Veterans for Common Sense

October 3, 2008 – The Army is launching a new war against an old foe: the lingering problem of sexual violence within the military.

Last month, 80 high-ranking generals gathered at a hotel in Alexandria, Va., for a mandatory, weeklong summit devoted to combating the crime. In a Sept. 22 essay in Army Times, Army Secretary Pete Geren and Gen. George Casey, the service’s chief of staff, said it was “repugnant to everything a soldier stands for” and promised a “zero tolerance” policy for harassment or assault.

The approach comes in direct response to a batch of new Pentagon data indicating that 2.6 soldiers per 1,000 reported a sexual assault last year. In the Marine Corps and Navy, it was 1.1 per 1,000; in the Air Force, 1.6 per 1,000. The Army began tracking the numbers only in 2006, and officials say they don’t have enough comparable data to determine whether the problem is getting worse over time.

Army leaders hope a major change in their strategy for combating these acts of violence can bring the numbers down. The service has long focused on dealing with the aftermath of an assault. Now it will try to prevent the crime from occurring in the first place.

The centerpiece of the new effort — known as “I AM Strong,” with the I AM standing for “intervene, act, motivate” — is a call for soldiers to confront peers who are abusing alcohol or exhibiting other possible harbingers of an assault, such as making suggestive comments. The Army also wants soldiers to alert higher-ranking personnel if their colleagues’ behavior doesn’t improve.

“We’re trying to change the culture,” said Carolyn Collins, the program manager for the Army’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program. “We want soldiers to look for red flags and take steps to address them before they turn into something serious.”

The military has been wrestling with the problem for decades. But some female veterans say the Army’s macho culture has enabled soldiers to behave in ways that would be unacceptable in the civilian world.

“We’ve heard all of this talk before, but nothing ever seems to change,” said Wanda Story, the national commander of the United Female Veterans of America, an advocacy group. Ms. Story said she was raped twice by fellow soldiers, in 1985 and 1986. She said she continues to be contacted by young veterans who say they were assaulted at the hands of other military personnel.

The Army’s first formal attempt to curb sexual violence was put in place in 2004 after a spate of high-profile cases. It focused on deploying “sexual assault response coordinators” to all military installations and expanding the range of counseling services.

It also allowed victims to choose whether they wanted the Army to open formal criminal probes into alleged assaults or to receive medical and psychological assistance confidentially. Army officials concede that the program fell short.

“We’re four years down the road, and we’re not where we want to be,” Ms. Collins said.

An August 2008 Government Accountability Report found that the military’s efforts to combat sexual violence had been hampered by a lack of support from some senior commanders and by a shortage of qualified mental-health professionals.

The survey found that 103 service members at 14 military installations said they had been assaulted within the preceding 12 months. But only 51 of the victims reported the crime to the authorities, with the remainder worrying that coming forward would hurt their careers, according to the report.

“Most people keep quiet because they don’t want to believe it happened to them or because they’re scared of what will happen if they speak up,” said Susan Avila-Smith, an Army veteran who runs Women Organizing Women, an advocacy group.

Ellen Wainwright, a former medic, says a higher-ranking enlisted soldier forced her into his room on a large U.S. base near Baghdad in early 2006 and raped her. Afterward, he warned her not to tell anyone. Ms. Wainwright kept quiet for two months and says he raped and sodomized her repeatedly before she finally chose to speak out.

In April 2006, she gave a sworn affidavit to agents from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. She was sent back to the U.S. on emergency leave. A few days later, Army officials told her she was being involuntarily discharged for psychological reasons. Ms. Wainwright says it was retribution for speaking up.

Army investigators said that they had “probable cause to believe” the alleged assailant had made inappropriate comments to Ms. Wainwright and made an unwanted overture to another female soldier. The investigators said they could not “establish sufficient evidence to prove or disprove” the assault allegations.

Efforts to reach the man were unsuccessful. Army spokesman Paul Boyce said the service “carefully investigates” all sexual assault allegations but avoids “discussing matters naming individual victims or alleged victims” because of privacy concerns.

Ms. Wainwright was unemployed for nearly two years after leaving the Army and says that she and her husband continue to litigate the terms of their divorce, including custody of their young son. Ms. Wainwright’s husband couldn’t be reached for comment.

