's as i said before you know we really can't find things is we don't have the capacity to enter the grounds so poor man's weapon which is used as a weapon how to destabilize the saudis winds up being the leading cause of casualties poor man's weapons against us soldiers so you know it's our argument that if you want to be friendly to us soldiers get land mines off all the battlefields that they may be sent on in the years to come as only the institutional inertia the reason that the joint chiefs have in support of getting rid of landmines i guarantee he has really very little to do with lemons it has to do with what we sat now closed doors and say hey what's going on guys and they said look if you take a land mines weightless we're going down a slippery slope that is going to the cluster bombs and subdivisions in other categories of weapons that are also indiscriminate watch leigh ann would have a humanitarian argument and if we allow the president to be set on the basis of an apperson a land mines we don't know where it's coming

up so you know it's a little disingenuous for these guys say they need an i personally am minds when we're the most sophisticated military power in history and all these other countries and said we can do with our land mines you say we can't it's ridiculous we have thirty five thousand troops in south korea and we would they like to the festival lilian craze north korea million and when the landmines to protect these thirty six thousand probably was older than general officer that set up a defensive structure for korea john hollingsworth darrell hollingsworth is one of the strongest supporters of this campaign to ban land mines specifically in korea he said look at tactical advantage is now mobility interview all the sudden start spreading in a prison a land mines alone replace your compromising our major tactical advantage now maneuverability and speed the other thing is you got a three mile militarize oh below that he got a six mile military buffer zone

you've got nine miles of you know naturally convoluted land would announce that has got more tank traps and more defensive structure said in any other piece of earth anywhere in the world it is subjected to withering anti aircraft fire missile fire artillery fire yet those north korean camps were to somehow get through these tank traps these naturally channel ice terrain and supplied the missiles and the aircraft and artillery with an actress ellen month and left it's ridiculous it's easy if you think about it for thirty seconds the argument annapolis where the convention is of course an ad that belief that connection or thirties if we didn't have the land and we have to double triple quadruple the number of troops and then the american the public would begin to walk out of this organ and you know i'll take any opportunity in any public forum to argue that the military and i'll have you know on an institutionalized military

personnel are required to carry company line ford i get people that this country anywhere will respect his military leaders on the other side and on you know product now how important is it that president clinton has announced that the united states will in twenty oh six and be ready to join that so many of our allies in imposing new soul and dance what is important about what the president said last year is that he reversed the position he'd taken the year before which was not to get rid of landmines not not to get re women's you know we had an extraordinary year back in nineteen ninety seven you know this issue of land mines you know captured world attention really because of diana when the prince is a whale dies and she had in the months prior to her death in bosnia holding a landmine victims had gone to

handle when she died those were the images that people associate with i and even president clinton when he announced to the nation that she died no mention that she had dedicated your life to ending the scourge of landmines so you know the people's princess gave this issue ad connectedness the people all around the world and that was the weekend that she died was when ninety countries came together to negotiate a treaty and they said let's call a banana tree and there was this extraordinary well of support to get rid of land mines an end in many ways out of respect for diana and two weeks later it was our president that said no and he said no in an unequivocal way that we would not get rid of land mines what happened last year was that he reversed that decision and said okay we will get rid of landmines with a look at two thousand and six is the date to develop alternatives awakening get rid of landlines

that is an important shift and the military has accepted the fact that they have to find alternative ways other than the instrument use an apperson a land mines to do and what they think of the military to leave the weapon they still represent that concept is a strategic shift but it's not guaranteed it still predicated on vulnerable time there's this president's going to go on and it's just you know that for down the road is too long to wait when you go not all the other countries around the world that are going to be brought in russia china india pakistan that will only come on board after the united states we do have a leadership role in our can jump ahead is the real good outlook that if you can get the war heroes as you have video of the senator's to the man who had been in we can bring all these people together including former military officers you name for his birth and all that mr crazy to think we need more schwarzkopf's and those that have the conventional sort of military yeah you're right on the

money i think what made this campaign electorate but what really got it was in washington will bring in the military and you know it was counterintuitive it was doors open and a little left normally disable peace groups bring in these right wing dies nobody can challenge them on their macho that patriotism or whatever as as leading spokespeople in this campaign was it was staggering after the second world war we have the geneva conventions and this year is actually the fiftieth anniversary of the geneva conventions designed to protect civilians in war they don't mean anything rowan moore won ninety five percent of the casualties were military people today more than ninety percent of the casualties are innocent civilians conflict around the world has transformed into nothing less than the slaughter of innocent people and partied awaited that's waters realizes to actually indiscriminate use of force and landmines the table re presented a caf he says civilians is a perfect example of the indiscriminate nets of violence and

it's a way to tease out the people that it's no longer a relic it's not a matter of armies this is a slaughter of innocent people and that's what we got to get on saddam's weapons thats why the united states is so critical if you get an international treaty with all these countries it's a hollow treaty without the world's superpower the united states the effect of the treaty is not in its enforcement language effective training isn't how it stigmatize is a weapon and make an acceptable know you got bed guys happy that the saddam hussein's you know what yet begun to use poison gas and chemical weapons but you know what they labeled a pariah and i'll never be welcomed at the family of of of men stigmatizing his weapon so that anybody who uses it paid the price in public opinion can only be done if united states noises treaty and doesn't say as it's currently saying it's ok to use this weapon it undercuts the entire moral authority of this treaty congratulations on the group before and in the sense of groups congratulations on one of those groups were in the

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