The Vulture’s Feast: Vietnam’s Last Gasp on the Altar of American Bloodlust

I stumbled off a Pan Am 747 two days ago, my skull still ringing from a week-long ether jag back in Woody Creek. The assignment was straight enough: file 5,000 words on the end of the Vietnam nightmare for Rolling Stone, deadline yesterday. But the second my boots hit the tarmac, I knew this wasn’t some tidy wrap-up piece. This was a plunge into the dark heart of the beast, a front-row ticket to the autopsy of a lie that’d been festering since Kennedy’s boys first started tossing greenbacks and grenades into this swamp. Saigon’s a circus gone feral—ARVN deserters peddling stolen M16s for a fistful of piasters, hollow-eyed GIs haggling with bar girls who’d slit your throat for a nickel, and a pack of wire-service hacks guzzling Scotch at the Caravelle, pretending they’ve got the scoop on “peace with honor.” Honor, my ass. This place is a slaughterhouse winding down, and the only peace is the kind you find in a body bag.

Back in ’68, I watched this war metastasize from a flickering black-and-white nightmare on the evening news into a full-color monster that ate half my generation. I was holed up in Vegas then, chasing the American Dream with a suitcase full of mescaline and a .44 Magnum, dodging the draft freaks and the flag-wavers alike. By ’72, I was knee-deep in the campaign muck, trailing McGovern’s doomed crusade while Nixon’s goons cackled all the way to the White House. Vietnam was the soundtrack to it all—choppers thumping, villagers screaming, and Cronkite droning on about body counts like a priest reciting the rosary. It wasn’t politics; it was a fever, a national psychosis that turned the Land of the Free into a junkie hooked on its own brutality. And now, here in ’75, with the embassy flags at half-mast and the last grunts scrambling for the exits, it’s clear: we didn’t lose a war, we ran out of altar boys.

The streets here are a Hieronymus Bosch painting with a tropical twist. Yesterday, I hitched a ride on a cyclo with a driver who claimed he’d been a Viet Cong sapper until the rice ran out—now he’s chain-smoking Camels and quoting Dylan: “The times, they are a-changin’.” Sure, pal, but not fast enough to dodge the B-52s that turned his village into a charcoal smear. We rolled past a Buddhist monk selling black-market penicillin, his saffron robes stained with motor oil, and a pack of kids kicking a deflated soccer ball through a puddle of Agent Orange runoff. The war’s “over,” but the ghosts aren’t leaving—they’re just switching costumes. I scribbled notes on a cocktail napkin until the gin fumes blurred the ink, then staggered into a dive bar where a jukebox blared “Fortunate Son” like a middle finger to the whole rotten enterprise.

America’s violence cult didn’t start here, of course. We’ve been swinging the scythe since Plymouth Rock—scalping Indians, torching slave quarters, blasting each other to bits at Gettysburg. Vietnam was just the latest mass, a Technicolor bloodbath broadcast live to every living room from Maine to Malibu. The Pentagon turned it into a machine: 58,000 American corpses, a million Vietnamese, and a tab that’d make a Vegas bookie blush—$168 billion, give or take a few million for the hookers and heroin. But the real cost was spiritual. We fed our kids to the grinder—18-year-olds from Omaha and Harlem, doped up on patriotism and bad beer, shipped off to die in rice paddies while the suits in D.C. sipped martinis and swapped war stories. And for what? To keep the dominoes from falling? Hell, the only thing that fell was our last shred of decency.

I ran into a Marine last night, a lanky kid from Tulsa with a thousand-yard stare and a limp he blamed on a punji stick. He was nursing a warm Tiger beer, muttering about how the brass sold them out. “We coulda won,” he said, “if they’d let us loose.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him there was no winning this thing—it wasn’t a game, it was a fix. The war pigs needed their pound of flesh, and he was it. I bought him another round and slipped out before the tears started. Back at the hotel, I popped a Dexedrine and stared at the ceiling fan, listening to the distant pop-pop-pop of small-arms fire. Fireworks, maybe. Or maybe not. In this town, the difference is academic.

The end of Vietnam isn’t a victory or a defeat—it’s a junkie crashing after a ten-year binge. We’re staggering out of the jungle, bloodshot and broke, with nothing to show but a pile of medals and a generation of walking wounded. The altar’s still there, though, waiting for the next offering. Maybe it’ll be Iran, or Chile, or some other godforsaken hellhole where we can flex our sanctified savagery. The congregation’s restless—Ford’s in the pulpit now, preaching “healing,” but the pews are full of hawks sharpening their talons. Me, I’m done with sermons. I’ll file this dispatch, catch the next flight out, and hole up in Colorado until the snow buries the stench of this place.

Saigon’s a graveyard now, a steaming relic of America’s holy war on itself. The vultures will keep circling, the ghosts will keep moaning, and the faithful will keep praying to their god of gunpowder and gore. As for me, I’m lighting a joint and raising a glass to the end of the madness—knowing damn well it’s only intermission. The altar’s cold, but the fire’s still burning. And in this country, it always will.

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is the High Priest of Gonzo, a journalist who takes mescaline for breakfast and truth with a chaser of bourbon. His forthcoming memoir, This War Was a Joke and Nobody Laughed: Notes from the Saigon Smorgasbord, will be released as soon as the CIA clears the redactions and the typewriter stops bleeding.

Note: This piece of writing is a fictional/parodic homage to the writer cited. It is not authored by the actual author or their estate. No affiliation is implied. Also, the Rolling Stone magazine cover above is not an official cover. This image is a fictional parody created for satirical purposes. It is not associated with the publication’s rights holders, or any real publication. No endorsement or affiliation is intended or implied.