Ms. Wainwright said that she had reluctantly concluded that her alleged assailant was right when he told her to stay silent.

“It would have been better for me to have kept my mouth shut,” she said.

October 5, 2008 – The war on terror, which has now lasted longer than World War II, is producing a growing family of combat veterans. It’s a disconnected family, large and far-flung, but close in ways that battle-tested soldiers always are.

I saw that for myself the other day in Stony Point, N.Y., at a church conference center as tranquil and green as Iraq and Afghanistan are not. It was a weekend workshop run by Vets 4 Vets, a Tucson nonprofit that is setting up peer support groups around the country for a new generation of veterans.

Most of those attending – two dozen men and two women – had never met, but they immediately opened up to one another, sharing war stories that some said they had never told anyone. These were not disabled vets – not visibly, anyway. But after two days, listening from a chair outside their circle, it was clear this was a wounded group.

Michael Rudulph: “A lot of times my anger, my frustration, feels totally, 100 percent justified. But in the back of my head I know that’s messed up.”

Kevin Cajas: “We were exposed to trauma so much we became addicted to it. We became trauma junkies. It doesn’t go away, so you’ve just got to learn how to manage it. I liked it; I’m not going to lie.”

Everyone had a transition story. Shifting from “hunter-killer mode” to husband-student mode is so sudden, it’s insane. One day you’re in Baghdad, the next you’re in Atlanta, passing rows of cheering civilians at Hartsfield airport. Then you get on with your life. The price is steep, in sleepless nights, troubled consciences and buried anger.

People have no idea, the veterans said. Ryan Knudson, from Phoenix, told me what a lifeguard at a pool had asked him: “Is it, like, all warry over there?”

Yes it is. Do you want to hear about it? No, said Mr. Knudson, you probably don’t.

Mr. Cajas: “We were the go-to platoon. When you’re on the go, you’re in a manic rage of violence, nonstop. My body’s just accustomed to that. I picked up my friends’ body parts. My roommate got his face blown off.”

Mr. Cajas was in a quick-reaction force, the guys who knock down doors. “We did a good job,” he said. “The irony of service is, we did a good job, and came back different. This is what it does to humans. The analogy we used was prison. We were locked in the base, and every time we were released, we had to go kill people. We acted like animals because that’s what we were.”

It was hard to watch them beat up on themselves, although their intense expressions of guilt seemed like signs of intact souls. One veteran told me he was haunted by the realization that any trauma he suffered was multiplied a hundredfold for the Iraqis he shot at.

Some gave me tips to pass on to the civilian world: Don’t ask The Question (Did you kill anybody?). “Support the Troops” magnets mean nothing to them. And military culture is not big on touching: the main things civilians want to do to soldiers – hug them and get them drunk – are generally not welcome.

Vets 4 Vets has only a few hundred members in about a dozen cities. Its founder, Jim Driscoll, has roots in the antiwar movement, but insists that this group is apolitical. Nor does it make therapeutic claims; nobody who runs its workshops is a qualified therapist.

Is there a place in the age of antidepressants for Vietnam-style rap sessions? It seems so. Tens of thousands of soldiers are coming back next year. The Department of Veterans Affairs has ramped up outreach at its hospitals and Vet Centers, but demand is great. Military officials always complain about how hard it is to get soldiers to talk about their problems. A lot of veterans say professional help feels useless. Some of those at Stony Point were adamant that medication checks and group therapy every few months didn’t add up to much.

Kevin Cottrell, a former medic, said that at his group sessions, he sat between an old Vietnam guy and a sailor who had been in Bahrain, and had nothing to say to either of them. But after last weekend, he said, he wanted to start a Vets 4 Vets chapter in his area.

The veterans broke into small groups, for the workshop’s most wrenching part. At a picnic table under a tree, Mr. Cottrell shared worst-moment stories with Michael Gillespie, Stephen Wade and a workshop leader, Abel Moreno. He told about trying frantically to save a soldier whose truck had been blown up, who had lost parts of both legs, and died in the hospital.

Mr. Wade then told of phoning his wife, who put her new boyfriend on the line. She called him a bad husband for going to Iraq. He is praying a judge grants him custody of his little girl.

