I WAS A HERO ONCE

An anti-Vietnam War activist who served in the conflict contemplates his generation’s failure to change the “rampant militarism of post-WWII America” in a candid memoir.  

Mahoney, now in his 70s, reveals himself as someone who’s honored his ideals throughout his life—whether they landed him in a war halfway around the world as a second lieutenant with Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), or in a Florida courtroom on trial for allegedly attempting to disrupt the 1972 Republican Convention as one of the “Gainesville Eight.” He later worked as a “rules and regs guy” for an unnamed nonprofit international development organization and journeyed to the Standing Rock Reservation in the Dakotas where he tried to help stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The decorated veteran modestly frames this frank and highly readable memoir as a way for his children to better understand their father; however, he also succeeds at creating a work that may help some of his fellow Americans better understand their country. For example, he characterizes his development work as “empty and worthless,” and his activities at Standing Rock as seeming like “an exercise in futility” as two presidential administrations pushed the pipeline forward (although, of the latter, he notes that he’s “proud of what we were able to accomplish and wish we could have done more”). All these endeavors, in the author’s estimation, fit in with a “lifelong trend of me being attracted to an ideal and then becoming disillusioned when I was confronted with the reality behind the ideal.” This feeling of bleakness—coupled with the terrible fact that the U.S. government has only intensified its international military presence since the Vietnam War ended in 1975—ultimately contributed to Mahoney experiencing bouts of suicidal ideation, he says. However, he effectively relates that he also achieved some clarity about what drives his nation: “I do know that if we are to survive,” he observes, “we must find a more just, more humane approach to organizing our economic activity than capitalism.”

An exceptional remembrance that illuminates both its subject and his homeland.