Mr. Wade fell silent, distraught. Mr. Moreno said the next step was usually a hug. They began an awkward, 45-degree guy hug, patting each other’s backs. Mr. Gillespie joined them, and then Mr. Cottrell, a big guy, enveloped them all. They stood still for an unbearable moment, holding one another up.

October 6, 2008, Cameron, NC – For Private First Class Michael Anderson, the perils he could face on his first deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan next year are the least of his worries.

Anderson, 22, says he is more concerned about how his wife, Tunisia, 30, and the four children they are bringing up – from six months to 9 years old – will cope with his long absence; whether they will be able to make ends meet; the long-term effects on their relationship; indeed, even whether the family can hold together.

In the new military housing development where they live outside Fort Bragg, just one of the military communities that ring the Army’s largest base on the East Coast, the neatly manicured lawns, American flags, and bright new playgrounds mask a messier reality about military life this election season.

“The family situation for soldiers stinks,” Anderson said in the living room of his simple two-story house in Lyndon Oaks, home to enlisted soldiers and their families, as his wife put away groceries from Wal-Mart.

“This is an area that needs a lot of improvement as far as things that help soldiers,” he added, including more pay and benefits and family-support programs.

“The wives don’t have much to do,” he said. “They get bored. They need to have more types of recreational things.”

In large part because of such anxieties, soldiers and their spouses are more engaged in this presidential election than ever before, according to longtime observers of the Fort Bragg area. They are keenly interested to see what the candidates’ policies will mean for the future of their communities.

But many of them are caught between their frustration with their predicament and a desire to make sure the mission in Iraq is respected and their service is honored.

Anderson, for example, said he believes that “the soldiers aren’t being respected when they come home.” He complained of local stores in the Fort Bragg area “taking advantage of us” by jacking up prices.

Since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Army has taken unprecedented steps to help soldiers and their families cope with the strains of multiple deployments, unleashing a battalion of family assistance specialists, financial advisers, and setting up a variety of new counseling programs.

The Army has repeatedly acknowledged the strain caused by such deployments, including a higher divorce rate than in other military branches.

“There is a maturity in how the Army supports these families,” insists retired Colonel George Quigley, 69, now a community volunteer and organizer for the McCain campaign, which is trying to convince military families that the former prisoner of war will provide more benefits, if not an immediate let-up in the pace of deployments.

Still, the Andersons and their neighbors are among thousands of military families around Fort Bragg who are bearing the brunt of the longest conflict in American history involving an all-volunteer military – a force that also has the highest percentage of married soldiers, 60 percent – than in any previous conflict.

For a growing number of them, their deep sense of duty is threatened by the daily struggle for the semblance of a normal life, forcing them to question how much longer they can hold out, according to nearly two-dozen interviews a Globe reporter conducted last month with soldiers, their spouses, counselors, and community leaders.

Wives with husbands deployed overseas whispered of countless Army marriages falling apart, often as a result of infidelity. Mothers complained about the hardships of living on the salary of an enlisted soldier such as Anderson – who receives less than $1,400 a month in base pay – including wartime bonuses.

Others spoke in serious tones of soldiers struggling to rejoin their families after returning from war with scars, both mental and physical, and young children who barely recognize them.

“They are breaking up families,” said Chandra Vargas, 27, whose husband is deployed a second time to the Middle East and who stopped by the Andersons, her two children in tow, to plan a late summer trip to the beach. “The same guys are going over and over again. You get a little bit of extra money, but it ain’t worth it. They are leaving the moms to be single parents. People are getting ‘Dear John’ letters.”

She implored: “Who is going to hear our pain?”

The soldiers and their spouses have conflicting views on how the candidates might help or aggravate the situation.

Anderson, for example, says he is drawn to the message of Barack Obama, who has pledged to bring US troops home from Iraq, but worries that the Democrat may not uphold the military’s appropriate place of honor in society as much as his opponent, Republican and Vietnam veteran John McCain.

“Obama hasn’t said that more money will be going to military personnel,” Anderson said, a common refrain in the insular world of the military ranks despite the candidate’s proposals for enhancing military and veterans programs.

“McCain has good ideas military-wise,” Anderson continued, “such as more pay.”

“I am a little scared about Obama,” added Staff Sergeant Oswaldo Gabriel Garcia, 26, after he got a trim in the Bragg Barber Shop on Bragg Boulevard, located in a shabby strip mall next to a dry cleaners, a few shuttered storefronts, a tax service and a Cash N’ Advance “coming soon.”

Garcia, who has completed two tours in Iraq and is married to another soldier who is based in Washington state, worries that Obama will “downgrade” the military. “That is not the way to go,” he said. “We have a war on two fronts.”

Obama has said he would start drawing down US forces in Iraq as soon as he took office and expects to have all US combat forces out within 16 months. McCain has said he wants all combat troops out by 2013 but opposes any timetable and wants to be certain that US forces do what is necessary to ensure that Iraq doesn’t become a haven for terrorists. Both candidates say they would improve benefits for veterans.

A growing number of soldiers, many of them in the lower enlisted ranks or junior officers, express support for Obama, whose campaign has launched a voter registration drive on Fort Bragg.

Soldiers such as Latoya Jackson, 26, who has been deployed to Iraq four times and is set to go to Afghanistan next year, want to know when the deployments will ease.

“I have been deployed four times and I have been in the Army nine years,” she said, adding that she is looking for a president “who is going to help us, not hurt us.”

But meeting the challenges facing military families simply outstrips the Army’s ability to deal with it comprehensively.

So the state of North Carolina last year provided funds for the Cumberland County School District – where nearly one out of three students has a military parent – to hire its first full-time liaison to military families.

They turned to Shannon Shurko, 32, a former elementary school teacher and mother of two whose husband is on his second combat tour.

Over a dinner of shrimp and grits at Georgia Brown’s in nearby Fayetteville, Shurko emptied a suitcase filled with pamphlets, binders and other materials she lugs to meetings with parents, teachers, and Fort Bragg officials.

There are practical tools such as “A Teacher’s Guide to Deployment Issues,” which outlines “signs of separation anxiety.” Another guide, designed for military families, advises: “Prepare for deployment now. Resolve family problems before the separation. Time doesn’t heal all wounds nor does absence necessarily make the heart grow fonder if there are unresolved issues left behind.”

She holds up a copy of a magazine called “Military Spouse” she recently discovered, which offers a military psychologists’ perspective on the impact of multiple deployments. “We have taken a big hit,” Shurko said of military families like her own. “It was a rough deployment,” she said of her husband’s first combat tour. “Fifteen months is a long time.”

Shurko, like many others interviewed, spoke not only of the difficulty of the multiple separations but the less-appreciated struggle to make the family whole again after reuniting with spouses and parents that have been at war.

“He missed so much,” she said of her husband.

And just when her husband was getting to know his sons again, he received orders to deploy again. She doesn’t want her husband to go overseas again, Shurko said. “I want my boys to know something other than chaos.”

Vargas, after making an emotional appeal for help, scolded another Army wife whose husband is deployed, Sabrina Rivera, 24 – a mother of three with another on the way – when she said she isn’t planning to vote.

“We have to make a difference!” Vargas told her.

But asked if she had decided whom she will turn to, Vargas paused before adding, “I don’t know who I am voting for. It’s kind of tricky.”

October 2, 2008 – In June of this year, Andrew Kramer, writing in the New York Times broke the story that the world’s oil giants, “Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP … along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies” were “in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields.” Subsequently, the Times went on to report that “A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies … ” The Times asserted that the “disclosure” was “the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism.”

In reality, there had long been ample evidence of deep involvement between the Bush administration, foreign firms and Iraq’s Oil Ministry. The Times and other major media outlets also failed to expose the major financial ties between the military occupation in Iraq and the same oil giants. In fact, each of the oil giants named in the original New York Times piece — Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, and Chevron — regularly shows up on the Pentagon’s payroll. In fact, last year, the five firms took home more than $4.1 billion from the Pentagon — with Shell leading the way with $2.1 billion.

In September, the “criticism” the Times predicted apparently finally scuttled the no-bid deals. In a piece by Kramer and Campbell Robertson, it was reported that the “plan to award six no-bid contracts to Western oil companies, which came under sharp criticism from several United States senators this summer, ha[d] been withdrawn.” The companies would, however, be eligible to bid for contracts and, just days later, it was announced that the Pentagon’s favorite of the oil majors, Shell, would become the first oil giant to sign an energy deal with the Iraqi government in 35 years.

On September 22nd, the government of Iraq and Royal Dutch Shell officially signed a $4 billion deal “to establish a joint venture with [Iraq’s] South Gas Company in the Basra district of southern Iraq to process and market natural gas.” A day later, the Times reported that Shell had “established an office in Baghdad.” From a “news conference in Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone,” the Times quoted Linda Cook, the executive director of the Shell’s gas and power unit, as saying, “We are ready to establish a presence.”

While the Times didn’t report it, Cook went on to say, “I am delighted that the Iraqi Government including the Ministry of Oil have supported Shell as the partner for joint venture with the South Gas Company. We look forward to moving jointly to implement the JV and begin investing in the energy infrastructure in Iraq.” What the Times (and other major media outlets) also failed to mention was that guarantor of that “Green Zone” from which Cook spoke, just days before, had the inked its own huge energy deal with Shell. On September 17th, Shell was awarded a $338 million contract for aviation fuel by the Pentagon. In fact, even before this contract, Shell had already awarded over $1 billion from the Pentagon during this fiscal year. If history is any guide, it will receive billions more before fiscal 2009 starts.

The Pentagon’s Shell deal came during one DoD’s periodic petroleum benders — massive multi-day spending sprees where hundreds of millions or billions of taxpayer dollars are paid out to oil companies. This one, on September 17th and 18th, netted Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and seven other oil companies a grand total of over $1.5 billion.

The fact that the U.S. government secretly facilitated dealings between Shell and the Iraqi Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts; that the U.S. military — the primary occupation force in Iraq — regularly pays Shell billions of dollars each year; that on the heals of a contract worth hundred of millions of dollars with the U.S. military, Shell just inked a deal with the with occupied Iraq and set up an office in the U.S. military’s secure “Green Zone” should raise myriad questions about the tangled relationship between the major players in Iraq. These complex issues go ignored because they are viewed as so routine as not to be worth mentioning, but in any other context the confluence of guns, oil and billions of dollars would certainly raise eyebrows.

October 4, 2008 – Randy Tran walked quickly past the majestic domes and marble statues of Capitol Hill, looking for the Cannon House Office building and the people he believed could help him.

Tran, a Vietnamese pop singer who lives in a Bay Area suburb and sleeps on a friend’s couch, flew 2,900 miles to be here. He rehearsed what he wanted to say. His English was not perfect. He was afraid he would have just a few minutes to make his case.

He had a 3 p.m. appointment in the office of a Wisconsin congressman. He was not exactly sure what the congressman did, but he was certain that this was a powerful man who could help untangle a political process that had ensnared him and thousands like him.

Tran came to Washington on behalf of abandoned children of American soldiers and Vietnamese women, born during the Vietnam War and, like him, seeking citizenship in the country their fathers fought for.

Called Amerasians, many were left to grow up in the rough streets and rural rice fields of Vietnam where they stood out, looked different, were taunted as “dust of life.” Most were brought to the United States 20 years ago after Congress passed the Amerasian Homecoming Act, which allowed the children of American soldiers living in Vietnam to immigrate. But citizenship was not guaranteed, and today about half of the estimated 25,000 Amerasians living in the U.S. are resident aliens.

Tran lives in Hayward and travels the country crooning pop songs to Vietnamese fans at restaurants and concert halls. But he feels unsettled.

“I feel like I belong nowhere,” said Tran, whose father was an African American whose name he likely will never know, but who gave him the mocha-colored skin so different from other Vietnamese.

“If I go to Little Saigon, they say, ‘Are you Vietnamese? You look black.’ If I go to the American community, they say, ‘You’re not one of us. You’re Vietnamese.’ “

But most wrenching for Tran is his lack of citizenship, a constant reminder of being an outsider in what he considers his fatherland.

“Our fathers served for the country, fought for freedom,” Tran said. “I am not a refugee, but I am being treated as one. We are Americans.”

Tran and 21 other Amerasians flew to Washington, D.C., for three days in July to lobby for the Amerasian Paternity Act. It would give Amerasians born during the Vietnam and Korean wars automatic citizenship, rather than requiring them to pass tests in English.

Most of them had never been to Washington. Some purchased their first suits for the trip. Some spoke no English at all.

Tran does not know his age. On paper he is 34, but he guesses he is closer to 37.

His mother left him in an orphanage in Da Nang when he was days old. A few years later, a woman in a nearby village adopted him to help care for her cows. She refused to let him call her “mother.”

The neighbors gawked at his dark skin; the village children yanked his curly hair. At night he would dream that his hair had turned straight and that he could pour a liquid over his body to turn his face pale. He would hide behind the bamboo mat he slept on.

“They looked at us like we were wild animals, not people,” Tran said.

When the Homecoming Act passed in 1988, thousands of Vietnamese who wanted to escape the Communist government used the Amerasians as a device to flee. At 17, Tran was sold to a family for three gold bars. When the family got to America, they asked Tran to leave their home. He moved in with a friend’s family.

Like Tran, many Amerasians lacked the English skills, education and family connections that had helped other Vietnamese refugees assimilate. Many did not attend school in Vietnam and arrived in America illiterate. Many migrated to Vietnamese communities where they were once again shunned. Some turned to drugs or gangs.

They received eight months of government assistance, including healthcare, English lessons and some job training. But the government did not help Amerasians locate their fathers, and funding for the program ended in 1995.

In Washington, Tran and the other Amerasians crowded into a friend’s house. There was Vivian Preziose from Queens, whose father brought her to the U.S. when she was 10. There was Nhat Tung Miller from Seattle, who found his father a few months before he died. There was Huy Duc Nguyen from Dallas, whose only clue about his father is that his last name sounds something like “Sheffer.”

They mapped out their plans. Preziose passed out 435 folders containing a letter she wrote. The next day they would deliver a folder to every Congressional office. They also had appointments on Capitol Hill, so they rehearsed what they would say.

Some stumbled over their words. Preziose encouraged them to speak from their hearts. Nguyen reminded them not to wear jeans. Tran advised them to speak slowly.

A year ago, few of the Amerasians knew one another. That changed when Nguyen went to a screening of a documentary about Amerasians stuck in Vietnam and met others like him. They talked about helping those still in Vietnam and started reaching out to Amerasians across the country. They knew of Tran from his singing.

Tran urged them to lobby for the citizenship bill, sponsored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose). In September 2007, they formed the Amerasian Fellowship Assn., which now has 5,000 members.

They had grown up haunted by a raw sense of being thrown away by their parents. Now mostly in their 30s and 40s, they came together for political reform, and along the way formed a community for those who felt invisible.

The day after they handed out the folders, Tran anxiously waited on the marble steps of the Cannon building for his team to arrive.

By the time they got to Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner’s office (R-Wisconsin), they were five minutes late.

They met a man in a tan suit with a faint smile.

Tran introduced himself and began describing the difficulties faced by Amerasians. Many cannot speak English, he said, making it difficult to pass the citizenship test.

The meeting lasted less than 25 minutes – not enough time for Tran to say that he was not allowed to go to school in Vietnam, that while he tended to the cows he would peer through the schoolhouse windows at the students learning to read.

Tran thought the man seemed confused why they were there. But the man promised to do what he could to help.

It wasn’t until the man handed out his business card that Tran realized he wasn’t talking to the congressman from Wisconsin. He was talking to a staffer.

“I didn’t know who he was,” Tran said. “I just knew we wanted to meet him. I wanted to tell our story.”

There is a lot Tran does not understand. He’s not sure which of the two houses of Congress the bill is stuck in or why it is taking so long to become law. When he and other Amerasians met with Lofgren in the Capitol building, he thought they were in the White House.

Lofgren warned the group that it was unlikely the bill would pass this year. But she promised to reintroduce it next year.

Some of the Amerasians decided to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, believing the names of their fathers might be inscribed on the wall.

Tran decided not to go. He has no clues as to who his father his. When Tran walked past an older black man on the street, he turned and looked.

He still wonders why his mother left him to suffer in Vietnam. Once, it was a source of deep anger. But his fury turned to sympathy when he learned about the harsh conditions during the war, the stigma of having a child out of wedlock with an American.

Perhaps she gave him away hoping he would have a better life. He once wrote a song called “After the War.” When he performs it before Vietnamese audiences, they are often brought to tears.

Tran later wrote an e-mail to the staffer. He mistakenly identified the man as “Mrs.” He also sent along an English translation of the lyrics of “After the War.”

He has yet to hear back. But he has faith that America will come through, eventually.